Originally Posted by
quarrydiver
I don't usually post on forums, but having read this thread and the related thread on Bruce's accident, as well as having had an interchange with Skip, I thought I would just add some comments and my own views to the mix.
These discussions on violating the 5 golden rules/guidelines of cave diving, particularly in light of the recent accident, seem to me to be a little dangerous. This is particularly so since a number of posters (including Andrew who should know better, no offense intended) seem to me to be in denial over what happened largely because they are constantly violating some rather minimal, common sense rules/guidelines, especially the one relating to having a continuous line to open water.
The 5 rules/guidelines, represent a minimum. They also represent common sense. Change in terms of increased conservatism is fine, but the reverse is not fine and is simply asking for trouble as accident analysis has clearly shown empirically, time and time again (even if the analysis lacks statistical rigor). Indeed, I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of deaths of trained cave divers (with the exception of Parker Turner's) have involved violations of one of the 5 rules/guidelines of cave diving, and they have invariably been due to either complacency or going beyond one's training and abilities (i.e. too far too soon).
In the case of Ginnie, there is no doubt that many people get away with not placing jumps. As Andrew pointed out you don't need to lay a line to drive to your local neighborhood store to pick up milk. But let's see how good he is at finding his local store or getting back home from it if the visibility was suddenly reduced to 1 ft (not incidentally impossible for anybody who has experienced a London fog/smog before they banned coal and wood fires). Let's see how good he would be if he had a mild heart attack or stroke, or a case of vertigo. In a high flow system such as Ginnie, a total silt out in many places can usually just be waited out for a few minutes, but not always, and certainly not everywhere (including Harry's crack, the Double lines, Sherwood splits, etc...). You never know what's going to happen, and it is those freak incidents that the golden cave rules/guidelines are meant to protect against, no matter how experienced a cave diver one may be.
Lets take a couple of really simple examples. I've noticed that many people don't feel the need to place a jump from the Gold line to the Hill 400, and I have had many discussions where such people have said that they can easily get from the Hill 400 to the Gold line in a total silt out/lights out situation. However, why would one want to subject oneself to additional stress to find the gold line effectively blind, when it would be trivial to just follow the jump line and not have to worry about it. The same is true for laying a primary line in the Ear or Eye. Again I've heard many people say that even in a total lights out situation they could find their way out from the start of the Gold Line to open water. But I'm not so sure in a real situation that they would fare that well, particularly if there were other factors coming into play as well (such as a limited gas supply, some medical problem, etc...). Let's say it's at night and the Ginnie flood light is off. Your lights have failed (including backup lights) or there is a total freak siltout or something's happened to your ears and you've suddenly got vertigo. In a training setting sure one could find one's way out the Ear (with a little luck and some time, and providing one doesn't get turned around), but when the real deal hits totally unexpectedly the stress level is going to be quite a lot higher. But if one has a primary line in, its a piece of cake to just OK it and follow it to open water with no (or minimal) stress at all.
So this is what I think happened with Bruce (purely speculative of course), and why I believe that placing jumps is so critical with absolutely NO exceptions. The divers decide they are going to do Harry's crack and they scope the exit (on the Expressway side) and the entrance on the Gold Line side, without laying any jump reels. Bruce goes into Harry's crack without laying a jump line and creates a massive silt cloud (either by accident, or because it's impossible not to from that side, or because his skill levels are not up to the task, even though he probably had over a thousand dives in the Devil's system). His buddy, quite rightly doesn't feel comfortable following since there is no way he can even see the start of the line in Harry's crack from the main passage. Bruce doesn't stop when he goes in but continues swimming, oblivious that his buddy isn't behind him. Had Bruce laid a line, and then waited until his buddy came (following standard protocol) or not as the case may be, there wouldn't have been an issue. Moreover, with a line in place, his buddy could have put his head in and flashed Bruce down. At some stage Bruce realizes that his buddy is not behind him and has an "Oh ****" moment. This may have been while Bruce was still in Harry's crack or had exited on the Expressway side (we'll never know). But either way, since the plan was to go into Harry's crack, Bruce is under the assumption that his buddy did follow and that he's stuck somewhere. Obviously a bad situation. So Bruce goes back in to look for his buddy. At this point, the whole of Harry's crack is silted out and Bruce is going blind, anxiety is increasing, etc...., progress is slow. (i.e. this isn't a question of being in a silt out for a minute or so but for a prolonged period of time in tight, silty passage). He manages to exit on the Gold line side, but there is a complete silt out at the exit, and he cannot see (he may not even realize he's out of Harry's crack and has no line to follow), he goes under the gold line, manages to get hold of the Hill 400 line, and for whatever reason continues up the Hill 400 line. At this point he probably doesn't even know whether he's on the Hill 400 side, or the Expressway side, his vision and thinking have tunneled, and he probably doesn't even look at his pressure gauge until it's too late. He's found 400 ft up the Hill 400. Assuming a swim rate of 50 ft per minute, that's 8 minutes, which would have been more than sufficient to get to the log in the Ear and onto his O2 bottle, albeit somewhat tight. As for the hypothesis that he went looking for his buddy in the Wormhole, there too, had they followed the continuous guideline rule, his buddy would have laid a jump line; if this wasn't there, then Bruce would immediately have known that his buddy wasn't in the wormhole. So from whatever angle you look at this, everything boils down to not running lines at all jumps. The other factor, of course, is that ultimately Bruce clearly didn't leave himself enough gas reserves (ipso facto since his tanks were found empty). Of course, he might have also suffered some medical event that would have impaired him either mentally or physically for a period of time, or some partial equipment failure (such as a free flowing reg) that would have slowed him down; but then again, not having a continuous line sure didn't help.
So why is laying lines at jumps so important in my view. (a) It provides a continuous guideline to open water so that if the **** hits the fan (silt out, mild panic attack, mild heartache, vertigo, etc....) one can just go back to muscle memory and follow the line without thinking. (b) It provides time to make and think about transitions (something Larry Green wrote about some time ago in the NACD journal); i.e. you install a line across the jump, you wait until your buddy comes over, you signal each other OK and then go on; without placing a jump, the tendency is just to go. (c) It avoids complacency (and if one is complacent about putting in jumps, then it isn't a stretch that one might become complacent or take short cuts with regard to other issues). (d) Placing jumps with spools/reels with one's name on it, allows others to come looking for you should the worst happen. With no jumps in place, how is anybody going to find you in a system as large and complex as Devil's. (e) Placing reels, jumps, etc... maintains muscle memory so that when one actually needs to use a reel in an emergency situation one doesn't fumble. And believe me, if one doesn't practice, skills rapidly go. I recently dove with somebody, who shall be nameless, who rarely placed a jump reel/spool in Devil's. No big deal for me as I always place them and enjoy doing so (I will never do any visual jumps and I always run a line to open water, including in the Ear carrying several stages and towing a scooter). But on one dive I told him that he should place one and indicated which one; guess what, he fumbled, took a really long time (because with a scooter in hand he'd probably never placed a jump) and then misplaced the snap clip pointing into the cave rather than towards the exit (i.e. back on the jump line as it should have been). Clearly he was out of practice which suggests that in an emergency situation such as a real lost line situation in a complete silt out or lights out, he might have some difficulty.
So lets look at the 5 rules/guidelines (in no particular order):
1. Dive to 1/3rds at maximum penetration; now that's pretty liberal and represent the bare minimum of conservatism. Clearly one has to reserve at least twice as much gas as one needs to exit (with 2/3 of one's starting gas at the point of maximum penetration being the absolute minimum reserve even in a high flow cave). In a syphon, in tight/silty passage, the presence of tight restrictions, in low/no-flow cave one obviously has to reserve even more gas for the exit as the situation dictates.
2. Continuous guideline line to open water; we've discussed this.
3. Three lights; again obvious (but more up to a common sense limit is better, especially since backup lights are now so small, one can easily stuff a couple of extras in one's pockets).
4. Appropriate gas for depth; that's obvious. (And dare I say it, it seems to me than a maximum operating pO2 of 1.2 for the working portion of the dive, as suggested by the GUE standards, seems reasonable to me; and for the record I'm not GUE trained).
5. Don't go beyond one's training; again obvious. (And very importantly note that training is a continuous process that goes well beyond cave class; in other words progress slowly and don't be in a hurry; it's the voyage that counts, not the destination).
I would add one more rule/guideline: don't venture in places that are beyond one's technical abilities, even if they are within one's comfort zone. e.g. if one can't go through the Parallel lines, for example, without kicking up the silt, then practice somewhere less tight, low and silty until one can do so. (For sure it makes for a much more pleasant dive to have good visibility on the exit as well as on the swim in).
One last thing, in the light of Kelly's very pertinent last post. While I haven't practiced medicine for a long time (since I now do biomedical research), I can confirm that in emergency medical situations, particularly late at night after working non-stop for 30+ hours, as many residents do, one absolutely wants to be able to make decisions and carry out procedures on auto-pilot. Since these often involve life or death situations one sure can't afford to make mistakes. This applies of course not just to CPR but to any number of other medical emergencies. Exactly the same is true for unforseen events/emergencies in cave diving.
Just a few thoughts.
Marius
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Marius Clore
NACD Equipment and Technology Chair
(Disclaimer the above views are my views and mine alone, and have nothing to do with the NACD).
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