Drawing The Line On Safety

[Tegg]

Some of the comments in this thread are amusing and as such I certainly hope they are jokes.

[deanme]

I don't have a problem with goldline in high trafficed caves, but I do have an issue with people pulling historic markers out. Its nice to see a sliver of man-made history mixed in with the eons of natural history we find inside these caves. Leave the original markers and exploration tags as a testament to the success of those who did the exploration... and if you're gonna change the lines, make sure its understood and agreed by everyone using the cave, not just a select few.

I think only one person would disagree with you regarding original line arrows, and, at the risk of speaking in his stead, I think even he has changed his mind on this issue.

dean

[Anders Knudsen]

The explorers will be recognized if a map or a stick map is published, there arrows are in my opinion just a tool, and as a line marker originally is a temporary marker, we shouldn't navigate while using them, and never trust them, but they are there to make navigation simpler - same with better lines, and gold lines, not needed, but nice to have in an emergency. as Steve pointed out, there is at least one fatality that would have been saved using gold line.

if you go 10000ft back in a cave to look at a plastic arrow, well we are looking at different things, I prefer to look at the cave, and must admit, that I never stop to look at a line marker, and read the initials or nickname - which we in most cases have no clue who is anyways.

but each to there own, it doesnt bother me to leave the explorers markers, if that is what makes people happy - even though i think this is primarily an ego thing.

But I have troubles understanding how some people think that we should keep the "temporary markers" on the line as navigational aid, but then use suboptimal lines and placements ?

is people dying in the cave to glorify the explorers ? wont the explorers be more recognized if there cave becomes easier to navigate so people can actually find the beautiful places in the cave ?

safety always comes first- if we can combine this with a plastic marker with some initials, well fine by me - but i would never compromise safety on behalf of " respect for the explorers"

just my point of view

Anders Knudsen

[deanme]

Some of the comments in this thread are amusing and as such I certainly hope they are jokes.

Speaking for myself, my comment about tying yourself off on the line was a passive aggressive response to Neon's comment about putting safety below cave preservation. I guess he would rather see people get lost and die then risk them swimming further away from the main line on a larger gold line then would be the case with a smaller line.

[deanme]

but each to there own, it doesnt bother me to leave the explorers markers, if that is what makes people happy

I think this is the key to the line arrow issue. It is not my position to dictate what you should find important, or where you should find value. If everyone thought like me, life would be boring. Diversity of interests is a wonderful thing. Only fascists would disagree.

dean

[deanme]

If you get lost because all the lines are the same color, you're already doing something wrong.

I guess that is kind of like saying, if you need lane lines in streets to drive safely, you don't know how to drive. I think everyone will agree, we can navigate our way down a street in a car without lane markers, but, at least for me, lane markers assist auto navigation and make driving safer.

Maybe you are confusing the subject of need with prefer? I don't think I need a gold line to exit a cave, but I think a gold line would enhance safety, and as such is a good thing.

dean

[Jay]

I used to ask my students a question before every OW class.
"Have you ever run out of gas on the highway?" If they answered yes, I suggested they should not be scuba diving. You shouldn't get on the highway if you are not sure you can make it to the next exit for fuel.
IMHO gold lines are a good thing in popular caves and any concerted effort to standardize how they are run, marked and maintained is good for the community.
The argument that it encourages fools to progress further then they should is very shallow. You cannot prevent a fool from killing themselves, they will keep trying until they find a way to do it no matter what you do. We see this over and over in cavediving.
There are ways to keep the casual folks out of caves the community feels should be used by more skilled divers, like placing the line further from the entrance or not using gold line.

[DA Aquamaster]

I used to ask my students a question before every OW class.
"Have you ever run out of gas on the highway?" If they answered yes, I suggested they should not be scuba diving. You shouldn't get on the highway if you are not sure you can make it to the next exit for fuel.

Absolutely. I had a flight surgeon once who had previously been a pilot, but stopped. I asked him why and he explained he usually had a half dozen things on his mind at any one time and he'd forget little things - like checking the fuel. His opinion was that doctors in general make poor pilots as many of them don't ever focus on flying. In that regard it applies to cave diving - if you can't focus on it, you have no business doing it.

IMHO gold lines are a good thing in popular caves and any concerted effort to standardize how they are run, marked and maintained is good for the community.
The argument that it encourages fools to progress further then they should is very shallow. You cannot prevent a fool from killing themselves, they will keep trying until they find a way to do it no matter what you do. We see this over and over in cavediving.

I agree. Not placing gold line to keep less expereinced people out is just treating a symptom while creating another potential problem. The real issues here are cave divers who are ale to get certified despite their own poor judgment. Cave instructors need to weed people out based on attitude and lack of judgment even more rigorously than they would for lack of skills. Skills can be tauight and acquired, an usafe attitude is very hard to change and poor judgment is almost impossibel to remediate.

As for a previous posters comment that gold line may allow less skilled dvers into to the cave, he needs to take a hard look at the poor quality of many full cave divers. In some cases it is lack of skill, in others it is a lack of currency and some others just don;t seem to care. In contrast, most into divers I have seen are for the most part not yet complacement about cave conservation and are still imbued with a strong sense that contacting the cave is wrong. That sees to fade to a greater extent in full cave divers.

There are ways to keep the casual folks out of caves the community feels should be used by more skilled divers, like placing the line further from the entrance or not using gold line.

In the past, this approach was fairly easy as into /basic level divers were restricted to mainline with no jumps, no tees, no navigational decisions. GUE Cave 1 complicates that a bit, as limited navigation is allowed.

But whether a line is gold or not, will not prevent an Intro/basic/Cave 1 diver from clipping into it, if they can find it, so placing the line farther back in the cave makes sense (similar to practices such as not making offshoot lines obvious on many unmarked jumps), but not using gold line on high trafficked lines is just asking for problems.

In my opinion, a challenging section of a cave should be more difficult to find in order to minimize the unskilled traffic in it, but it is absolutely essential to ensure it is as easy as possible to navigate out of the cave from where ever the diver happens to be and gold line is a valuable tool in achieving that.

In that regard gold line makes sense in any complex cave system where that line in conjunction with a line arrow tells the diver it will take them to an exit with no gaps, jumps, etc.

[FW]

The really sad thing about all this is, if you don't pay attention to lines, you won't pay attention to gold lines either.

I have seen experienced cavedivers swim off the goldline, across a gap, and into a sidelead with smaller white line, and not notice for over a minute.

I took someone on the bone room circuit in Devil's Eye, and had told them we would be jumping onto gold line at the Maple Leaf. They nodded as if they agreed. About 3 minutes after we were on the goldline, on the way out, the diver gave me the up signal, and turned around and headed back into the cave. I chased them down, pointed to the goldline, and the out arrow. They kept swimming upstream. I gave the out-is-that-way hand signal, but still couldn't get them to turn around. I finally grabbed a hand, and lead them out. The moral, once a person get stressed, they get blinded to nearly everything. FWIW, this diver was way past thirds by the time they ever looked at their SPG, so were panicked to get out ASAP. The only good thing to come of that dive was the diver deciding they didn't need to cavedive anymore.

[phillip1]

The explorers will be recognized if a map or a stick map is published, there arrows are in my opinion just a tool, and as a line marker originally is a temporary marker, we shouldn't navigate while using them, and never trust them, but they are there to make navigation simpler - same with better lines, and gold lines, not needed, but nice to have in an emergency. as Steve pointed out, there is at least one fatality that would have been saved using gold line.

if you go 10000ft back in a cave to look at a plastic arrow, well we are looking at different things, I prefer to look at the cave, and must admit, that I never stop to look at a line marker, and read the initials or nickname - which we in most cases have no clue who is anyways.

but each to there own, it doesnt bother me to leave the explorers markers, if that is what makes people happy - even though i think this is primarily an ego thing.

But I have troubles understanding how some people think that we should keep the "temporary markers" on the line as navigational aid, but then use suboptimal lines and placements ?

is people dying in the cave to glorify the explorers ? wont the explorers be more recognized if there cave becomes easier to navigate so people can actually find the beautiful places in the cave ?

safety always comes first- if we can combine this with a plastic marker with some initials, well fine by me - but i would never compromise safety on behalf of " respect for the explorers"

just my point of view

Anders Knudsen

I totally agree with you on safety, but this should not be used as an excuse to remove diver's line arrows ever. I have heard that some unscrupulous divers will actually take out explorer's line arrows and replace them with they're own in cave systems they did not find nor explore, come and try that here in the DR!!!!

I think that the history of a cave is important and to me who were the original explorers and pioneers, how did the cave exploration develop etc.. is really interesting and important and the original line arrows are to be left in place. If I were to dive a cave and happen to look at a line arrow left in the cave 30 years ago by Sheck Exley or Hasenmayer that would be awesome and I think any original explorer famous or not should have they're line arrows in place should the line need to be replaced.