Thinking and restrictions

[ARY]

...
I start by gathering my equipment putting it in my truck in the same order and in the same place. This might only help me remember to bring everything. Having everything you planned on having seems important to me. When I get to a dive site and I am missing something it changes my mental state IMO.
I also assemble my gear the same order every time. My tech instructor said it was a good habit to get into so it has stuck with me.
I also only implement one or possible two new ideas for a given dive (ex. I have been using a bungee for my deco cylinder to bring it tighter against my body.) helps me keep my mind on what I am doing as well as assessing that one new technique.
I like to talk about diving while getting gear out of truck but not when I'm putting/placing items of gear together.
...
... what couldn't you prepare yourself for?

This will make your dive safe but ironically it will also make you complacent and less prepared for disaster after a while. I say make it a wreck! When you have havoc in your garage or truck bed - it does better prepare you for unexpected, no brainer- you have to come up with solutions quick and timely to save your a$$. You buddy can also play an important part in making havoc so you must have different buddies for different missions

[DarkSloss]

Hahaha! I like that...Wreaking havoc to prepare. Don't worry Garth, if you decide to go for your cave cert, your instructor will probably do lots of things to wreack havoc on your dive.

That said, one of the things my instructor in MX taught was the importance of a pre-dive meditation. Not discussing your dive plan, but visualizing in your head for a minute or two as well. See yourself making that jump, and see yourself taking a left at that "T."

When forced to navigate out of the cave during a lights-out/air-share (after a lost diver drill), that meditation will be very helpful to sense of direction. Especially helpful if your instructor takes out your cookies and the arrows from the permanent line. After all, they are really only there to make your life easier, and are never to be relied on.

[Garth]

Good advice for the havoc. My wife throws in enough curveballs and havoc.

Visualization. This will likely be my focus now for a while. Even though I do most of my dives locally in a quarry I will try to visualize my dive more. It seems like great advice. I'm going to use it.

[DA Aquamaster]

I won't go into tight restrictions unless I'm alone. It's risky enough alone, never mind having 2 people in there.

Marci and I will go through restrictions, but use use a modification of this approach that also reflects what Forrest mentioned regarding looking ahead for a place to turn around.

In our team I will normally have Marci hold while I proceed ahead to determine how far we'd need to go before being able to turn around and to ensure it does get wider fairly soon. The idea being it is much faster for one of us to back out of a longish restriction than it is for two of us to try to do it at once. And if the restriction is overly long, it's not worth going there.

We have also shared gas going through fairly snug restrictions and that has been both a confidence builder but also a warning as to the impact restrictions will have on gas planning.

[aainslie]

The main prep for restrictions is gear prep. Getting rebreathers through restrictions is interesting. Gas planning becomes way more complex. Drysuits are easily torn.

I once dropped through a vertical restriction and had a great dive... Until I found that the config that let me in so easily wouldn't let me out. It took me almost 30 mins to move 20 feet. I had to drop back down to 200 ft depth and totally reconfigure my gear before I was able to exit.

The toughest thing is to not panic, and to keep thinking through the problems.

[Michael Stroeck]

I once dropped through a vertical restriction and had a great dive... Until I found that the config that let me in so easily wouldn't let me out. It took me almost 30 mins to move 20 feet. I had to drop back down to 200 ft depth and totally reconfigure my gear before I was able to exit.

You did WHAT? I'd love to read that dive report

[Scott]

I do the pre dive visualization, and some of the things mentioned above. But 2 more things to add, when it is tight and no vis (like when exiting) I close my eyes and visualize the passage. This helps me a lot.
2nd thing, I just lost 20 lbs to be able to fit better in some "dry" stuff we are doing. Goal weight is another 10 pounds away, but I can't wait to try my new 'body configuration' underwater.

Scott

[apitkin]

FWIW, I have been doing that type of cavediving for 35 years. Roughly in the order of most importance:
1. You can't use the Thirds rule in anything but big tunnel, and still water. Andrew doesn't think it even works there, and I agree.
2. As a rough rule, I increase my reserve for each restriction. The amount depends on how tight the restriction is, and how much silt is there.
3. I look ahead for places to turn around. If I can't see any, I try to memorize what I am going through, in case I have to back out.
4. I won't squeeze through a really tight restriction, if I don't see a way to turn around. Backing up through something like can be really time, and gas, consuming.

There are plenty of larger caves yet to be explored, and it isn't worth risking my life for.

Five pieces of excellent advice, distilled from a lifetime of cave diving.

The other point is that in addition you are often running a line and dealing with it in zero visibility while trying to back out. It's easy to entangle yourself.

[aainslie]

You did WHAT? I'd love to read that dive report

Ok

Day 4: the crack

This isn't the cave where someone died last year of an oxtox. It's on private property, and had not been dove until very recently. The WKPP guys did a die trace that lead to this sinkhole from their main passage that they've been chasing down, but there's a catch - the "crack" that leads down is really really REALLY narrow between abut 140 ft and about 180 ft. I headed down dressed like I was going to be away for a month - rebreather, 2x85's sidemounted, a 40 of 50% and an 80 of O2. I dropped the O2 really quickly, but I was already silting the hell out of the cave. There's a ton of dead vegetation in the crack, and it's easy to dislodge huge mounds of the stuff. Turns out I have a talent for cleaning out debris filled passages - I could barely see my HUD, which is located less than 2 inches from my mask! I was worried about decoing in this vis but headed down anyway.

At about 100 ft it opened into a smallish room, with the crack still going down from 140 ft, even tighter than above. I dropped in feet first, facing along the crack with my sidemount tanks pressed up against the sides. I couldn't move - so I squeezed the tanks inwards so that they were in line with my body, and dumped all the air out of my BC. A wiser person would have gone down 10 feet and then tried returning - not me, I scratched and scraped my way down until I hit the bottom, beginning to understand why GUE were unwilling to push this cave - actually the wusses won't even go the first 30 feet. At 180 ft it opened up to a huge room with a debris cone in the middle. Vis was about 30 feet or so. There was one lonely line - so I followed it. Fifty feet... and it ended. I tied in, wondering if I was missing something - why did this line end in wide open space after 50 stupid feet???

I ran about 80 feet further (I'm guessing, I didn't survey) before hitting massive flow. I mean massive. It was a huge passage, at least 20-30 feet across and 10-15 feet high, with water just screaming through it - I swear I could hear it vibrating the walls, like a low rumble. I swam hard, panting and puffing, for about 100 feet up the passage... and suddenly the flow stopped. By now I had been going for 20 minutes, and I already had nearly an hour of deco. i think that what had happened was, I had accidentally swum off the main passage into a side passage. I was a little narked, a lot winded and very freaked out by then, but that was my best guess. I didn't want to risk going back and relocating the main passage so I tied off and headed out. Which is when things began to get interesting. I got vertical again and headed up the passage. At 160 ft* I got stuck - and I mean STUCK! I was squeezing my tanks in to the middle and clawing like a wild thing but nothing was working. This is when rebreathers help so much (although of course the whole reason I was stuck was becuase I had so much crap on...) - I calmed down and realized that although deco was racking up, I was in no immediate danger. I dumped the air in my BC and headed down again. At the bottom, I tried getting my cylinders as much in line as possible and headed up again. No dice - stuck again at 160. By now I was getting seriously panicked. It's amazing how quickly those monkeys start chattering at a time like this. I sank back down, and on the way down finally had an idea. I released the right hand tank, and left it hanging by the clip on my second stage. I then took the left hand tank, and slung it across my body so that the top was bungied to the left, but the bottom was connected to my right hand D ring. Finally, I went open circuit because I realized that the way up required me to actually go past vertical by about 10 degrees, and going open circuit allowed me to move by head back more to see. Finally things started working, and I gently worked my way to 140 feet when I shot out the crack and had to hit the brakes... err, BC vent.

I just sat there in the dark, letting my breathing calm down. My first stop was at about 120 so it seemed a reasonable place to start relaxing, with deco decreasing instead of increasing. I stripped down again and moved my tanks back to their original positions, then continued the ascent. it was pretty uneventful from there, although I did get pissed off when once more my fancy iPod deco toy refused to fire up. 80 minutes of deco and nothing to do! It was almost meditative when it wasn't mind numbingly boring - the gloom wasn't as bad as on the way down but I definitely couldn't see much. Boy, was it nice when finally a bit of green murky light worked its way down to me at 30 feet. I exited the second one of my 3 computers cleared me - I was done with this deco thing. Total time 130 minutes. Amazingly my scrubber, which I'd now done 3 dives and a total of 4 + hours on, still claimed that I had plenty of scrubber left.

200 feet of line into a virgin passage at 210 feet depth, and a crapload of adrenalin - a fine dive! This is going to be a huge challenge to really push for future groups. The problem is, one needs to get a few stages down that crack somehow - and what would REALLY rock is finding a way to get a scooter down. I suspect that the way to do it is to do setup dives sidemount or with limited bailout running stages and scooters down to the bottom, THEN to do the big dive with all the gear, followed by set-down dives. The scooter could be on a leash beneath you, with a small weight on the nose to keep it down. Once down there I suspect that you could blast down that passage and dump 2000 feet of line in no time flat... but boy would the deco suck! not to mention that absent any GUE lackeys, we'd be needing to do a lot of carrying back up after the dive.There's some great "big balls" diving available down that crack for a willing group - but this needs serious planning, and some tailor made plans to get in and out of the very restricted vertical slash tidily. The rush of finding passage that big with water moving that fast is indescribable, though. There's some very serious passage down that hole.

[jlillest]

Great trip report!

Always willing to hear more anytime you feel like sharing. Keep up the exploration and tell us anytime you have another fun adventure.

-Jon