Did Edd save another one?

[nakatomi]

I just personally think that if you're not putting a jump on the map you should not make it obvious and especially not mark it. I thought the lost instructor/student issue was because of confusion based on what was marked on the map vs what was marked in the cave.

The incident occurred because the instructor wasn't familiar with the cave, went into a passage that wouldn't work for them and didn't turn his students around while he had the chance to.

Having said that, the beginning of the Squirrel Tunnel is even on the old map Sheck Exley made. It just stops at the fissure which is a no-mount restriction for the configuration they dove back in the day.
I bet that back then, the line was even tied off before that restriction.

[rddvet]

I may have heard it differently than it occurred. I thought there was confusion because a jump was present that wasn't on the map they referred to. The story has about 80 different versions I'm sure.

[nakatomi]

I may have heard it differently than it occurred. I thought there was confusion because a jump was present that wasn't on the map they referred to. The story has about 80 different versions I'm sure.

I know of only one story.
The instructor meant to take the students into the horseshoe circuit, which on the map is the first passage to the left after the chimney. Instead he took the next jump, which was the Squirrel Tunnel with the restriction (now called the lost student tunnel).
Both are on the map.

At the time, it may have been so that only the Lost Student Tunnel was a marked jump, since it shares the jump marker with the Beanie Tunnel/Young Siphon, which is on the right hand side of the passage.

Either way, jump markers or not, if he had read the map correctly, he would not have gone into that tunnel.

[bamafan]

From the double arrows at Young Siphon if you go left you will see the Lost Student Tunnel as it is about 90 degrees from the main line. The Horseshoe circuit is back to the left and sort of tucked back in a corner. The other rescue at the lost student tunnel was because another team did the same thing. As Oliver stated both of these tunnels are on the map.

[Sludge]

the jump marker with the Beanie Tunnel/Young Siphon, which is on the right hand side of the passage.

We call that the Hat Room.

[ffdiver5597]

Is it me or does Superlyte messages keep disappearing?

[FW]

Is it me or does Superlyte messages keep disappearing?

He asked for it to be removed, once he got new information.

[ffdiver5597]

10-4.

[Aotus]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/3537...3389954839546/

[nakatomi]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/3537...3389954839546/

As a side note to the two people who tend to think I'm responsible for everything they don't like, I had nothing to do with this post. Thank you for your attention, you know who you are.

And just for everyone who does not have Facebook, here is the full text:

Recently there was an incident in Jackson Blue that could have easily resulted in a fatality. The diver involved kept a level head and was able to work through the situation and get himself out of the cave without harm. While the incident ended with no injury or fatality it’s still important to discuss what happened in hopes of preventing any similar future incidents. The purpose here is not to demean the divers involved in the incident. We weren’t there with them. We don’t know what they were thinking or feeling while this was occurring. It’s easy to sit back after the incident and say they should have done this or they should have done that. But no one knows how they will respond to a specific situation until they are faced with it. The incident has occurred, it’s in the past, and everyone survived. So let’s try to learn from this by analyzing what we know about it.
The information I know about the dive may not be completely accurate. Even the divers involved may not know exactly what happened. After a stressful event memory is not always the best and the event will likely not be recalled perfectly. So anyone who thinks any information presented here to be inaccurate, that’s okay. The point of this is not to present an accurate account of the incident but to try to take away something positive from this event.
The dive – Two divers planned to do a DPV dive in Jackson Blue back to the Middle Grounds area. One of the divers had been there previously but it had been some weeks and he was not completely familiar with it. The other diver in the team may not have scootered in this cave before.
Let’s look at this plan. First, lots of divers have done and will likely continue to do dives like this. This is a common occurrence. So we, as a community, can’t really blame these divers for this plan. The community condones it by accepting that it’s done and by a large enough percentage of the community doing similar types of dives. This is done in spite of the general rule that is often referred to that a cave diver should not scooter where he/she hasn’t been swimming. This doesn’t mean a cave diver needs to swim from the Ear to the Heinkle Restriction or from the Jackson Blue cavern to the Middle Grounds. What it means is that each section should be visited by swimming before it is scootered. It’s difficult to become familiar with a passage if you’re moving 150 feet per minute through it. Use progressive penetration to learn a cave. Swim the first 1000 feet several times and learn the main passage and the side passages. Once you have become familiar with that area scooter to the 1000 foot marker and park the scooter, then swim the next 1000 feet and learn it. Continue to do this as you progress farther into the cave. This is how you learn a system.
The team had done their dive and reached their turn pressure. They turned the dive and began their exit. So far everything was as planned and uneventful. On the way out they missed a turn in the main passage and continued straight into a side passage. They noticed they were in a side passage when they noticed the line they were on was white and not gold. This is the main reason we have gold line in caves. A death occurred back in the early 1980s in which a team did the same thing. Only there wasn’t gold line in the caves back then. All the line was white and there was no definitive way to determine which passage was the main passage without being familiar with it. The team disagreed on the exit. They separated and one survived but the other died. Soon after the agencies decided to do something about it and gold line became the line in the main passages of caves.
The passage the team in this recent incident accidently went into became small fairly quickly. The adjacent main passage also gets small so it wasn’t realized right away. A major difference between these two passages is that the side passage has a lot more silt on the floor than the main passage does. This led to a decrease in visibility. The second diver was able to back out and find the gold line. The lead diver remained in the passage. At some point the second diver decided to exit the system and call for help.
This next part is my recommendation for future divers and in no way intended to be a criticism of the divers involved in this incident. As I stated previously, we weren’t on the dive and we don’t know how we would have responded in a similar situation. But let’s examine this part of the incident. We have one diver back on the gold line and another off the gold line in a side passage. My first reaction is that a safety reel should have been deployed from the gold line toward the direction of the lead diver. As cave instructors we teach certain scenarios to our students. One of the scenarios is the lost buddy situation. The way it is most often taught is that you notice your buddy is no longer behind you and begin a search. During some of the classes I teach I will also swim off of the gold line quickly into a side passage and expect my students to perform a lost buddy exercise even though they know where I went. This helps them think outside of the box of the typical “noticing your buddy is no longer with you” scenario. This incident is also one of those out of the box scenarios. The second diver knew where his buddy was so he wasn’t really lost, right? Not exactly. The lead diver was lost off the gold line. He was in decreased visibility. The best thing to do at this point is to place a safety reel from the gold line to as close to the area as possible in hopes that the lost diver will come across it and be able to make it back to the gold line. This, of course, only applies if the second diver has sufficient gas reserves to do this and still make it out of the cave. As difficult as it may seem, one fatality is better than two, and sometimes that decision has to be made.
Another thing that could have been done, as long as gas reserves were sufficient, was to leave a stage cylinder, or both behind. Both divers were carrying two stage cylinders with them. The lead diver ended up leaving a stage cylinder in the cave because it had to be removed to pass through a restriction in decreased visibility. The stage cylinder couldn’t be located after passing through the restriction. This stage cylinder happened to be full with 3000 psi of gas. The second diver could have left at least one stage cylinder behind, and possibly both as long as there was sufficient gas in his sidemount cylinders. As it turns out it wasn’t needed but we all have heard the old saying, “You can never have too much gas.”
The lead diver obviously ended up getting out of the side passage and finding the gold line. By that time he was low on gas and had left a full stage cylinder behind because he had to in order to get through a restriction. Fortunately, he knew there was a safety cylinder nearby. The person who had placed it there a few days previously had mentioned the safety cylinder and its location. The diver, being back in a familiar part of the cave, went to where they cylinder was supposed to be and found it behind a limestone feature. He was able to clip the cylinder on, even with rigging he was not completely familiar with, and use the safety cylinder to exit safely from 2100 feet back in the cave. By the time he reached the cavern of the system his buddy and another diver had entered the cavern and he was provided assistance. He completed his decompression obligation and made it out of the cave unscathed, a little tired (who wouldn’t be after such an experience), but unharmed. He was even checked out at the local emergency department and medically cleared.
So, fortunately, this turned out to be an incident we can discuss and learn without having to mourn over the loss of another friend or acquaintance. We’ve had far too many of those over recent years.
To recap, the parting lessons are the following –
Make sure you are familiar with the area of the cave you are going to scooter. It’s easy enough to swim off the main passage into a side passage. It’s happened before and will likely happen again. Most will know within a few seconds that they are no longer in the main passage. That few seconds will get you much farther off the main passage if you’re on a DPV though.
Leave a safety in for your buddy, even if you know where he is. Lost buddy doesn’t mean lost from you. It means lost from the line. The same procedure should be used for any diver who is lost off the line.
Evaluate gas reserves if you have stage cylinders and leave whatever you can behind. The more gas the lost diver has available the better the chances of survival.
And the biggest lesson – stay focused, stay determined, and don’t give up. That’s what saved this diver. He didn’t give up. He kept pushing on until he found the main line and then he remembered the safety cylinder that was located not too far from where he was. He was then able to get the unfamiliar rigging to work and scooter out. This focus and determination is what saved his life. I applaud him for this. And I hope that everyone reading this can take something positive away from it, learn from it, and become a better diver because of it.
Rob Neto
International Training Director
National Association for Cave Diving
TD@nationalassociationforcavediving.org