Should jumps be marked?

[Cindy]

that is why vital divers like you are so important.

Cute :P I think what we need is one of our divers who is nominated for instuctor director to share how they think it should be done. Better yet an explanation by all three of them.

I'm just a nut who swims in a cave. I don't teach this stuff. Cindy

[JDR]

Of course they should be marked. I can't believe anyone would believe otherwise.

But then again, I don't have a huge ego.

Dude, are you serious? The ego comment above is short sighted, ignorant, and biased.


Maybe a few jumps should be marked, like in some training areas. The fun of diving other people's lines (for me) is finding something new. If there are 20 road signs telling everything about the system, it becomes a dive of follow the yellow brick road. The inner explorer who dives in holes in the ground wants the excitement of "finding" something that is not clearly and readily available. Not everyone has time or dedication to "ridge-walk", but we all have time to learn a cave well enough to know where jumps are. Marking jumps is a short-cut to understanding a cave(flow patterns, tunnel alignment, etc...). Is the diver there to collect glory distances and say that he/she has dove 'x' line (ego), or is the diver there to experience a 3-dimensional multifaceted environment for the joy of the experience.

Hey Forrest,
Yes, I was referring to the double arrow jump markings.


Why did jumps become introduced instead of running a continuous line that T's or Y's?

Sure, I'm serious.

A large number of cave divers are cave tourists. I'm one of them. Although I make 50 - 60 cave dives a year, I have no desire to "go where nobody has gone before." There are enough passages at Jackson Blue, Peacock, Little River, Devil's, Manatee, Madison Blue, and the other "tourist caves" that I can dive them for the rest of my life without feeling I have missed out on anything.

I don't think that I have ever met you, but I have met many cave divers over the last ten years whose egos were overwhelming. They are the guys who think only the elite should be allowed in any cave other than the above-mentioned "tourist caves."

I only make about ten dives a year in Peacock, but it's mighty convenient to come around the corner and see the double arrows that mark the Peanut Restriction jump. When swimming from Olson to P1, the arrows marking the Cisteen and Nicholson jumps help me know EXACTLY where I am.

Do the double arrows marking the Young Syphon or Middle Grounds jumps at Jackson Blue bother anybody? If so, then those divers probably fall into the aforementioned category.

I just go out and enjoy the caves.

Russell

[BobK]

Sure, I'm serious.

Yup. Anyone with a decent light who spends any time in a system is eventually going to see, or go find, the jumps. So why not mark them ?
I do like the idea from Cindy of marking them somehow for back or side mount, but past that we're all supposed to be qualified to not screw caves up, right ? Or, perhaps I'm missing that this is supposed to be an Easter egg hunt

[johnnyrichards]

No.

Johnny Richards

[FW]

Hey Forrest,
Yes, I was referring to the double arrow jump markings.

Why did jumps become introduced instead of running a continuous line that T's or Y's?

Ok, at the risk of annoying all the current instructors...

A brief history of lines in caves:

The earliest (surviving) cave divers ran lines in, and removed them on each dive.

I am not sure who or when, but later explorers started leaving their lines in so they could get farther on each dive.

Then OW divers started following the lines in, with no gas plan, and ran out.

It became common practice to start the permanent lines past the cavern zone, so not to tempt OW divers.

As more passages were discovered, there became a maze of Ts and double lines in some caves. Then cave divers started getting confused and lost. This was *BEFORE* there were plastic line arrows, and tape arrows didn't stay put very well.

Then the idea of gaps was born. That way even cave divers would be forced to mark the way out for themselves.

After the plastic line arrow came into use, some explorers went back to Ts, and used arrows to point the way out. The problem is that the "Gap" system was in all the training manuals, and the instructors couldn't quit teaching it.

Personally, I think all the popular gaps should be replaced by well marked Ts, like the Merry Go Round in Little River.

[FW]

Since my last post was to answer JDR's question, I left out some other line points.

In the '70s, no two divers could agree on how far back the main line should start, or how long the gaps should be.

It was common to go in a place like Devil's Eye, and find the start of the main line changed from the previous day. The main line would start at the Lips one day, the Keyhole the next, and the Bone Room junction the next. We had to use main reels with at least 500' of line, just to be sure we could get to the start of the main line.

As the number of cave divers increased, an new problem arose. There might be nearly a dozen lines from the entrance to the start of the main line on a busy weekend. So the main lines started to migrate towards the entrance. Scooter (as well as other) divers didn't want to run lines at all, so would just follow the spider's web in. Sometimes these divers would come out to find *no* line at all from the start of the main line to the entrance.

Once most of the main lines started very near the entrance, there were few places for instructors to teach reel handling. About the only places left to teach reel handling are gaps, so instructors are reluctant to replace them with Ts. While I agree that reel handling is *extremely* important, a new problem has arisen. More and more trained cave divers are routinely doing visual jumps, especially on popular traverses, and circuits. If those gaps are not replaced by Ts, someone is going to get lost soon, and we will lose a couple more trained cave divers.

Here are a few places I have seen divers doing visual jumps: on the Grand Traverse at Peacock, the Grand Tour in Devil's Eye, Peanut-Crossover Tunnel-and out past Pothole, and several different Bat circuits in Devil's Eye.

[Line Squirrel]

My personal opinion is that there should not be any jumps! All lines should be clearly marked like ski slopes. Cindy

Did a sidemount "double black diamond" the other day, not for the faint of heart...it was awesome <G>

[JDR]

Thanks Forrest,

That clears up a lot about the way that lines are ran.

Side question, today, do the various training organizations work together on some minimal standard of teaching? Does the training reflect what happens in a cave, or vice versa.