Your 3 most stressful cave stories
If I would know how to start an anonymous thread. So that every post could not reveal the author to save a face and to educate us. I would ask you guys what were the most 3 serious in your opinion incidents that you have experienced on cave/sump trip?
Perhaps that would also show that our activity is not as extreme as media tries to present. Which in turn makes my wife stressed.
That is what the IRAP forum is for. If anyone wants to post anonymously, send the report to a moderator, and whey can post it under the name IRAP administrator.Originally Posted by ARY
http://www.cavediver.net/forum/forum...-Project-(IRAP)
I never knew that was a "thing"... finally taking my Cavern Course this coming weekend, so no cave stories for me, but I really look forward to reading them.
Let us know how it goes, and good luck.
In no particular order, I'll get this started. Not going to throw anyone under the bus
I was SM diving a low flow rather dusty low area. I had discussed with a respected diver prior to going there. He said, "Jeff, you're going to stir up dust. Know that going in. When it gets bad, just stay still and let it clear. It got much worse than I thought. Because of all the potential snags above and below, I had to wait for what seemed like 90 minutes (probably 3 min) for it to clear enough before moving back out. Just focused on breathing slow and calmly.
I was number two in a two man team SM attempting to dive Shangrila. Apparently we choose the wrong entrance. Diver one went in and I became aware it was much tighter than what I wanted to deal with. He went out of sight and I stayed close to our entrance looking for signs of him flashing a distress sign. My stress was around "What would I do if I saw his light flashing a distress signal out at me?" Go after him or not. Fortunately, he came out.
Lastly, years ago I watched a buddy disappear into the far end of the skid row line without placing a jump. As he was in BM, there was soon a pretty good wall of silt forming between us. I tied in a jump, (as should have been done in the first place!) and slowly started waving my light as a beacon. After a minute, I OK'ed the line and went in after him. We were only about five feet apart before I could begin to make out his light coming back at me. I reversed and we exited on the line.
That said, I know there are folks that have been in deeper poop than this. But the worst I know is all I can reference.
The first incident was a confidence builder. I eventually went back there and made a successful transit.
The second and third were "post dive conversation starters". An interesting aspect of this topic will be how often were basic rules broken resulting in stressful situations as opposed to situations simply developing. Looking forward to seeing what else pops up.
Nice post ARY
Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
-Ferris Bueller
The most certain way to stumble into the future, is to live your life looking over your shoulder.
-Jeff Hawes after getting a huge mulligan...
I kinda was hoping to not only read near death but more "average" stats. Just more input from a normal dude of the cave crowd. I have a great sympathy to everyone who had a survival story but we have hundreds of cave divers who did not (yet hopefully) have it too bad. Hoping that an average picture would rather look maybe like a challenging sport but not a suicide mission.
From what I started to read though it is already very interesting (also what came in PM)!
Read all the IRAP reports. Most are "average"
I have often wondered how many "near miss" type situations go unreported. I suspect there are as many lessons to be learned there as in the ones with casualties that spawn volumes of posts.
Your 3 most stressful cave stories
Recently on a sunday our dive at Ginnie was longer than expected. By the time we got out of the water and packed up we realized we wouldnt be able to make t to Alice's in time for fried chicken. It was touch and go for a while but we ended up switching to our backup and had a great burger at Loosey's b
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Made a dive trip to High Springs while my girl friend (now wife) stayed home. Promised to call her when I was out of the water. But my phone went dead (low battery) and had to drive 2 hr to hotel to call her. She was freaking out, thought I was dead. Almost got divorced before I got married.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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