Challenge Question

[Cindy]

I thought it might be fun to start a challenge question post. I would like to post now and then an incident or problem that either happened to me or has been reported to me. The Challenge is to post how you would resolve the problem or your suggestions for survival. Just something to get people thinking and I would like to learn some other ways on how these problems and situations could be solved. Please keep it civil. The divers involved survived and learned from these events.

OK, High flow, tannic cave, vis apx 3-8 feet, depth 150 feet, distance from entrance over 1500 feet, mapping in a team of two, both experienced cave explorers. The lead diver is laying line and the second diver is doing tie offs. Both divers were in backmount configuration and had dropped a stage on the line. Diver one is watching his compass and laying line, he is slightly ahead around a corner of the cave from the second diver and not aware of any problem.. Diver two goes to make a tie off and starts to deflate the wing. A loud noice alarms and stuns the diver. Later it was found that the first stage had exploded due to metal fatique. The diver finds themself on the floor of the cave attempting to shut off the manifold. After several tries the manifold isolator is found and shut down and then the left post. How would you handle this problem? Which way do you go? Toward your buddy or the stage? How do you find the line?

[OutlawCaver]

Once I had assured myself that my air was managed I would attempt to locate the line. I would need the line to locate either my buddy (since he was last known to be laying the line I have lost) or my stage. I should not be more than about 20 feet from the line in any direction since I was doing tie offs and surveying. Once I found the line I would probably start exiting. All my buddies would be coming down hard on me from the rear long before I made it to my stage anyway.

[Mike]

In tannic water with vis. at 3-8', I would not be far off the line.
If it was my left post I no longer have an SPG & don't know how much gas I've lost ( at 150' it's going to go pretty quick ) and I'm not sure how far away my buddy is if he's out of sight.
I would put an initialed line arrow on the line to let my buddy know I have headed for the exit & he should know there's a problem & be headed after me.
Hope I make it to the stage in time!

Mike M

[FW]

In tannic water with vis. at 3-8', I would not be far off the line.
If it was my left post I no longer have an SPG & don't know how much gas I've lost ( at 150' it's going to go pretty quick ) and I'm not sure how far away my buddy is if he's out of sight.
I would put an initialed line arrow on the line to let my buddy know I have headed for the exit & he should know there's a problem & be headed after me.
Hope I make it to the stage in time!

Mike M

Great answer Mike! I really like the arrow idea.

FWIW, the leader should be watching for light behind (him) and turn back soon anyway.

Cindy, great thread.

[Jay]

Cindy,

Knowing how large some of those caves you are surveying could be I would have to get the drysuit drycleaned if that happened to me.

1. Find the line
2. Find my buddy

I would not take the time to place an arrow at that point. At that depth and a high flow cave, there could not be much gas left and the emergency has to be dealt with first.That is not how we are trained. In emergency situations your responses have to be clear and consistent. It is not the time to improvise. In less of an emergency and with agreed upon protocol that may be acceptable to some folks, but leaving your buddy is hard to justify.
The only reason that would keep me from going for my buddy first would be if the stage was much closer then them. Even if I got the stage first, I would still find my buddy and exit together. If I could not find them after a reasonably short time, I would then leave an arrow on the line and exit.

[aw]

1) Locate line. Should be very close if he was doing tieoffs. Shouldn't take long. High flow means silt from him hitting floor would be gone quickly. Finding line should be rather quick. (Unless it was a high tunnel passage, I'm not sure why the diver was deflating his wing anyway to do a tieoff. Normally you can just turn upside down and reach.)

2) Then move towards Buddy. The reason you have redundancy is to get things under control and exit WITH your buddy in a controlled and orderly fashion. You have a responsibility not to endanger his life by taking off assuming he will follow. If you took off too quick, he might start a lost buddy search not seeing you tearing downstream. Remember, in 8 ft vis, you don't have to go far before he can't see you at all. Also, dashing for the stage which is probably about 700 ft away from you (around 800 ft of penetration probably) is the farther gas anyway. Your buddy is probably only 50 or 100 ft away at best and is the next available gas source. Plus he probably already saw that your light isn't there and is probably coming towards you already.

3) Communicate and execute a controlled exit. Try using the post you just turned off so as to breathe as much usable gas from the damaged tank first. When it's gone, go to your other reg on the right post. When it's gone too, you'll have your buddy's reserve. And SURELY by that point, you will have reached stages, if not completely out of the cave, especially in high flow.

It's real easy to analyze something like this sitting at a computer cause you have one great resource (air which equals time). But in the actual situation you've got to already have decided what you need to do. Hence, training and "what if" scenarios.

[Cindy]

OK, this one did happen to me. The reg exploded in two and was unusable. The cave was very large and I had "fallen" down and slid to the floor. I basicly crawled up the wall to my line. I followed my track back up in the silt. I scrawled a note to my dive buddy and left it on the line. I started toward the stage (more out of fear than thinking) and realized I didn't remember how far off it was. I turned and went to my buddy who was tracking back toward me. I ran out of air just as he reached me. We shared air and he supported me to the stage. Once at the stage I was able to stop sharing air but my buddy still had to support my bouyancy. I had damaged my inflator hose in the mess. I remember this incident that happened around six years ago when my buddy is late or does something to piss me off. He earned my respect and loyalty that day.

Next week I will post another that was told to me by a icon of cave diving. I would like to see a few other posts to get people thinking about diving and less about politics etc. Cindy

[MORGAN]

I'm enjoying this and hope more of these challenge scenarios will be posted- Thanks Cindy! A great opportunity for us rookies to get perspectives from those more experienced. My cave training was extremely organized and detailed, but an instructor can only fit so many "What are you going to do now?" situations into the time available. Keep 'em coming!

Mike

[Mike]

This is definitely a thought provoking question.
My first thought was to find my buddy & my reasoning was that he should be the closest source of air but, then thought I'm going further into the cave with an unknown amount of gas to find a source that could be around the corner or not. In that kind of vis. when you cup your light unless he is within 20' you can't see his light.

when exploring the caves here in Tn. your lucky to have 8' of vis. so, we try to stay close to buddy, but things do happen.

Forrest, to be honest I got the line arrow idea from Marbry on the last dive at Cow Crap Cave, it was only a small OH S**t moment.

Mike M

[Mike]

Okay, I guess I failed the challenge question, I would have died!

Sure has made me think, thanks Cindy.

Keep em' coming.

Mike M