The "New" Ginnie
...ain't so new any more.
I've just come back from a 5 day trip to Ginnie. It was deeply disappointing.
My very first dive was to the restriction that there's so much fuss about. It has been eroded to the point where a rock that was barely exposed has now been exposed down about 6 to 8 inches. In other words, a lump of clay about 6 inches deep by 3 feet long by 2-3 feet across has been eroded away by people barging their way through this restriction. That's somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 a TON of clay. Unbelievable.
The damage is beyond belief. Immediately after the restriction there was dark, black goethite as little as 8 weeks ago. This has been trashed, with white scars everywhere in the rock.
It's really saddening. Within two dives back there, I had completely flipped sides and was with all those asking me not to publish anything on what lies beyond there.
I suppose I'll have to live with the fact that it's now trashed. I am utterly amazed at how quickly this occurred.
Please, please don't go back there if you're not in total control of your buoyancy, reasonably slender and wearing sidemount. Yes, you can bash your way through - but you do every other diver a discourtesy by doing so. You also put your life at risk since any attempt to reverse your course if you're that fat/big/discombobulated/improperly attired is going to be extremely difficult.
Rose also pointed out something to me when I was there. It's important to realize that if you DO manage to kill yourself back there, you put others at risk who are going to have to haul your overladen and underskilled (and now stiff and immobile) ass out of there. Please have some consideration for not only your life, but that of the people who have to get your corpse.
There are a LOT of fun dives that you can use to develop your skills - the wormholes both at Ginnie and at Little River, perhaps some of the smaller stuff in the top left corner of Ginnie, etc etc. If you can't get through small silty caves with minimal contact and silt, you have NO BUSINESS going past the gold line at Ginnie. Actually that weird little tunnel where all the catfish hang out at the exit to LR where we put our deco bottles is a GREAT area to practice running lines, handling siltouts and even better, not creating them in the first place. There's some stuff in Downstream Cow off to the left and right that's reasonably trashed yet good practice for doing small silty passages at relatively low risk. If you don't make a regular practice of TRYING to handle little passages in relatively benign situations, don't try it at the back of Ginnie for crying out loud - you'll panic, and kick the crap out of it. And more importantly if you haven't found these spots yourself you have no business going back there.
There. Now I sound like an old fart also. But I am just astonished at how much a select group of dumbasses have screwed up that cave in 8 short weeks. Well bloody done.
I have no more intention of ever putting a map into the public. I've had the pleasure of sharing some data with one of the finest divers I've come across, James Toland. He has done an outstanding job of lining some cave where, in all seriousness, it looks as though the line mysteriously got there by a natural process since there is not a single mark in the cave around his line. He also mapped it, and did me the honour of sharing the data with me. I think we'll just keep that stuff to ourselves, since without the map it's pretty hard going back there and easy to go off in an incorrect direction resulting in a very difficult dive. if someone else is able to add to that data then maybe we'll share with them.
I am embarrassed at how wrong I was on this issue.
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Semper Fi, Cameron David Smith, my son, my hero. 11/9/1989 - 11/13/2010 
Originally Posted by aainslie
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