Cow Springs Access Restrictions for Conservation, Safety, Accessibility

[Tegg]

The greatest benefit of NSS-CDS membership is access to the NSS's caves. Hart and Cow are the only ones that don't require trimix. Cow is the only one that doesn't require a guide.
If Cow is closed to most members, why belong? Cave Divers' Forum offers more information than UNDERWATER SPELEOLOGY. The Sierra Club has more clout in conservation. Non-members pay only slightly higher registration fees at NSS-CDS events, most of which are prohibitively far away.
Bob Cree's suggestion that the NSS-CDS offer a mentorship program is one that most newbies would jump at, but it is unlikely that there are enough mentors to go around. If offered, it would meke up for losing access to NSS-owned caves.
Most of my dives since full cave are short because most of the buddies I can find are at the intro level. That's not all bad: Intro cave divers tend to be sticklers for the rules and fiercely critical of the slightest lapse.

How many caves, springs, or land has the Sierra Club purchased and preserved?

If you want to support an environmental group who's focus is much broader then just caves and springs, then Sierra Club is your deal. I have never seen a map of a cave and where it travels in a Sierra Club publication. I have also never seen the Sierra Club get involved in water sampling, fauna counts, and bother to track down individuals who have been proven to damage a cave clay formation.

I may not agree with all the access policies for the properties, then again, all of the properties ARE accessible to any member who meets the requirements. (which are not all that stringent in my opinion)

[TONY CHANEY]

I know that this issue has been beat to death but after deciding to not renew my membership via a kind letter to the staff of NSS-CDS, I was informed that there is no requirement for Ab Davis to dive upstream. Sorry to bring up something that others might have already known but if I did not know it, I reasoned that other divers also did not know.

[Sludge]

I was informed that there is no requirement for Abe Davis to dive upstream.

Are you sure they didn't just mis-speak? There is no 100-dive requirement for downstream.

[FW]

Are you sure they didn't just mis-speak? There is no 100-dive requirement for downstream.

No "mis-speak". At the February meeting, the BoD voted not to require 100 dives in upstream Cow, at least for the forseeable future.

[Sludge]

Wow.

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Well... if this poll is accurate, atleast you guys took into account nearly 10% of people's wishes... lol

Piss on the other 90%

[PfcAJ]

Sweet, lets lower some more standards!

[TONY CHANEY]

There really is another way to looking at the poll: 49% voted for Ab Davis required
40% voted for prior experience
10% voted for at least one diver with Ab Davis
Considereing that I have been there several times and our team has an Ab Davis diver that makes us a 50% of the votes...not the 10%.

[TONY CHANEY]

Sweet, lets lower some more standards!

It was all about increasing the standards not lowering them. So it is back to the way it was before the poll. I did not get a chance to dive there last week out of respect for the new standards. Each and everyone could have lied and said that we were only doing downstream but we chose to respect the rules and standards as we thought were in place.

[SuPrBuGmAn]

There really is another way to looking at the poll: 49% voted for Ab Davis required
40% voted for prior experience
10% voted for at least one diver with Ab Davis
Considereing that I have been there several times and our team has an Ab Davis diver that makes us a 50% of the votes...not the 10%.

You have a dizzying logic...

You are less than %1, as far as this poll is concerned, no matter how you voted.




As far as the standards, there appears to be nothing in the new standards that requires prior experience. So no, this is not an increase in standards necessary to dive Cow, it is in every way a decrease.