When does it become dangerous though? The flow has been pretty constant every time I went in there.Originally Posted by Kelly Jessop
Welcome to the Cave Diver's Forum.
When does it become dangerous though? The flow has been pretty constant every time I went in there.
Mostly when the river is dropping fast, and the aquifer is well charged. A week or so ago was a good example, The Ear was blowing so hard that you had to pull on the wall while on a scooter, and some people's backup regs freeflowed.
Damn, I didn't even notice the higher flow. I must have had so much less gear than my typical scooter dive that it felt normal.
While going through the lips my buddy ran out of air. I handed him my backup regulator. Next thing I know he rips my reg out my mouth.
After a few milliseconds of panic I figure out he put the backup reg in his mouth upside down and was unable to get any air. I rectified the
situation and exited the cave safely.
Why do I like cave diving? It's the one place where my kids can't follow me.
Siphon was really strong that day. Imagine going into the flow like normal, gentle frog kick, maybe some pull and glide, nice day for a cave dive. Let's take a left here, and another left. Hmmm, this is nice, I'm hardly kicking...look , I'm going faster and faster, wait, I can't slow down. I see light, maybe We can exit here....Nope, tiny crack. There's no kicking against that current. Pull on the cave wall, regs are free flowing, Uh-oh, this is bad. I have to help my wife against the flow, cause she's not making it. It was that kind of bad.
I had that happen in OW (luckily). One of my students handed his reg to his OOA buddy (a drill) upside down. The OOA guy took a breath of mostly water, and bolted to the surface, dragging me along with him. I guess he exhaled into the reg enough, that he didn't get an embolism. I learned a heck of a lot that day, so did the students.
That reminds me of another stressful dive. I was working up to becoming a Hart guide. I was with a "mentor guide". We went in the Black Lagoon, and downstream towards Hart spring, which in blocked to anything as big as a diver. The line ended at a vertical restriction. Instead of turning around, I went to look at the restriction, and got sucked into it. Lucky for me that I didn't fit, but I was pinned by the flow. I looked back at my guide, and all I could see was bubbles, he was laughing so hard. After wriggling a bit, I realized the only way to get free was to roll away from the siphon. Once I did that, I was good, but it was still quite a swim for a short distance.
plus the dive at hart with us, forrest.
we did upstream and back to little hart, then the traverse to hart. well, no-####-there-we-were with the line flapping in the flow. and we hadn't changed tanks.
forrest told us to hold and tied off and went looking for the rest of the line. larry spent the next few minutes calculating how much time we could spend there before we had to haul ass back against the flow to get out on the gas we had - about 5 minutes. thank goodness forrest came back pretty quickly and tied the broken line and we exited without problems.
another fun dive was in the sidemount tunnel in kitty, to the left. larry was leading and pulling line out of the silt. he pulled up a T he couldn't see, as the T happened to attach to the line just behind his elbow. i cookied it. when we got back to it, his eyes were enormous because it was a nav decision he didn't remember. plus the aliens who put the T in also put one of my cookies on it, the devious bastages.
then my personal worst dive, when my dump valve string (behind my shoulders) got caught and my wing wasn't holding air and i couldn't figure it out and couldn't fix my awful buoyancy and spent most of the dive crying. yes, just like puking, you can sob into a reg.
proud cave tourist!
That was Black Lagoon, upstream a little, back to Black Lagoon, then downstream to Little Hart.
It wasn't very stressful to me, since I knew the way out. Besides all we had to do was follow the flowMostly, I wanted to fix the line.
BTW, since then we put in a 1/2" rope where that line was broken. It can be used as a pull line for people entering from Little Hart.
i wasn't stressed either. i had perfect confidence i was getting out.
thanks for the place name corrections!
proud cave tourist!
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