I always run a line
I sometimes don't run a line at an entrance. I always run a line at jumps.
A don't always run a line at jumps. I always run one at entrances.
I sometimes do and sometimes don't run lines at both entrances and jumps
I never ever run a line at either.
Sounds very dangerous, I never dove in FL less Ginnie, really I fail to understand the logic of this kind of behavior, no matter how well you think you know a cave.Originally Posted by DA Aquamaster
To me it seems (god forbid) that this kind of behavior is an accident waiting to happen.
Well maybe you should reserve judgement till you get one or two dives in there. So where do you dive? Bill
"With regard to cave diving, the great thing is to be carried where you could not have imagined you would ever be, and then to come back alive."
"Wilderness. The word itself is music." Abbey, Desert Solitaire
In Response:
Dove Devils on Sat with a buddy.
- we are both full cave
- not instructors
- not deranged
- could care less what others think
We installed a primary in the ear and all three jumps required for our dive. Left primary in on exit as we were planning a second dive that day.
Dive 2
Agreed to join another 2 man team for this dive. Planned the dive as 2 2man teams not one 4 man team although we were all diving together.
- They were both full cave
- one an instructor and the other Abe Davis qualified.
- I have dived with both before and know their skill level.
We put in both the required jumps for the dive.
Hope this helps you
John
John Naschek
Canton Georgia
I don't care what cave it is I always run a line, no matter how safe it may look. I live and dive in the Dominican Republic, been to Mexico a few times too to film for an upcoming cave diving documentary, that's it only dove DR and Mex so far but I do plan on doing a dive trip to FL in the near future, and yes I will be running a line all the time, lol..
I think that is how it should be done all the time, regardless of your experience level or how well you know the cave.
If you had been there the Sunday prior, you would have seen me (in sidemount) enter without a primary - But then again, that's not the whole story.
The whole story is that there were 3 primaries run to gold from the eye. One happened to be for a team that my daughter was a part of. I was doing a short dive (< 700'p), and would meet them on their way out.
So, someone else's observations would have been:
1) A sidemount diver entered without a primary and broke a cardinal rule
2) That rule should never be broken
In reality, common sense prevailed because of the situation:
1) There WAS a primary in that I knew wouldn't be taken out before I exited, therefore I didn't break the rule.
2) There were 3 cave classes occurring at the same time at (~100'p - 200'p), which meant me running a line would have just made a bigger mess.
As someone said earlier, "Absolutes rarely are".
Exactly. Whether divers run a line or not at Ginnie is only part of the question - the rest of it is why do they do or do not do it and what level are they at?
I agree with you on common sense. That was my point. The observation was that we put the only line in there and followed teams who had clearly entered without a line and then saw other teams coming out who clearly went in without a line. We also passed teams entering during our exit, but again saw only our line entering the system. Clearly, the issue was not an over abundance of lines.
If there had been a line there before we entered, I would not have made the same observation or conclusion.
Your observation supports mine. You saw 3 lines and 3 classes, begging the question of whether people run lines in Ginnie outside of a class.
Also, using another team's line is fine, but only as long as they know you are "using" it. We had a similar arrangement with a pair of divers diving to Into limits. And the agreement was they would cookie the line and pull the cookie after they left. Given that we were planning a 90 minute run time, I was confident the cookie would be gone when it was time to pull the line, but if not we would have left the line in.
I think it's clear from the responses and the poll itself (as well as my own observation) that many experienced cave divers and even instructors at times forgo running a line at either a well known jump, a jump that is physically close to the mainline, or to a cave entrance they feel they could exit from in zero visibility due to flow or other factors. Creating more rules or refining the existing ones isn't a panacea.
I think we call can agree that running a continuous guideline to the surface is safer. Whether we put that into practice or not is quite another matter.
That's not the question. it's subtler than that.
Given that everyone agrees with you, the question becomes what's the tipping point? Everyone becomes TOO complacent because they see everyone else not laying line... then one day they go TOO far.
That's the problem with not discussng this. Each person is inventing their own safety standard. This is really dangerous.
Andrew Ainslie
Almost extinct cave diver
We were the 4th team in at Little River this morning. First reel in! I guess the 1st team could have run one, but they did 2 dives so I figured I would have seen it. Very sad indeed. At least the intro group came over and asked if they could use our primary as an egress, and I just asked them to cookie it so we wouldn't pull it with them in the system.
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