So, what's different about Cave Diving?

decoweenie

Cave Photography 1

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Mark Chase

Yes those picks of Ginny and Mexico lime scale formations and gin clear water are fantastic. I relay want to dive them but the picks I have seen of Ressell and Lot in france are of rock rock and more rock.

French Rock
Photography

ATB

Mark Chase

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See my "Doing It Chasey" video where I'm locked into a padded room, naked, with two ball bearings and within an Hour, I manage to lose one and break the other!!!

Kevin Juergensen 16/11/08
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lizardland

It's like wreck diving for me... it's interesting enough but it's just a lump of twisted metal. I don't get it, I can get a similar effect walking around my local scrap yard

I'm not a sea person, I've no interest in shipping or maritime history, I hate boats and it's ridiculously expensive to even go out on a boat. I'd much rather be out in the woods or the mountains and cave diving is an extension of that for me. When I do any sea diving it tends to be scenic stuff like the drop offs and pinnacles off the west coast of Scotland... rock... rock... rock...

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Azerbaijani Association of Technical Divers Publicity Officer and Goat Wrangler

Duncan Price

Conscientious cave explorers (diving or dry) survey into virgin cave as they go. Dry surveys use a fibre glass tape, compass and clinometer to contruct a basic 3-D stick model of the cave which is then fleshed out with measurements of passage dimensions and a sketch of the cave to produce. Diving surveys use the line (which has distance markers on it anyway for safety) as a permanent tape measure, compass and depth guage. Examples of both are on my website at: sump4.com/downloads/index.html

Dry cavers don't leave bits of string to find their way around. The "read" the cave, noting its geological development to route find. Most often if the cave is well known then there is a well worn path through the cave perhaps with the occasional cairn or bit of road flagging tape to mark the way in an environmentally friendly manner. Cavers are very conservation conscious and you will often find cave passages with tramlines of tape through them to mark the path and preserve the rest of the cave. Whilst a wrecker migh be after a bit of splidge from the innards of the ship no self-respecting caver would remove more than the mud on his clothes from a cave. Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but pictures, kill nothing but time.

Lines are a vital part of cave diving as the consequences of loosing your way are fatal whereas being lost in a dry cave (it happens) is just an amusing inconvenience.

gtzavelas

as an old (caving) friend said: if you explore with out surveying/mapping its like you have never been there.
in fact surveying and the production of a map should be the result of every exlporation, otherwise the whole point is missed...

lof

Wet rock can be pretty
DTD - dive
and
Petr* Vaverka* -* WRECK* PHOTOGRAPHY

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Duncan Price

Very true and I also rarely cave or cave dive just for fun. I'm usually going somewhere I've not been before, no-one has been before, I'm mapping it, replacing line, carrying stuff, photography, training someone, testing gear etc. etc. It is and unforgiving activity and I try to minimise risk by minimising exposure.

AM

Go and do some SRT work in an easy cave such as valley entrance-Kingsdale master cave and you'll see an example of carrying your gear to the sump. This is the infamous Keld Head trip, in fact, have a read of Darkness Beckons, the "Dead Man's Handshake" section for a bit of context of things that can go wrong in caves.

Go and do a "resurgence" cave like Joint Hole or Hurtle Pot and you'll enter the water immediately and experience "potholing" underwater. In fact if the water level drops enough in Joint Hole you can do a bit of sump crawling with your gear on your back between several earlier sumps. I'd be interested to see how far you get on your first trip into Joint Hole and how you approach the bail out planning if you plan to do it on a large rebreather rig. This cave gives great context to the DIR debate of days gone past

In these "tourist" caves you can take advantage of already written cave topology/architecture to plan which route you intend to take. When you are mapping it for the first time your own plan is what tells you which routes are available on future trips.

There is nothing better than the thrill of original exploration and in my view something like this isn't on a parallel with diving a virgin wreck (I've dived dozens if not hundreds of virgin wrecks) and nowhere near that in virgin cave. It is just that bit more elusive and certainly far harder to achieve.

Finding a virgin wreck is a case of researching marks, for example at the maritime museums and finally locating it - straight down a line and you're there. Finding virgin cave is a lot more complex and protracted and you may well be following someone else's line a long, deep way in, before you have any chance whatsoever to find a new piece of passage.

Without question, finding new dry cave beyond sumps is a joy.

I won't go into the dirty tricks of removing lines after finding new sumps but there are a few people in the sport who think that caves are their personal possessions/projects and will deliberately impede others from exploring said cave!!

Regards

AnneMarie

onetime

I agree that it's a good book but there are others that focus more on the diving rather than the preparation for diving. If there was a bit more about the actual diving I would have ranked it as perhaps the best cave diving book out there. Just my .02. Everyone will have their own take.