Pre Cave Diving Training

My goal for diving is to at some point is to become cave diving certified. I know that you have to log a butt load of dives before you can take the classes. So here is my request from current cave divers. What type of classes and skills should I take and have mastered by the time that I want to take the cave courses.

I am planning on getting AOW and Navigation this next summer hopefully if money is right, and investing in some new equipment as well. I was thinking that a search and recovery class would be helpful as well.

Any suggestions on classes and equipment that i should buy will be helpful, as well as teachers that have a good reputation.

A cavern class. This will show you what you need to know to continue. Also, if you can find any cave divers to dive with, well not any cave divers you want good ones, who will mentor you and show you what right looks like.

Some cavern and cave instructors will even dive with you before the classes to help you get ready for them and learn what will be expected of you.

WVUdiver1:

My goal for diving is to at some point is to become cave diving certified. I know that you have to log a butt load of dives before you can take the classes. So here is my request from current cave divers. What type of classes and skills should I take and have mastered by the time that I want to take the cave courses.

I am planning on getting AOW and Navigation this next summer hopefully if money is right, and investing in some new equipment as well. I was thinking that a search and recovery class would be helpful as well.

Any suggestions on classes and equipment that i should buy will be helpful, as well as teachers that have a good reputation.

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For equipment ... if you're planning to backmount, get familiar with using a standard Hogarthian setup (backplate/wing with 7-foot primary second stage and bungeed backup). If you're planning to sidemount, do some research on the type of sidemount system you're interested in, purchase a setup, and take a sidemount class from someone who actually dives sidemount primarily (as opposed to the 6-dive "wonder instructors" who are popping up like so many smoked sausages lately). Also it helps to get a canister light and learn something about using it for communicating with your dive buddy ... both passive (placing the light where buddy can see it) and active (signals).

For training ... a good cavern class, or GUE Fundamentals, or Intro to Tech.

For instructors ... there are many excellent cave instructors in North Florida. I can personally recommend Jim Wyatt, who's a member of this board. I'm sure others with personal experience with good instructors will chime in as well.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Dive your butt off.

Work on impeccable trim, buoyancy control and propulsion. IE, well past fin pivots and flutter kicking all over the place.

Dive your butt off.

Take a Cavern Class and see if it's for you.

Dive your butt off.

All good advice above and we actually have an excellent cave instructor near me. And if you want to do the Intro to Tech we can get you set up for that. When we did your nitrox class you saw some good skills from Shawn who you were buddied up with. He just completed his Master Diver class and really worked hard to get that stuff down. I am planning on more trips to Ohio next season and you know you're welcome to come along. If you want to do cavern I can set you up to meet the instructor I would choose for that. He will require you to take a trip to Florida though for that. The place he and I checked out and did the traverse up here last summer is not suitable for it. But we can certainly work on your skills to prep for it. Give me a buzz. Would like to hear from you.

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And I'll set you up with gear that you can rent cheap until you're ready to buy from whoever.

I am not only going to agree on the intro to tech part, I am going to suggest even more tech training.

You really want to be able to handle yourself and all the problems that will be thrown at you while staying calm and in good trim. You really need to have your non-silting kicks down. You develop these skills over a long time after getting the appropriate training first.

In addition, when I did my cave training, many of the dives we did were decompression dives. That means that we carried oxygen deco bottles into the caves and used them for decompression at the end of the dives. We were able to do this in my class because I already had that certification. I assume that if I had not had that training, the instructor would have done things differently.

ow, aow, nitrox. dive dive dive. cavern or cavern and intro to cave together. dive dive dive dive. intro if you didn't already do it. dive dive dive dive. advanced nitrox and decompression procedures. dive dive. apprentice cave and full cave. voila!

of course, this is my opinion only, ymmv, etc.

There are a lot of things which are useful in cave diving that you can learn in open water, and it is my personal opinion that you should learn all of those things IN open water, before you present to a cave. For one thing, all of the skills are useful in open water diving. And for those of us who don't live in cave country, it's a little silly to spend time in the caves learning things you can learn and practice at home.

If you have not already decided to go sidemount from the get-go, I would HIGHLY recommend a GUE Fundamentals class. It is one of the only classes you can take in a cave-compatible gear configuration with a single tank, and the class will introduce you to the cave-standard of buoyancy, trim, and non-silting propulsion, as well as light signals and strong situational awareness. Even if you don't take any of your future training with GUE, Fundies is a great basis for a cave or technical diver. You are lucky in having a GUE instructor not too far from you -- Ed Gabe has had wonderful writeups from his classes, and has a reputation as a very nice man.

As others have said; Cavern class and pre-tech training.

GUE Fundies is a good starter for the core skills.
UTD run the 'Overhead Environment' skills primer.

Cavern courses vary in quality. Do a lot of research on the instructor concerned.

Intro-to-tech is a waste of time. Just go straight onto an Advanced Nitrox/Tec40 course in cave configuration kit (none of this H/Y valve nonsense), either backmount doubles or sidemount.

Plenty of dedicated cave/wreck instructors run similar pre-training in the guise of workshops, clinics and mentoring programs. Definitely worth looking out for these.