I was diving little river 2 days ago, and in the serpentine tunnel, there was fresh serious rock damage of the lower tunnel plane where it meets with the clay. By all accounts, it looks like someone was trying to Nomount a 12" x12" hole, and broke off a 10" piece of the tunnel. Not being satisfied with that, they tried it again next to it and broke an even biger piece off a second formation.
When our team went in around 4:30, there was only 1 team in the system, and they passed us in sidemount right after the chimmney. Now I am not accusing them of doing this, but the system was so blitzed out, that I had to basically do a line drill to find the shute! We had at best 3' of vis!!! This continued until we hit the damage at the serpentine tunnel, and past that the vis was great!
The damage was so fresh, that the fresh silt had not even had a chance to settle on the bone white fractures.
I just talked with John, and he's going to take some pictures and post them tomorrow night.
People, this crap has got to stop. Sidemounting does not give you the right to destroy the friggin cave! I choose to sidemount because it MINIMIZES the damage that backmount would do in certain areas. For pete's sake, use some common sense!