Rocky Horror Has Rules for a Reason!

[tbone1004]

Copied from CDF with @iowacavediver 's permission. This is his story, not mine. Any clarifications needed, please ask. Split post to accommodate character restrictions.

One IMPORTANT clarification. There is NO solo diving in state parks. End of discussion. The Rangers were mistaken about the solo diver certification. While I certainly wish this were the case, @karstdvr has clarified that there is no solo diving, period.

the wife and I planned a dive into the courtyard via Rocky Horror. Both on CCR (sidewinder), she was on LP80's bailout and I had LP50's with a Stage for bailout. We planned that it would take 45-55 minutes to swim to rocky horror and then we would swim 30 minutes past the end of rocky horror, turn the dive and slowly poke our way out shooting video and such along the way. (we are VERY slow swimmers, so penetration beyond RH was no more than 400'). We arrived at Madison and found a team of 3 that were gearing up at the Martz parking area.. dang!!

Thankfully this team was going to head to Rotor-Rooter and they said, "the courtyard is all yours!"... yippie! As we were prepping gear another diver pulled up and appeared to be waiting for his buddy. We chatted briefly about gear stuff and then I told him, once we submerge, likely in the next 30 minutes, we'll be headed to the courtyard via Rocky Horror. He too said he was planning a dive to the courtyard. I told him we would take about an hour to get to RH, swim 30 minutes past RH then head out at a very slow pace. I predict we'll be beyond the restriction for a little over an hour. He did not disclose his team's dive plan, but since nobody else was there I assumed he thought he had plenty of time for us to go in and out before they'd even be near the area.

We started our dive and all was going according to plan (don't all good stories start this way?). It took us 10 minutes to descend at martz, bubble check, secure tanks and make it the snap/gap at the gold line where we dropped 02. Viz in the martz cavern was the best I've seen it and the siphon sucked us effortlessly towards the gold line. Starting inward towards the RH jump, I noticed the flow was not as bad as everyone had claimed... it was not "screamin' or pumping" but was typical madison flow... you could make easy progress by swimming or super easy progress with some strategic pull and glide.

Viz was great... at least 80' if not better and blue!! We made it to our jump around :45 and then hit Rocky Horror at around :55. I dropped my stage on the line about 10' from the clip board, we both dropped REMs and my wife lead into RH. We progressed through RH and into the courtyard, slow and steady, really enjoying the clear water (finally!) and the beautiful passage. BTW Ken's bailout bottle is still in there... I feel bad for anyone who ends up having to suck on that mouth piece... yuck. We stopped in the 2nd large room just before it drops to 110'+ and swam around poking our heads into the 3 different side passages and we started shooting some video. We video'd all the way back until we hit RH and the wife turned and said... "enough video... turn it off". I wish I had left it on.

We entered RH and she was leading. about 1/2 way through I could see a light ahead of her and thought, is there someone in here?? Sure enough, she came face to face with a guy, let's call him Scuba Steve, in the worst possible point of RH. We were on the non-exit side of the hairpin turn/restriction in the middle of RH... those of you who have been through RH a few times know this spot... it is a very tight 90 degree turn which in sm(or bm) you normally have to flip on your side and wiggle/squeeze through. Steve attempted to flatten himself against the side wall and signal us to go by him. I had a clear picture that my little wife in her fairly sleek sm ccr profile (sidewinder plus LP80's) was not ever going to fit past this guy who was in a bm CCR and what looked like LP85's or larger bailouts.. if she wasn't going to fit, there was no way in hell I'd ever squeeze past this guy. She started telling the guy "you need to back up!".

He attempted (from the little I could see) to move backwards but kept getting caught up, likely his tanks hitting the walls. My wife started backing up towards me and after a couple of fins in the face, I too started backing up to make room, thinking, perhaps if we back up far enough there will be a spot where we could pass each other. Of course communication from me was minimal and I felt fairly helpless with the situation since I could not make my way past my wife to assist with the situation which was quickly escalating. As I was backing up I saw him start to take off one of his bailout tanks and I think it was this point where I started thinking thoughts like this...

"is this how a triple fatality occurs?"
"if he or she freaks out, there is nothing I can do"
"will we have to crawl over his body to make it out or will we need to remove his gear first?"
"I'm glad I'm on CCR, at least I can still see my display...I wonder how long this is going to take"
"My wife is pretty fierce, but this guy is pretty big, I wonder if she can take him?"
"what if she dies?"
"I really want to get out of here"
and a few other choice thoughts/words came to mind...

I backed around a corner so all I could see were her fins as she attempted to solve the issue with scuba steve. She moved forward so I thought we were making forward progress, so I moved forward. as I came around the corner he had one bottle off and the back cover of his CCR had broken off and was floating around. My wife grabbed it and held it in front of her and he grabbed it and stuffed it to the side. His eyes were big, that, I could see. I wondered, is he on the verge of panic? am I on the verge of panic? Is she on the verge of panic? I backed up again to make room and thought "we've got lots of time, we just need to keep under control and work through the issue... man I wish I could be leading at this point".

 

[tbone1004]

It was about then that a cloud of silt engulfed me. We were in zero viz. It was a weird zero viz... I couldn't see more than a few inches in front of my face, meaning if I held my display close to my mask I could read it, but other than that, nothing. over time it got darker and darker but there was still some glow from my light even though I couldn't see it. I thought, "FU*K. This just got worse". Apparently, according to my wife, Steve had removed his bottles and attempted to spin around, which didn't work. then he attempted to get vertical and flip over that way, and that didn't work (he was a big dude... probably 5'11'' 260?). This is when the silt out occurred and she lost all viz too. Somehow or another he was able to get back through the hairpin restriction (this is what was keeping us from making any progress) and move backwards into the slightly larger (not by much) area of RH. I remember going through the hairpin restriction in zero viz, on the line, thinking "wow, given everything that's going on, I can't believe that wasn't harder".

At this point it was very dark and my buoyancy was crap. I would be moving slowly along, touch contact with my wife's ankle, thinking my buoyancy was good until I would crash into the bottom which was thick silty clay and I could just feel plumes of silt billow into the already nasty potato soup I was swimming through. Over and over this happened. Having the flow behind me I was certainly not helping anyone's situation, but since I couldn't see what she and steve were doing it probably didn't matter. After what was probably 10+ minutes (it felt like an eternity) my hand hit the clip board on the line but at the same time I lost contact with my wife. I snatched our REMs off the line and looked up to see a pocket of clear (well sorta) water above me. I ascended a foot or two only to loose the line and found myself just above Scuba Steve. I dropped an "ok" sign in front of his face and he signaled ok and for me to get going. I'm really glad nobody could see me at this point because I was pretty much floating mid water waving my arms around in hopes of making contact with the cave or preferably another human.

A fin hit me in the face.. my wife! I worked my way up her body to her arm and said "do you have the line? do you have the line?" we are not yet fluent in CCR to English translation so it took a few times for her to understand me and she took my hand to the line. She kept saying "stage bottle, stage bottle, stage bottle". I was feeling around on the line (zero viz still) and couldn't find the stage bottle. Unknown to me she was navigating some wraps in the line to ensure we were headed out. My hand came across my stage and I quickly picked it it up and secured it to my harness. We began to proceed in touch contact on the line headed towards the gold line. Buoyancy was pretty good, however the walls of this passage are covered in fine silt, so as we thumped along the wall with our hands on the line, I'm certain our fins were continuing to add to the already destroyed visibility.

It was slow going... at least 10 minutes to make our way through this passage. I was thinking...

"god, this really sucks... I'm just glad we made it past Scuba Steve.. I can deal with no viz/on the line, but a stranger, head on in a restriction?? no thank you!!"
"I wonder where scuba steve is? do we go back for him?"
"Why the hell did he enter RH? I'm going to light him up when we get out of here!"
"Are we on the right line? I haven't felt an arrow yet and I know there are passages off of this tunnel"
"was that guy solo? Is there a fourth diver somewhere?"

About the time my hand hit an arrow pointed towards exit (phew!) we started to gain a couple feet of visibility. I squealed through my DSV... "yippie!". We pulled our jump reel (scuba steve's was still in place) and began to float towards the exit. I stopped my wife and we had a brief conversation about scuba steve... do we go back for him? Is he ok? Was there another diver? Right or wrong, we decided he made it out of RH, he was on the line, he didn't seem to care much about our lives when he decided to enter RH with a team clearly in the system, he may have decided to continue with his dive (i hope not), it was not worth the risk to head back into that mess and we were shaken enough at this point, time to exit.

Turns out Scuba Steve was not far behind us, after our 10 min of deco in the main basin, he surfaced behind us with a look on his face I won't forget. He looked like someone had shot his dog. The first thing out of his mouth was "guys, I am so sorry. I never should have gone in there and I put all of our lives at risk. I am so sorry. I am so sorry." My wife had steam coming out of her ears just prior to these statements and she was very quiet, she didn't say a word. I merely said, I'm glad we all made it out, for a minute there I thought it was going to be a triple fatality. Thank you for your apology, I hope we all learned something from this dive.

I don't think there was anything more to be said. We all packed up and headed home. I think this guy realized he made 1 really bad decision that could have cost us all our lives and he felt so bad he couldn't put it into words, nor were we in a mindset to hear them.

 

[Diver below 83]

At least he apologized but that’s crazy. The feeling of helplessness from the husband must have been nerve wracking

 

[Jack Hammer]

Passing people in small areas isn't fun and usually leads to a complete loss of visibility. It just gets worse with everybody trying to maintain contact with the line while clamoring about. Luckily everyone made it out ok.

 

[txgoose]

Holy smokes.........

 

[rjack321]

scuba steve is frigging moron

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

scuba steve is frigging moron

Is the title of Captain in your profile short for Captain Obvious?

 

[chillyinCanada]

From his reaction, I'd say he knows he was a moron and unlikely to repeat.

 

[rjack321]

Is the title of Captain in your profile short for Captain Obvious?

Perhaps, although @GLOC would say that chastising Mr "ignore the big slate with obvious directions" just makes him less likely to consider his mistake...

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Perhaps, although @GLOC would say that chastising Mr "ignore the big slate with obvious directions" just makes him less likely to consider his mistake...

I'm hoping that the phrase "you can't fix stupid" is incorrect in this case.

I'm just glad that everyone was on rebreathers here. While being on OC may have been fine, I wouldn't want to depend on reserve gas to deal with a problem like this.