AN / DP in sidemount or backmount?

[kafkaland]

I recently took up cave diving and did my Intro Cave course in sidemount. While diving at that level is fun, it's also a bit limiting and I'm now thinking about Full Cave. My cave instructor suggested that it's a good idea to do AN / DP first, although it's not absolutely required.
Now, I'm wondering whether I should try to do the deco course in sidemount as well, or learn how to dive backmounted doubles. I have heard that taking additional deco gases in sidemount is a pain, especially in open water where you can't just leave them at the cave entrance. On the other hand, learning to dive doubles is also a bit of a barrier fir me, as I don't intend to dive doubles in caves. I'm not sure if I would dive doubles in open water (mostly the Great Lakes), as deep dives don't really interest me, at least not for now. A final consideration is that it seems harder to find a good instructor locally (Michigan and nearby) to teach AN / DP in sidemount, rather than doubles.
So I'm curious what people here suggest: bite the bullet and learn how to dive doubles first, or find an instructor for AN / DP in sidemount, or simply forget about it for now and just go for Full Cave without a deco course first?

 

[tomfcrist]

Do it in Sidemount. It would be different if you didn't plan on using Sidemount in the caves, but since you are going to Sidemount, you might as well learn to handle extra stages, deco bottles etc in that configuration. Furthermore it would be prudent to get comfortable side mounting with multiple stages and deco bottles PRIOR to even thinking about going into a cave environment configured that way.

 

[tbone1004]

ask your cave instructor to do an AN/DP course combined with your full cave course. If you don't plan on diving doubles regularly, why learn a new gear configuration you aren't intending to use regularly?

 

[kafkaland]

ask your cave instructor to do an AN/DP course combined with your full cave course. If you don't plan on diving doubles regularly, why learn a new gear configuration you aren't intending to use regularly?

Thanks, TBone. A combined course with my cave instructor was of course my first thought, too. But when I mentioned it, it was quite clear that he is not passionate about the AN/DP stuff, and mostly sees it as a nuisance to enable longer cave dives, which he is passionate about. That's where the thought and his implied suggestion to do it locally with another instructor came from. But when I started to look for an instructor in my neck of the woods, the instructors I found were usually of the backmount doubles variety, with a "you can do sidemount if you insist" attitude. And given my poor experience with my initial sidemount course (an instructor who wasn't that proficient and passionate about it), I don't think I need a repeat of that. So that's where the idea of "why not just learn doubles" came from. Or, if I can't find a suitable instructor locally, a trip to Florida may be in order.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I teach adv nitrox and deco in sidemount or back mount doubles. My last class I was in sm as were two of the students. The third was diving double 95s. Not a problem managing stages for anyone. Your first few dives are going to be done with one deco gas anyway. It's not hard to manage that in ow and carry it with you. You just have to know how to rig it and there's more than one way. I teach the class at gilboa. Don't have one scheduled for this season as yet but do have some interest in one. It's a five day class though. Wed thru Sunday normally unless we make other plans. I'm not opposed to changing the days just like to do it in one shot. It's easiest that way. Doppler was my instructor trainer and referred one of the students in my last class to me. FWIW. Michigan is not that far from nw ohio.

---------- Post added April 4th, 2015 at 05:54 PM ----------

And I did my instructor training to teach those classes along with adv wreck instructor in sidemount. I'm very sidemount friendly. Even let aow students do the class in sidemount.

 

[rongoodman]

I did my Normox course in sidemount simply because that was the gear I had me when I took the course(the same week I did a cave stage course with Protec). AN/DP was done at a different location in backmount. No issues with either.

 

[drice]

If taught and done properly it's not an added nuisance to do it in SM. In my trimix course last month, we were in SM with 3 stages with no problem... Very doable.


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[Patoux01]

Hi,

Unlike some others, I see a reason to learn in BM even though you might be diving SM. I am currently looking at backmounted training out of pure curiosity (never used a bp/w, and backmounted only during my OW).
Mastering both setups makes you, imo, a better diver. When diving mixed teams, you might then be able to give a bit of advice to your buddy although you're not diving his rig (you don't always dive with experts!), it makes fixing stuff easier. Also gives you the chance to adapt to your diving depending on what's available where you go. Some countries will only give you a single 15l tank, and well, although it's not really "technical diving", I wouldn't sidemount that thing.
It also gives a chance to see that in fact, it doesn't really matter what setup you use, a good diver in BM won't become a terrible diver when switching to SM (or the other way round).

However, I would NOT do this until I consider I have a really good command of my sidemount setup and basic skills. If you can't fin in SM, it won't be better in BM and then gear will just become a burden. There's two "issues" however that I'd then ask your instructor for full cave to fix: I can easily understand how to mount decos in BM or how the gas switch procedure works, I find it slightly harder to understand in SM (I know how to mount the decos in one way, but it's not optimal imo, however I'm clueless as to how you'd do a proper gas switch). Some will say that this is the essence of AN/DP course, but having not taken them yet, I can't really tell, it seems to me that there's much more to that combo than switching gas.

Cheers

If it's the "it's not feasible in SM" thingy, see here

 

[CamG]

Greetings Kafkaland you are SM now I would do it in SM that simple.
You are planning to do your Cave / Full Cave class in SM I would not change right now.
I just did my TriMix with 2 85's for my primary tanks, 2 AL 80's of 32%, and a AL 40 of O2.
It is possible and I am certain if you are having issues finding an instructor that is easy to remedy.
There are many who are available to teach Adv. Nitrox / Deco.

If you need any help just ask.

CamG

 

[tbone1004]

my suggestion there would be to find a new cave instructor.... No offense to whoever you chose, but there are two things to that. One is that if you are planning on doing AN/DP you shouldn't be with a cave instructor who finds it to be a nuisance to the point of basically refusing to teach it that doesn't give me warm fuzzies. No one likes decompression, and everyone finds it a nuisance, but it's a necessary evil, and has to be done. The other part of that, is that I do think there is merit to having multiple cave instructors for a change in experience during your training.

I would recommend calling Edd Sorenson at Cave Adventurers and looking at taking your apprentice/full with him or Michal Turek. Both are phenomenal instructors, and they are also offering a PSAI course that is a combination of AN/DP and stages aimed specifically for cave diving. It isn't uncommon in wreck diving to not need stages to hit some serious decompression schedules, but in cave diving due to potentially long shallow kicks back, you are almost always taking stages in to get into any deco that would require bringing O2. I.e. yesterday I was in P3 and went back to Hendleys Castle with a 80 some odd minute dive and had about 7 minutes of back gas deco, not worth bringing O2 in for the 3 minutes it would have saved us, but if we had taken a stage back there and monkeyed around for an extra half an hour, we would have had a real advantage of taking O2 in there. It's a great combination of the three courses because it is almost impossible to do stage diving without O2 deco in the caves, and since it is often difficult to rack up sufficient deco without a stage bottle, it makes sense to combine AN/DP with the stage course. I can't remember what the official course is called, but my buddy was the first one to take the course with Michal after he and Edd wrote the combined course. It's worth the call....