"Full" Cave

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My issue with going zero to hero, even for those with solid skills, isn't about whether they can grasp all the skills and procedures. It's simply about gaining some experience in varying conditions before making complex dives in an unforgiving environment.

It's odd we rarely hear people questioning whether a rebreather diver should gain experience before progressing, mod 1, 2, etc. Yet too many think it's ok to skip the experience building with cave or deep trimix and just all out at once.o_O
 
My issue with going zero to hero, even for those with solid skills, isn't about whether they can grasp all the skills and procedures. It's simply about gaining some experience in varying conditions before making complex dives in an unforgiving environment.

It's odd we rarely hear people questioning whether a rebreather diver should gain experience before progressing, mod 1, 2, etc. Yet too many think it's ok to skip the experience building with cave or deep trimix and just all out at once.o_O

Yes, I think that is very valid. I have looked upon cave diving as starting again. I would not yet even begin to think about a cave dive that required any decompression or gas switching. I am used to doubles as a default equipment and this is for redundancy not for gas volume.

I wouldn't go in Germie's mine with it's falling silt. I am not yet ready for that dive.

Is this "full" cave? I have no idea - the title means nothing to me any more than "Master Scuba Diver" means anything more than badge collector.

I will continue to gain experience and take training until I can do the dives I want to do. I don't much care what it says on the card no one is ever going to look at it so I doubt it will impress anyone.
 
I had a student who first did cavern and intro with Johnny Richards after he had completed GUE-F and GUE Tech 1. He did apprentice and full with me and showed great maturity and strong leadership in class. His skills were top notch and he later became an instructor for one of the DIR agencies. But, right after completing PSAI cave, I found out he had grabbed a DPV and scootered to the Henkel.

One of my other students did "zero to hero" and spent a couple years building his experience before doing complex navigation dives.

I personally did cavern & intro and gained experience. I did apprentice and gained more experience before doing full cave.

Remember the Peacock death where the husband and wife were intro to cave, but were doing circuits?

One of my students was an incredibly aggressive cave student. He failed cavern for being aggressive. He realized his error and it was his first "Come to Jesus moment" ... in cavern class! He broke up his training with me into cavern/intro and apprentice/full. He went to Ted McCoy for rebreather training. Ted thought he was a great guy and good student. The student has been a smart and sensible diver since I failed him on day 1.

While it would be better for the community if cave certification really vetted students, the truth is that they can change after class for the better and for the worse. I don't think breaking up levels or doing a complete cavern to cave course makes too much difference. The adage, "There are old divers and bold divers, but there are no old bold divers," still rings true - especially in very deep diving and overheads.
 
Every diver is different. Every instructor is different. Every class is different. The chance that a new cave diver will be laying new line or doing cave surveys is very, very remote. So why require that for cave? That just doesn't make sense. I don't teach cave, but for the Scuba classes I do teach, I ask my students what they expect from the class. From there, we craft a singularly unique syllabus to teach what I have to as well as to cover areas of special interest for them as well as me.
 
While it would be better for the community if cave certification really vetted students, the truth is that they can change after class for the better and for the worse. I don't think breaking up levels or doing a complete cavern to cave course makes too much difference. The adage, "There are old divers and bold divers, but there are no old bold divers," still rings true - especially in very deep diving and overheads.

I don't have a beef with Cavern/ Intro/ Cave1 being a separate class the full/cave2 or whatever its called. To me that is a natural split and I encourage people to get experience between those levels. Personally I had about 75 or 80 Cave1 dives before taking Cave2. Personally I think its a rare student who zero-to-hero is appropriate. I am not seeing any downside to requiring 20-30 intro level dives before taking full. So what this exceptional zero-to-hero student has to slow down. How is that at all a negative? The other 99% should never do a zero-to-hero in the first place. So in the interest of consistency there's no good reason zero-to-heros should even be allowed. There is nothing to gain from that approach and much to potentially lose.

My issue is with the concept that students are ready to be fully qualified cave divers aka "full" without some key pieces that are apparently optional in some instructor/agency minds. stages, flow, deco, survey come to mind as significant elements being left out.
 
Gotcha.
 
So Rjack, I agree with you for most of that. I think it’s a very rare student that should be certed zero to hero. I’ve had several try. I’ve had few succeed. But, you seriously have to earn a cert card from me. It doesn’t matter what level.

One of the members here, and a pretty well known cave diver came to me about a decade ago wanting to do zero to hero. More than that, he thought that he should be able to skip cavern class because in his words, he had been diving these florida caverns longer than i had been alive. It’s true. He had been. And in truth, he had been diving Great Lakes wrecks pretty deep on air for decades, in doubles. The fact is, he had good skills. I didn’t have to teach him to dive. I just had to teach him to cave dive. But, I believe Cavern is the basis for everything else I teach. I finally told him that I would teach him, but we weren’t skipping cavern. But, if after the class, he still thought that he didn’t need cavern class, I’d give him his money back.

10 days later when we were all finished up, I asked him if I owed him any money. A decade later he still says it was the most important class he’s taken.

Again, I think that’s pretty rare. I think experience dealing with issues is necessary. But the skills we teach can be assimilated in 10 or 12 days IF those days aren’t spent on remedial stuff like running a reel, buoyancy, trim, streamlined gear, etc.
 
It all depends on the diver. Doing just intro to cave will invite some divers to do jumps without course and go over gaslimits. Others do a cave class and stay first 50 dives on the mainline.
I see same back in my students. Most are carefull after a course and dont do directly to their limits they are allowed to do, they enjoy diving on a 'lower' level. For example on the mainline, but using more than the 1/6 rule. But the intro to cave is really limiting. And it invites to go further than you have learned. I see it everywhere around me. Then it is much better to do the rest of the course also. People who are unsure or not so skilled will know that in the intro part and will stay for some time at that level, they don't progress in the same week to full cave.
You have to look at the diver. For a really well skilled full trimix diver, the cave course is not that difficult if the diver has no problems with being overhead and realise 1km in is 1km out. The new skills are line work. With good bouyancy it is mostly not that hard. Cave awareness takes some time, but the more skilled a diver is before starting a cave course, the faster he develops the cave diving techniques and cave awareness.
Same you see with ccr. With ccr you can go from mod1 to mod3 if you are allready a full trimix oc diver. When I started started ccr, 2 weeks after buying my own unit I signed up for a mod3 course 3 months later. I would have then around that minimum of 50 hours. The course went to 76m and day after course I went to 100+ with my experienced buddy.The whole week after course we did every day 100-128 m. And I would say: I learned more from my own deep dives with an experienced buddy then the mod3 course.
Then I started ccr cave diving. And dpv ccr cave diving. And sidemount. Long time later I did the user courses. Not really eye opening anymore then, but I had some nice discussions with instructors, the courses where more fun dives and talk about how do you do that than course dives. Yes, I realise that I was a natural with ccr diving, and I had some feeling for diving. BUT, I wanted to learn also, so I practised a lot, read a lot, talked a lot to other divers, etc. Before starting the mod3 course I practised bailouts a lot. So I knew that if needed I can do it from 100m.

So as instructor you have to look to the individual diver and look what is possible. If people say it is not possible to do a full cave course 18 months after open water, that is not true. Some divers find the time to dive a lot and really want to learn. My open water course was just a way to move into tech. So yes, my full cave course was just 19 months after my open water. BUT: my qualifying dive was dive number 390. My first 100m dive and qualifying dive for full trimix was dive 521, 24 months after open water. I started open water diving with the end in mind: technical diving. So from the beginning I was working on trim, bouyancy, etc. Even if everybody said to me you are not ready for it (without ever been with me in the water). 10 months after my open water I bought the wanted twinset. My adv. rec. trimix cert is dated on 1 april, my full cave on 18 or 19 april same year, my full trimix on 20 or 21 october same year. So if the basics are fine, and you dive a lot, you can progress faster. Becoming instructor I waited till I had between 800 and 900 dives and some years of experience.
You have to look at the individual diver. And yes, most cannot progress the way I did. And that is not wrong as long as you have fun. Motivation is the key factor in success. If you have the brains that reading theory once and remember it, then the theory is not that hard. If you really have to learn for it, yes, that takes time. You see it back in the students also. Some have 800 dives and are not ready for a next level because they allways dove 1 way and never practised, others come with not a lot of dives but a lot of motivation. Between 2 course dives they go practising and in a few weeks you see a big big difference. Other divers perform better by doing a 4 day full time course as the repeating factor is high then. But you must realise, they pass, but if they don't practise after a course their level go down fast again.
Every diver must practise, even me. I still learn.
If you see experienced oc cave divers taking a ccr in a cave without course, or a dpv, if this is safe depends on the diver. I teach the courses and most times you see a little bit unsureness in the diver. He needs an experienced coach to bring them on the next level. Others read about it, have the brains to think about things, and then try to do it. When I look back, I learned most in my 'one week nothing to full cave class' (I won't call it zero to hero) and the adv. rec. trimix course and then the full trimix course. The normoxic was disappointed, just a few meters deeper to depths I already had been and still one stage. The full trimix course was with 3 stages, so really great to do. The adv. rec. trimix course was the course I learned how to handle a stage cylinder. And cave diving, yes, I learned how to dive in caves.
With this experience I teach normoxic trimix with 2 stage cylinders. Sometimes a student chooses the easier way with another instructor as normoxic is still allowed with just 1 decocylinder, but most like to do it with 2. I also learn them the 'stage rotation',bring the outside cylinder to the inside. Then later the 3 cylinder stage rotation is not that hard anymore.
In a cave course is not a lot of time to practise finkicks or bouyancy, that must be normal before the course. As student you only have to think about the new things, the bouyancy, trim and finkicks must already be natural without thinking. That is how I select/accept the students.

Another point to think about: I discussed with an IT what I would learn in the 'expedition trimix' as this is not a real course, but you go deeper than 100m. He answered: NOTHING. And then: you already know how to plan dives over 130m depth, you execute them also. It is the most dangerous course to teach, people who want to do it, want to do 100+ with an experienced diver and are mostly not capable to do it on their own. I think this can be seen in cave also.
You cannot stop daredevils (they will say yes and amen in a course and think **** up directly after a course), but to split and split things into smaller levels, this is done for the less skilled divers. But there must be always a way to combine things for the more skilled divers that want to progress faster.
Of course allways with the warning, don't go outside your comfortzone.


And never say to divers who only do mainline dives and enjoy them: this is boring, it is not real cave diving. Diving is fun and everybody does it on their own level. I passed one time a student who never dove to the 1/3 of gas. He allways turned earlier. But he was a skilled diver. His student buddy was not so happy with him and asked my why I certified that diver. I answered: because he knows his limits, he will allways get out of the cave with enough gas, and he has showed the skills he needs to do to become full cave certified.
Not all cave divers will be explorers. Most will stay on the recreational full cave diver level. And that is fine. I still like to dive with some less experienced divers in a cave and just stay on the mainline for a fundive. Or diving with a sportsdiver and just stay shallow in less than 10m.
 
Some of the things I'm reading are internally consistent, other are internally conflicted, and most of them really depend on regional factors.

Accelerated deco procedures should be a given in the generally deeper caves found in N FL simply because a dive to thirds on a set of steel doubles will quite easily put you into decompression in a majority of caves in N FL. I'd question any "full" cave class in N FL that did not include accelerated deco procedures, just like I'd question any N FL based "full cave class that did not spend a significant amount of time in high flow caves since high flow caves are common in N FL.

However, it's not reasonable to impose those requirements on "full" cave classes based in Mexico, where cave divers can dive an awful lot of passage with some very impressive penetration distances before they run into decompression and where high flow caves are less common.

On the other hand, a pair of AL 80s and an AL 80 stage is more or less our normal configuration in Mexico, and I think a MX based "full" cave class would be remiss to not include staging. Conversely in N FL, a newly minted "full" cave diver can get all the deco and penetration he or she should be handling with a pair of LP 85, 95s, 104, HP 130s, etc and has no need for a stage until he or she has acquired some experience at that level.

It's also a very small addition to add stage management and gas planning to the bottle management and deco planning aspects of AN/DP, particularly when AN/DP is being taught in a cave environment. Taking AN/DP in a cave environment between the Intro and Cave or Basic and Full Cave levels makes a great deal of sense in terms of both steady progression and increasing experience between levels, and acquiring needed pre-requisite skills prior to a "full" cave class, so that the focus can be on the truly "full cave" related skills.

Cave survey strikes me as a really bad idea, along the lines of "zero to hero". Teaching survey as part of "full cave" is to some extent sending the message that a newly minted full cave diver is ready to go off exploring virgin passage. I don't think many experienced cave divers would agree that is the case. IMHO, it should be something, like Cave DPV, that's reserved for divers who have at least 50 to 100 cave dives post "full" cave before starting the course to help ensure they have fully consolidated what they've learned at the full cave level and gained some experience before getting new toys or tools that will put them into challenging situations that are in excess of what a newly minted full cave diver should be doing.
 
Cave survey strikes me as a really bad idea, along the lines of "zero to hero". Teaching survey as part of "full cave" is to some extent sending the message that a newly minted full cave diver is ready to go off exploring virgin passage. I don't think many experienced cave divers would agree that is the case. IMHO, it should be something, like Cave DPV, that's reserved for divers who have at least 50 to 100 cave dives post "full" cave before starting the course to help ensure they have fully consolidated what they've learned at the full cave level and gained some experience before getting new toys or tools that will put them into challenging situations that are in excess of what a newly minted full cave diver should be doing.

I'm just going to focus on the survey bits. The dry cavers get the basics of surveying instilled in them from the get go. From very early in their underground careers there is an expectation that they will at some point be beyond the 'tourist' loops and be a part of a larger project. Even if they aren't pushing the end of the cave they are expected to know something about how surveys are done and basic mapping. The issue is when divers go take cave classes, get "full cave" minus any understanding of surveying or mapping - then they try to be part of bigger projects that require or where its helpful to at least understand the basics of surveying. They don't understand even the basics so they have to be taught from scratch vs having enough understanding to get mentored.

I had a 2 dive module (out of a 6 day 12 dive cave2 class) on surveying in 2005 or 6. I found the basics of surveying helpful and was a pretty fun way to apply our freshly minted stage bottle lessons from the previous days into an actual "working" dive. We had to survey and draw a map of the fire pit loop in Cenote Carwash. The precision of our loop closure was not a pass-fail thing, but I remember it was pretty damn good, like with 6". Which still surprises me since I think we were both a little narced in ~90ft. Even though we only surveyed an existing line/loop, I found the surveying module really made me a vastly better line layer as well.

I don't do a ton of mapping now, but enough to be reasonably proficient. While I have occasionally seen a mapping workshop they are quite rare. So my conclusion is, and this is backed up by comments I get on projects, that there are a whole bunch of "full cave" divers who have never surveyed and don't even know the basics, they aren't doing any follow-up courses or workshops, and they don't fit in well into larger exploration projects because of it this mis-characterization of what being "full" is.
 
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