Ricks Spring Cave - Logan Canyon, Utah

This past Monday, Richard Lamb and I did a quick dive at Ricks Springs Cave.  It had been almost a year since I was up there last, so I was anxious to get back in there and see how things were looking.  Being a sidemount dive, I was diving steel 85s and Richard had steel 95s.  

As usual, the water was VERY cold, about 39 degrees or so!  The weather was great, just staring fall weather, but beautiful!  We left the dive shop about 7:30 AM and arrived at the cave about 9:30.  We had a bit of an audience when we got up there, with lots of people asking us questions like: "Is it dark in there, and is the water cold?".  

We prepped our gear, and started the dive.  The entry way was clear and the flow was not too bad. I was wearing a new dry suit, which I apparently cut the neck seal a little too much, and so I suffered a flooded suit.  By the time we were about 30 mins. into the dive and back at the second air space, I was so cold that I had to call the dive!  By the time we made it out of the cave, I was really chilled!  The top of my head was so cold, I couldn't feel a thing!  Completely numb!  I was quite hypothermic and really struggled even getting my gear off.  In fact, Richard had to help me remove my fins!  

All in all, it was a beautiful dive, albeit cold!  I had a great time, and about 2 1/2 hours later, by the time we made it back to Dive Addicts, I was actually almost warmed up!  What we won't do for a little adventure!  

A Legend has been lost

This past week, we spent the entire week in Cave Country cave diving and having fun with the family.  We took all 3 of our kids and their spouses, (well a fiance in one case) as well as our 2 grandkids.  While we were there, we were able to attend the memorial service for Wes Skiles who died while on a fairly benign dive in 70 feet of clear blue sea water in Boynton Beach, Florida.  He was on a video shoot for National Geographic, and apparently wasn't involved in anything too strenuous or challenging during the dive.  He was diving a CCR unit, but little is known about what went wrong at this point.  

The entire dive community was in shock, and there was an immediate outpouring of condolences from around the world.  Additionally, tech divers everywhere were stunned that Wes Skiles, one of the original and best known cave divers of all time, could suffer such an unlikely accident.  

For those of us who dive CCR units, this was a severe dose of reality.  If it could happen to Wes, it could certainly happen to anyone!  Unfortunately, as is the case with most of these types of accidents, it is unlikely that the entire story will be made known.  Either due to lack of information, or reluctance to speak publicly about well known figures, the information surrounding the cause of death is rarely made public. The one thing that does happen however, is that hopefully many of us to stop and consider our own diving practices, and hopefully recommit ourselves to ensuring that we are safeguarding our own fragile lives.  

When we dive, especially technical dives, we are placing ourselves in a harsh unforgiving environment.  Hopefully, Wes' unfortunate death will serve as a reminder to all of the rest of the technical diving community, that none of us are above having things go wrong.  I know that I will approach my personal diving with a renewed commitment to ensuring that I prepare and execute every single dive as though it is the most important one I will ever make.  

Wes Skiles was an incredible underwater explorer, diver, cave diver, underwater photographer, underwater videographer and environmental advocate for the planet.  It is a huge loss for the diving community that he has left us this early, but his presence will long be felt and experienced through those in the diving community that he has touched.  The close to a 1000 people that showed up to Wes Skiles' memorial service is a small testament to how many people he influenced with this photos, videos and infectious enthusiasm for life.  

More CCR pics

Michael, Randy & Josh Thornton prepping for a Trimix dive on the wall in Grand Cayman May 2010.

Josh and Michael doing their pre-breath!

Plenty of CCR units headed for a deep dive!  

Randy, Michael & Josh doing deco after a dive on the Carrie Lee in George Town Harbor

Eagles Nest - a Fairly Serious Dive in Cave Country!

I'm just on my way home from a great week of cave diving in Cave Country (North Central Florida). I had the opportunity of doing a beautiful dive at Eagles Nest with my good friend Wayne Kinard. Wayne was diving OC while I was diving my Hammerhead.

I was diving a 10/60 mix at a set point of 1.2. Even though I choose to dive OC in some cave diving situations, Eagles Nest is in my opinion, a dive that is more conducive to CCR. It's a very deep, large wide open cave with variable conditions that are effected by the tides. (Even though you won't find salt water in the cave, the tidal exchange will completely affect the viz from day to day.) We did a nice long dive with a total run time of 3 hours and 10 mins.

Although Eagles Nest is also the perfect cave in which to use a scooter, we chose to swim this time around. We dove the Upstream section and swam to the 1000 feet mark, which even though it doesn't sound like much, when you are swimming at 270 feet, a 1000 feet in and a 1000 feet back out is a pretty good work out! It took us 41 mins. to hit the 1000 feet mark where we turned the dive. at about 43 mins., I started to notice that I was getting a fair amount of water in the loop. I emptied it several times over the next few mins., but I kept getting more and more water! Thankfully, the Hammerhead is extremely flood resistant and tolerrent, and I knew that I could deal with a fair amount of water. Over the shoulder counter lungs and the radial scrubber that sits on top of a sizable spacer, combine to make for a substantial safety margin when it comes to water trapping.

When you are 40 mins. back in a cave at 270 deep, about the last thing in the world you really want to do is to test out your bailout planning efficiency! I was pretty confident that I was packing sufficient bailout, but not real excited about testing out my theory! Consequently, I was determined to complete the dive on the loop if at all possible. Because my buddy was on OC, I really wasn't too excited about having to share air with him if it turned out that my bailout was not sufficient, so I had even more motivation to stay on the loop as long as possible!

My work of breathing became a little more difficult as a portion of my scrubber became wet, but again due to the scrubber design, it was still functional. I just had to slow down a little bit so as not to over breath the scrubber at that point. A slight adjustment to my normal cave diving trim also helped keep the water out of the scrubber.

3 hours and 10 mins. later, I completed my deco and with a HUGE smile on my face surfaced still on the loop! When I later cleaned my unit, I found a couple of liters of water in both counter lungs, and in the canister. Never once did I even taste a hint of caustic cocktail. I was actually quite surprised at the volume of water!

So the big question that is now going through my mind is "Did I really have enough bailout? Given that I was diving with an OC buddy that really wouldn't have been in a position to do "team bailout", should I have staged more bailout then what I did?" I think the answer is that even though I theoretically had plenty of bailout, in this particular buddy team situation, one CCR and one OC, I will error on the side of extreme caution in the future. When I'm cave diving with my two sons on CCR, we dive as a team and carry loads of bailout between the team. When diving with an OC buddy, this type of dive does not lend itself to team bailout practices.

The conclusion I have come to is that I will be staging more bailout than my planning requires when doing a deep cave dive with an OC buddy. Although the Hammerhead is extremely flood tolerant, I will be hedging my bets in the future! A flooded CCR in a deep cave is a CCR divers worst nightmare! When in Cave Country I will occasionally see CCR divers way back in caves with nothing more than a couple of aluminum 40s. I wonder what would happen if they had a CO2 hit, or a flood and actually had to make it back out on these little tanks in what would surely be a very stressful situation? A little scary in my mind!

By the way, once I realized that I was taking on water, neither me or my buddy could figure out where it was coming from. After the dive, I noticed that it was coming from a slit in my mouthpiece. A simple problem that caused my a bit of concern during the dive!

Dive safe everyone! 

Just finished up InnerSpace 2010

I'm in the Atlanta airport on my way home from InnerSpace 2010.  We had a great time, and I had a fantastic time diving with my two sons.  We had spent a significant amount of time preparing for the week, working and drilling on our team diving procedures, and it paid off!  The week went smoothly with no problems and we finished off the week with a dive to 352 feet at Texas Hole.  Photos courtesy of Doug Ebersole.

It is amazingly peaceful to do a deep dive on the Cayman walls, especially when you and the rest of the team are in synch!  After nine days in a row of deep dives together, we really were working well together.  Our equipment configurations were working well and it was awesome exploring the incredibly beautiful vertical walls.

Thursday we dove the Carrie Lee, a wreck that sits in the sand on the edge of the wall in George Town with the bow sitting in about 280 feet.  We dove down to about 330 feet and then came back up the wall underneath the bow.  It was a very cool dive!  Very pretty looking up the wall and seeing the bow hanging over the edge.

On Wednesday, we had a really funny thing happen during one of the dives.  We were coming up the wall from quite deep and when we saw another diver on an Inspiration hunched over and very still on the wall at about 280 feet.  I watched him for a few seconds and when he wasn't moving, I became concerned and swam over to him to see what was going on.  I floated over the top of him and it appeared that the skin on the top of his head was loose and flowing back and forth in the slight current.  Obviously, this was quite concerning, and I couldn't figure out what on earth was going on.  I wiggled his arm to get his attention, and he looked up and he had a Halloween mask pulled over his head!  I certainly didn't see that coming!  Even on serious Trimix dives, divers are stilling having fun!

If you haven't been to InnerSpace before, it is definitely worth a try!  It's just plain fun hanging out with other CCR divers with similar interests all week!

One more day of InnerSpace 2010!

This week has been an incredible experience.  9 days of deep technical CCR dives and interesting seminars every night.  Sitting around between dives chewing the fat with some of the who's who in the industry has really been just a blast.  And to make it even more fun, I've been able to dive with both of my sons on each dive.

We have spent quite a bit of time this winter discussing and practicing our team diving skills and procedures, and I think the time has paid off.  Josh and Michael are already excellent divers and diving with them as a 3 man team has been a great experience.

The weather has been on again and off again raining then sunny, but we have not had any dive called due to weather.  Most of the dives have been between 300-330 feet, and we have really had a great chance to put the Hammerheads through the paces.  Haven't had a single problem with them.

Cayman is a great place with for this kind of stuff, and everyone in attendance has been very friendly and open for discussions about CCRs and tech diving in general.  It's been great to rub shoulders with some very experienced guys and listen to their thoughts on various things.  Dive Tech has done an amazing job  of keeping up with 64 CCR divers!  The logistics much just be overwhelming!

We dove today at a place called Hepp's wall and a dive site called "Funky Town".  We entered a tunner/cave/swim through at 180 and exited on the reef at 290 feet and kept going down the reef till 312.  Incredibly quite and beautiful and relaxing!

InnerSpace in Grand Cayman

InnerSpace at Dive Tech and Cobalt Coast Resort started officially last night in Grand Cayman.  Joshua, Michael and I all arrived on Thursday afternoon after an all night red eye.  We weren't complaining however when we got off the plane and were greeted by warm breezes about 80 degrees and beautiful blue oceans!

We were picked up at the airport by the resort and about a half hour later were unloading at Cobalt Coast.  Dive Tech really does a wonderful job of putting on this event.  64 CCR divers plus staff this year.  All sorts of units here - Inspiration, Evolutions, Sentinels, Hammerheads, Titans, rEvos, Megs, Kiss, and Optimas.   They range from the newbies/freshly minted CCR divers to crusty old hands that have been around since the beginning of CCR diving!  They divide up the boats so that we have a recreational boat, a normoxic trimix boat and a deep trimix boat.  Of course the boys and I opted for the deep boat!

The first couple of days prior to the open of InnerSpace we did some shore dives as warm up.  First dive was a 180 footer, later that afternoon we did a 150 footer.  The next morning we did a 225 footer in the morning and a 60 footer in the afternoon.  Here in Grand Cayman there is a mini wall and then the big wall.  In between, depending on whether you are swimming from Cobalt or Light House, the distance swim between in 15-20 mins. each way, so you definitely get some exercise.

On the dive at Lighthouse reef yesterday we were cruising along at 225 feet when we saw a turtle come screaming up from the depth at 300 plus feet.  As it got about even with us, it got tangled in a fishing line wrapped around its head and front fin.  Fortunately, we were close enough to help cut it free and it was able to swim to the surface unscathed!

This morning the boats started up and we did a 250 foot dive this morning.  The group on the boat are all quite experienced divers with several CCR Advanced Trimix instructors and divers.  It was fun to not have to worry about anyone besides your individual team!  Nice and relaxing with incredible viz and nice and warm!  It is very quiet down there with just CCR divers on the wall.  I didn't personally see it but other members of the group saw a large hammerhead swim overhead.

Having a great time.  Hope to get the video camera out soon!

Regards,
Randy