Australian Cave Diver Dies Attempting Body Recovery

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_...5E1702,00.html

Cave:2, Divers:0 <sick-grin>

"Grumman-581" <grumman581-YYYY-MM@charter.net> wrote in message
news:XeoEd.56617$RS7.9303@fe05.lga...
> Cave:2, Divers:0 <sick-grin>

Yep.

"Dillon Pyron" wrote ...
> Solo? Now, someone with more experience
> in caves can help me with this. Doesn't that
> violate the "don't do more than one risky (or
> stupid) thing at a time"?

There are those who think that diving solo in open water is an unacceptable
risk, much less in caves... There are those who think rebreathers are too
risky... Each of us has a certain amount of risk that we are willing to
accept in life -- some more than others... In the end, Darwin will decide
for you what should have been your acceptable level of risk...

Considering that they were doing depth record type dives, I have to wonder
what the profile of the cave might have been... I would suspect that it
would have been a more vertical type of cave instead of a slowly descending
one...

Oh, here's the web page of the guy who drowned...
http://www.deepcave.com/pages/6/index.htm

"Dillon Pyron" <dmpyronINVALID@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
news:9fa5u0h796hm8jblsqktgudsi23cp1bf7v@4ax.com...
> Thus spake "chilly" <slarson@shaw.canada> :
>
>>http://www.news.com.au/common/story_...5E1702,00.html
>>
>
> Solo? Now, someone with more experience in caves can help me with
> this. Doesn't that violate the "don't do more than one risky (or
> stupid) thing at a time"?
>
> Me? I'm a claustrophobe. I get the shivers looking at a cave mouth.
> I have nightmares about getting stuck in caves.
>
> --
> dillon
>
> "When the French are against it, you know we can't
> be far wrong." - Adm. Bobbie Ray Inman

Solo diving is safe until something goes wrong.

Thus spake "Grumman-581" <grumman581-YYYY-MM@charter.net> :

>"Dillon Pyron" wrote ...
>> Solo? Now, someone with more experience
>> in caves can help me with this. Doesn't that
>> violate the "don't do more than one risky (or
>> stupid) thing at a time"?
>
>There are those who think that diving solo in open water is an unacceptable
>risk, much less in caves... There are those who think rebreathers are too
>risky... Each of us has a certain amount of risk that we are willing to
>accept in life -- some more than others... In the end, Darwin will decide
>for you what should have been your acceptable level of risk...

I have no problem with solo, I have no problem with tech deep, I have
no problem with cave (well, actually I do, but that's my head), I have
problem with rebreather. It's just that, in this case, he seems to
have compounded his risks. But, as you say, everybody has their risk
tolerance. I do risk analysis for a living, and it's all a matter of
mitigation, probability and damage.

>
>Considering that they were doing depth record type dives, I have to wonder
>what the profile of the cave might have been... I would suspect that it
>would have been a more vertical type of cave instead of a slowly descending
>one...

I've only been diving for 20 years, and I'm not stupid enough to think
I'm qualified to make a dive like that. What was a 20 year old doing
trying it? That's a story I'd like to hear.

>
>Oh, here's the web page of the guy who drowned...
>http://www.deepcave.com/pages/6/index.htm
>

--
dillon

"When the French are against it, you know we can't
be far wrong." - Adm. Bobbie Ray Inman

> I've only been diving for 20 years, and I'm not stupid enough to think
> I'm qualified to make a dive like that. What was a 20 year old doing
> trying it? That's a story I'd like to hear.

As long as records mean something to somebody, there will be somebody,
usually a younger somebody, striving to break them. I've been diving for
more than 40 years and I'm not qualified to make a diver like that either.
More to the point, however, I have no desire to become, or to have become,
qualified to make a dive like that . . . and I used to like diving in caves.

Lee

You have a cute widow . . . I mean widow to be?

Lee

--
The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant: It's just
that they know so much that isn't so.
"Grumman-581" <grumman581-YYYY-MM@charter.net> wrote in message
news:VFAEd.60028$a65.7094@fe05.lga...
> "Dillon Pyron" wrote ...
>> I've only been diving for 20 years, and I'm not stupid enough to think
>> I'm qualified to make a dive like that. What was a 20 year old doing
>> trying it? That's a story I'd like to hear.
>
> Well, depending upon what the cave profile might have been, the original
> death might not have been at that depth anyway... Depending upon his
> buoyancy and any water flow through the cave, he might have originally
> died
> quite a bit shallower and sunk... Couldn't have been all that shallow
> though
> since no one bothered to recover his body previously... I did a quick
> Google
> search, but didn't find any maps of the cave profile...
>
> Frankly, I suspect that the 20 year old knew that he was invunerable --
> just
> like we all did at that age... Assuming that we live long enough to get
> older, we learn that we weren't invunerable, we were just lucky...
> Sometimes
> Darwin sleeps, sometimes he doesn't... For the most part, Darwin has been
> napping during my non-survival-oriented endeavors throughout my life... I
> seriously doubt that I have any sort of great skill in my various
> questionable endeavors that has kept me alive...
>
> Oh well... Live fast, die young, leave a cute widow...
>
>

Grumman-581 wrote:
> Well, depending upon what the cave profile might have been, the
original
> death might not have been at that depth anyway... Depending upon his
> buoyancy and any water flow through the cave, he might have
originally died
> quite a bit shallower and sunk... Couldn't have been all that shallow
though
> since no one bothered to recover his body previously... I did a quick
Google
> search, but didn't find any maps of the cave profile...

See http://www.deepcave.com/pages/1/index.htm

The cave is shaped like the letter "b".
this place is pretty well known; Sheck Exley tried for a record there.
The guy who was on the bottom died in '94 in a depth record attempt.

Adam Helberg wrote:

>
>
> Solo diving is safe until something goes wrong.
>
>

ALL " diving is safe until something goes wrong."