Traning >
Goul de Tannerie (May 2003)
Latest update: March 18, 2004
Goul de la Tannerie: Tom dropping our 4 stage bottles, 2 each. The water level is low. A local complained to us about the lack of rain. Unfortunately, sometimes what is good for cave diving is bad for the agriculture.
This weekend Thomas Karch and I did a little cave diving in the Goul de la Tannerie. We did one double stage dive each day, about 5.5 hours in the water over 2 days. We could have done more if Tom's dry suit was not leaking, but it was enough to have fun.
I think this was a good weekend since Thomas got to learn or practice quite a few things before going to his GUE cave class the following weekend. He even said that he had a lot of fun. I just hoped that he meant it;-) I liked the fact that after the first dive he said to Micha that he needed to find a new hobby. Good attitude.
We spent a lot of time working with line: primary tie-off, secondary tie-off, then a total of 90 minutes of line laying over 2 days. This should help him a lot for his cave class. He learnt a few things like to look around to find the best placements, to wrap that line properly and efficiently when doing a tie-off, to deploy the line without getting it entangled in his 2 stages (that one is a bit beyond the scope of a cave 1 class but important in an exploration project), to be creative when solving little issues like the line not being tight enough and to do jumps with a spool.
Good news! The commune rebuilt the road! So we could park the van where it is less visible and more convenient.
While Tom was laying my knotted line I was doing the survey behind. I wanted to practice and optimize this with thick gloves since I have only done it twice since I came back to France. Of course it's much easier with bare hands like I did in Florida but still manageable with 7mm 3 finger gloves.
Then, while I was removing the line after the second dive, Tom also had a chance to practice making it easy for the reel-man, by staying slightly ahead, providing light and undoing all the tie-offs before I got to them so that we could make continuous progress.
We also spent a good hour practicing blind progression along the line in touch-contact. That was very interesting since Thomas laid the line... It is a very efficient way to teach somebody how to avoid creating line traps: make him come back blind on his own line. And there were a few line traps that he had to figure out. That was really a lot of fun for me ;-) Just to make it even more fun, we did this where there were 2 restrictions close to each other with a 3 meter shaft in between and of course there was another line in there ... imagine the confusion if you tie-off on the same small rock as the other line, then when you are blind you come on one line and there are 3 other lines on that same rock.... and no line arrows... When I saw Tom choosing to tie-off on that rock I decided that we just had to do a touch-contact exercise there... And because I had plenty of time to think while Thomas was figuring out every puzzle that he created, I thought that I was really too nice... I should have let him keep that second stage on his hip: the more stages in restrictions with 2 lines, the more chances for entangling... Then there was the time when he finally got through the last restriction but kept going instead of waiting for me. I just don't know why I did not fake getting stuck in there, wrap that line in my stages and have him come back for me, still blind of course... It must be because I am too nice...
Just 2 stages each, no scooter: an easy dive, at least from an equipment point of view.
All in all I must say to Tom's credit that he stayed very calm. I was listening to his breathing, which was nice and regular. After he does his cave class he should be really good at managing tough situations while cave diving.
Tom taught me how to make it easier to undo the loop (while wearing thick gloves) that one makes with a jump spool onto the main line. The trick is to make a little loop at the end of the bigger loop on the spool line. So now I put this on all my jump spools, reels and on my safety spool. Thanks Tom!
The rest of the 5.5 hours in the water we spent taking a look at various side tunnels that all looped back into the main tunnel. We got to about 100 meters away from the shaft but since we did not want to use our back gas, had to turn.