Northwest Dive Club

Another mediocre report from a great dive!

https://vimeo.com/70614104

Do you need to be cave trained for that, looks awesome...

The rules say you only need OW. You have a guide, and you follow the guide, and you stay in the "cavern zone" which is 150 or 200 ft from the entrance. You are always supposed to be in view of sunlight, so if all the lights go out, you can still get out. You also run on the rule of thirds, so the first diver to 2000 PSI signals the guide and you turn around. (Typically you've already hit the turnaround point before anyone in the group hits 1/3, it seems.)

That said...

You better have your #*(@! together because it's a fully overhead environment. If you go off by yourself into the dark, something bad could happen.

If something bad happens even when you are on the right course, the guide could be a long way away, and it could be hard for your own buddy to turn around quickly because some passages are narrow. Silt isn't a huge concern, I think all these sites have coarse sandy bottoms, not fine silt, because they can't count on everyone knowing the frog kick. (The guide will tell you to use the frog kick, but if you don't know it, well, you go in anyway.)

I have thought a lot about how they manage these cenote dives and while I'll happily do them over and over, I'm worried about the unskilled divers they let in. But, hey... Mexico.

nothing like having a PNW dive light to blaze up those caves ... looks like a great vacation

I was thinking about diving my Gem rebreather down there for longer bottom time, wonder if longer than 80 single tank dives are an option...

Jeff Pack wrote:I was thinking about diving my Gem rebreather down there for longer bottom time, wonder if longer than 80 single tank dives are an option...

None of the cenotes require more the 1000psi from an AL80 (25cf). They aren't that large. Even if you wanted to do multiple laps, the rest of your group will limit the bottom time. Not to mention you'd need to reserve enough gas to exit from your furthest point of penetration while on OC. And convince the guide, who's done the site 1000 times on 20cf of gas, why you need a SCR.

Standards for guides are they must be: 1) full cave, 2) an instructor (open water or more), and 3) wear double tanks and full cave equipment.

The tourist caverns are benign enough that these tours have a generally long record of safety. The few fatalities reported tended to be either guides breaking rules (taking clients off the cavern line into the cave for a bigger tip) or medical issues (heart attacks).

Grand is an amazing place, and even after all these years, one of my favorites. The cavern line there is so lovely that I often swim it to end a cave dive, just to enjoy the views out toward the sun and the open water. What you get to see on the cavern tour is only the smallest, little-fingernail taste of what the cave has to offer.

Glad you enjoyed your trip. These are truly unique and amazing places.

I warn anyone considering cavern tours in Mexico that these tours are EXTREMELY dangerous. The cave bug lives in those places, and once you are bitten, you are forever lost. It's an expensive and obsessive hobby, cave diving . . .

thats what I'm afraid of, after diving Blue Grotto in FL.

I can feel the cave bug nibbling at me for sure... I don't want to wait years and years til my next underground, underwater experience like I just did. But I'll scratch the itch with more cenote tours. Getting cave or even cavern certified is just not something I'm going to do for a variety of reasons.

LCF wrote:Grand is an amazing place, and even after all these years, one of my favorites. The cavern line there is so lovely that I often swim it to end a cave dive, just to enjoy the views out toward the sun and the open water. What you get to see on the cavern tour is only the smallest, little-fingernail taste of what the cave has to offer.

Glad you enjoyed your trip. These are truly unique and amazing places.

I warn anyone considering cavern tours in Mexico that these tours are EXTREMELY dangerous. The cave bug lives in those places, and once you are bitten, you are forever lost. It's an expensive and obsessive hobby, cave diving . . .

Wasn't there a triple fatality in the kast year or so, where a "cavern guide" took two clients into a cave....and none of them made it out? Can't recall where it happened. ..

Three at Chac Mool:

http://infodeephorizon.blogspot.com/201 ... ality.html

The cenote tours, IF they are run according to the APSA rules, have a truly excellent safety record. That guide broke the biggest rule, which is to STAY ON THE CAVERN LINE!

The entries into cave are all marked well with NACD or "Peligro" signs. No diver should follow a guide past them, and no guide should take divers into cave, even if they are good divers and they request it.