มือใหม่ ริอาจไปดำถ้ำ ( ยังดี ที่พอมีสติ ไม่ panic

[ไอ_นุ!]

ผมไป cave dive มาครับ ( สมัยยังละอ่อน ประสบการณ์ไม่ถึง 50 ไดร์ฟ )

[ เคยเขียนเล่าประสบการณ์เรื่องดำถ้ำไว้ เลยก๊อปมาบอกเล่าที่นี่ด้วยดีกว่า... เพื่อเตือนใจมือใหม่+มือเก่า ว่าอย่าประมาท ]

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ไปดำน้ำในถ้ำน้ำจืดที่จมอยู่ในเขื่อนเขาแหลม

ไดร์แรก มือใหม่ ขาดประสบการณ์ .... แถมประมาท จึงซวยดังนี้
• ไม่ได้ใส่ลมเข้า BCD ( เสื้อชูชีพ ) เพื่อปรับการลอยตัวในน้ำ จึงทำให้การทรงตัวแย่มาก คือตัวจมติดพื้นอย่างเดียวเลย เป็นผลให้ไปโดนตะกอน ทำให้น้ำขุ่น
• ไม่ได้ทำฟิลม์ให้กับหน้ากาก จึงเกิดฝ้า ทำให้การมองเห็นแย่มากๆ แย่สุดๆ แย่แบบบรรยายไม่ถูกแล้ว

จากเหตุข้างต้น จึงทำให้ระยะการมองเห็นสั้นมาก เพียงระยะแค่ยื่นมือออกไปเท่านั้น แถมประมาท ดำน้ำแบบไม่จับสายเชือกที่เป็น line นำทางไว้ นึกว่าจะมองเห็น line แต่ดันเห็นบ้างไม่เห็นบ้าง เพราะไม่ได้ทำฟิลม์นั่นแหละ
จึงดำน้ำโดยใช้ระบบมือสัมผัส คือว่า แตะผนังอย่างเดียว ตรงไหนแตะไม่โดนผนัง ก็แปลว่ามีทาง ก็ว่ายไปเลย ( ผิดกฎดำน้ำ เพราะอาจจะทำให้หลงได้ ) แล้วก็ได้หลงกับคนอื่นจริงๆ แต่ไม่รู้ตัวหรอกว่าหลง เพราะว่าก็คลำหาทางไปเรื่อย โชคดีว่าคลำหาทางไม่เจอแล้ว เพราะเจอแต่ผนัง เลยหลงไปได้ไม่ไกล ( ตอนนั้นก็คิดว่า +++จะรอดไหมวะ หากเกิดอะไรขึ้น คนอื่นจะช่วยเราอย่างไร เพราะอยู่ในถ้ำ ทางเข้าออกมันแคบ แล้วไดร์สอง เปลี่ยนใจไม่ลงดีไหม ... แบบว่าเริ่มกลัวแล้ว ) แล้วคนอื่นก็มาตามผมให้กลับเข้าเส้นทาง แล้วพาไปจุดพักกลางทาง ซึ่งจะมีโพรงให้พูดคุยกันได้
พอปรับสภาพจิตใจแล้ว คราวนี้ดำน้ำตามสายเชือก แบบจับไว้ไม่ปล่อยเลย แป๊ปเดียวก็ออกมาข้างนอกได้แล้ว
สรุปว่า ไม่ได้ดูความสวยงามในถ้ำเลย เพราะมัวแต่พะวง

ไดร์สอง แก้ตัว ... ไม่ประมาท แถมเตรียมอุปกรณ์พร้อมรบ เติมลม และทำฟิลม์
มันส์เลยครับ ... ผ่านไปด้วยดี

( ทุกวันนี้ ยังจำภาพและอารมณ์ตอนไดร์แรกได้อยู่เลย ... แบบว่า แย่สุดๆ )

มีข้อมูลเพิ่มเติมดีๆ จากผู้ตอบกระทู้ ที่ผมเคยโพสไว้
http://www.siamscubadiving.com/board/view.php?tid=1007

[ไอ_นุ!]

ความเสี่ยงอีกอย่าง...ด้วยลักษณะของถ้ำ
ตอนเข้าถ้ำ ต้องดำลงไป ด้วยมุม 45 องศา ซึ่งทางเข้าใหญ่กว่าคุณดื้อนิดนึง จึงต้องเรียงเดียวเข้าทีละคน ยังคิดเลยว่า ถ้าตูเป็นอะไรตรงทางเข้า แล้วเค้าจะช่วยอย่างไรละเนียะ

ปล. แต่ก็ประทับใจนะครับ ถ้าเตรียมตัวพร้อม ก็สนุกดี
ว่าแต่ มีใครสนใจไปบ้างไหมอะ จะขอไปแก้มือ

ปล.2 เค้าว่าในเขื่อนมี จระเข้ จริงหรือเปล่าครับ.. กลัวอะ

[chickykai]

โอ้ว ตื่นเต้น ตื่นเต้น มีสติเป็นทรัพย์จริงๆ ถ้าขาดสติคงขาดใจไปแล้วแน่ๆ

ป.ล. ไอ้เข้ยังมีใตธรรมชาติบ้านเราอีกเหรอเนี่ย นึกว่ามีแต่ในบ่อเลี้ยงกะสวนสัตว์ (ไม่นับพวกที่หลุดมาตอนน้ำท่วมนะ)

[ดอกปีบ]

ไม่เคยดำถ้ำแบบที่นุไปลองดำในเขื่อนเลยซักครั้ง ..

ที่ผมเข้าใจก็คือว่า ทัศนวิสัย ของน้ำในเขื่อนมันแย่มากๆขนาดว่ามองไม่เห็นอะไรเลย (สงสัยต้องใช้ไฟฉายช่วย) ..

สมัยเด็กๆตอนที่ไปเล่นน้ำในคลอง ลองหัดดำน้ำดู จำได้ว่า เห็นแต่น้ำคลองเขียวๆ ..
นึกไม่ออกจริงๆครับว่าบรรยากาศจะเป็นยังไง แต่ถ้าเลือกได้ ขอกลับไปดำทะเลแบบเดิมดีกว่าครับ ..

[Coffee]

น่ากลัวมากครับ พวก overhead environment เนี่ยะ.....

[conundrum]

ต่อให้เป็น Inst. 1000+ ก็ไม่ควรลองครับ

การดำน้ำถ้ำเป็นการดำน้ำที่มีลักษณะ Overhead Barrier Environment ซึ่งก็คือมีสิ่งบดบังเหนือหัว นักดำน้ำไม่สามารถขึ้นสู่ผิวน้ำได้โดยตรงหากเกิดเหตุฉุกเฉิน

การดำน้ำ (Cave Diving) ถือเป็นศาสตร์อีกแขนงหนึ่งที่จำเป็นจะต้องเข้ารับการฝึกอบรมอย่างเป็นเรื่องเป็นราว เพราะมีข้อปฏิบัติ และอุปกรณ์มากมาย เพื่อที่จะป้องกันอันตรายต่าง ๆ

นอกจากนี้ก็มีนักดำน้ำที่มีประสบการณ์เอาชีวิตไปทิ้งในถ้ำไปเป็นจำนวนมาก รวมไปถึง Sheck Exley ซึ่งถือว่าชำนาญที่สุดในโลก

ฉะนั้นจะทำอะไรก็ควรที่จะรู้ให้จริง และศึกษาให้ถูกต้อง เพื่อความปลอดภัยของตัวคุณเอง โดยเฉพาะอย่างยิ่ง คนที่อยู่ข้างหลังคุณ และรอคุณกลับบ้าน

[สายชล]

เห็นด้วยกับน้องติ่งและน้องหนึ่งค่ะ....


เพิ่งอ่านเรื่องของ Sheck Exley เมื่อไม่นานมานี้ ทราบเรื่องแล้วเศร้าจริงๆค่ะ...ลองอ่านดูนะคะ




ภาพจาก...www.facebook.com/pages/Sheck-Exl...90818387


Exley is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of cave diving, writing two major books on the subject: Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival and Caverns Measureless to Man published by Cave Books, (ISBN 0-939748-25-8), and establishing many of the basic safety procedures used in cave and overhead diving. Exley was also a pioneer of extreme deep water diving. In the book, Diving into Darkness (a story about Dave Shaw and Don Shirley) it was commented: "Exley's status in the sport is almost impossible to overstate."

Exley began diving in 1965 at the age of 16. That very year he entered his first cave and was hooked on cave diving for the remaining 29 years of his life.

He was the first in the world to log over 1,000 cave dives (at the age of 23): in over 29 years of cave diving, he made over 4,000. He is one of the few divers to survive a 122 metre(400 ft) dive on compressed air. During his diving career, he set numerous depth and cave penetration records.

He died aged 45 on April 6, 1994 while attempting to descend to a depth of over 300 metres (1,000 ft) in a cenote called Zacatón in Mexico; he was about 10 meters away from the bottom of the cenote. He made the dive as part of a dual dive with Jim Bowden, but Bowden aborted his descent early when his gas supply ran low. Exley's body was recovered only because he had hooked his arms in the descent line, perhaps to sort out gas issues. His wrist-mounted dive computer read a maximum depth of 268 metres (879 ft). It is not certain what caused his death; team members concluded the causes "...could include stress of HPNS exacerbated by the narcotic effects of nitrogen at that depth". The line was also wrapped (deliberately) around Exley's tank valves. Bowden and other experts have theorised that Exley may have done this in anticipation of his own death to prevent any dangerous body recover dive being necessitated.

Sheck Exley is one of only eight people in the history of technical SCUBA diving to dive below 800 feet.

Some of Exley's exploits are described in Daniel Lenihan's book Submerged. This book describes how Exley was a very influential dive buddy of the author, who went on to form the National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center.

เรื่องจาก....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheck_Exley



ภาพจาก...www.vanwaasen.de/LITERATUR/CAVE/...AVE.HTML

[สายชล]

อีกบทความหนึ่งค่ะ....





Eulogy for an Explorer




"Most of the small percentage of accidents involving experienced cave divers have occurring during deep cave dives."


--Sheck Exley
Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival



It would be interesting to know what, if anything, Reinhold Messner would have to say about the death of Sheck Exley. Exley, a 45 year old mathematics teacher from Live Oak, Florida, died on April 6, 1994 as he attempted to descend to a depth of over 1,000 feet in a cave in Mexico.


It is tempting to draw comparisons between the two men, Exley the cave diver and Messner the mountain climber. Each had a well-earned reputation for being the best in their chosen endeavor. Over the years both men saw contemporaries perish; early in their careers, both watched their own brothers die in front of them, Messner's high in the mountains and Exley's deep in the clear waters of Wakulla spring. Today Messner, although very much alive, suffers the effects of oxygen deprivation from breathing the rarified air of the upper atmosphere; while Exley is dead from breathing the thick air of great depth.


Open the books to the longest and deepest underwater caves in America, and Exley's name will inevitably appear. While no one would argue that cave diving is without risk, Exley demonstrated that it could be done safely if practiced with knowledge, care, and skill. He literally "wrote the book" (several books, actually) on safe cave diving practices. He was the first in the world to log over 1,000 cave dives. In over 29 years of cave diving, he made over 4,000.


Like Reinhold Messner, Exley seemed to have a sixth sense, an uncanny ability to know when to push on and when to retreat. Like Messner, there were times when he seemed almost invulnerable, too smart to be caught in the traps that killed others.


Sheck Exley particularly excelled at pushing back the traditional cave diving barriers of distance and depth. At Cathedral Canyon Spring in Florida, a site which had such potential that Exley bought the property and moved there, he achieved a world record penetration of over two underwater miles during an eleven and a half hour solo dive in 1990.


Exley was equally famous for his expertise at deep diving, an even more technical and formidable challenge. As depth increases, divers must breath air at ever higher pressures. Under pressure, the nitrogen in ordinary air causes narcosis, a kind of drunkenness that increases with depth. Even life-giving oxygen becomes poisonous at depths greater than 200 feet (although Exley, one of the few to dive much below 400 feet on compressed air and live through the experience, had a demonstrated tolerance to it).


The most practical solution for those who must dive at great depth is the use of special gas mixes such as Trimix, which lower the oxygen and nitrogen content while substituting another inert gas such as helium. While early experiments using mixed gases in the U.S. had tragic outcomes (Exley's friend Louis Holtzendorf died on one such dive), Exley's deep dives at a Mexican spring known as Nacimiento del Rio Mante soon proved the worth of Trimix for cave diving. Not only could these mixtures allow a diver to go deeper without succumbing to narcosis or oxygen poisoning, but they also reduced the amount of time spent at decompression stops during the ascent.


Beginning in 1979, Exley methodically worked his way deeper into the cave at Rio Mante. In March of 1989, using Trimix, he descended to a world record depth of 881 feet, returning to the surface after 14 hours of decompression with no harmful effects. Only commercial divers, working from diving bells which supplied their breathing mixture through umbilical tubes and provided shelter for days or weeks of decompression (a level of support not possible in a cave) had ever been deeper.


In recent years Exley and his team continued their explorations of deep caves and springs. In August of 1993, Exley reached 863 feet when he touched bottom in Bushmansgat (Bushman's Hole), South Africa, but not before experiencing a serious case of high pressure nervous syndrome (HPNS) that included blurred vision and intense, uncontrollable tremors. Soon after, he joined Jim Bowden in focusing his efforts on a cave known as Zacaton (aka Pit 6350), north of Tampico, Mexico that was known to be at least 1,080 feet deep. In September, Bowden dove to 774 feet in the dark, warm waters of the spring. Ann Kristovich, the team physician, descended to 541 feet, a new depth record for women (the old record had been set at Rio Mante by Mary Ellen Eckoff, Exley's wife). Following the September expedition, the team announced that despite over 30 dives at great depth, they had encountered no pressure-related problems. Dives of over 1,000 feet, it was said, were planned for the future.


The number has a nice ring to it. A thousand feet would be a milestone, a necessary one if anyone was ever to reach the bottom of Zacatan. By the time Exley returned to Mexico in the spring of 1994, the number 1,000 must have been etched into his brain.


On April 6, 1994, Jim Bowden and Sheck Exley entered the water at Zacatan. After months of meticulous calculations and planning, their descent would be over within a few moments. While it's been a tradition in cave diving for these kinds of attempts to be made solo, Bowden and Exley dove simultaneously, following separate weighted lines 25 to 30 feet apart but still essentially alone in the murky water. There was little hope of even seeing one another; they may as well have been diving solo. In 11 minutes, Bowden had reached 898 feet but was lower than expected on gas reserves and turned upward to begin over nine hours of decompression. Kristovich, acting as a support diver, was hanging in the water high above, watching the two streams of bubbles. Eighteen minutes into the dive, she saw that the bubbles coming from Exley had stopped. Exley's wife Mary Ellen descended to 279 feet, where a ledge might have blocked the flow of bubbles. There were none.


What happened to Sheck Exley in those 18 minutes? The physiology of making such a rapid descent to great depth is not yet completely known or understood, and when solo divers perish they typically leave few or no clues. Following the accident, it was assumed that Exley's body would never be recovered. Those who knew him well were certain of one thing: whatever happened, Exley did not panic. More than once in the past Exley had jeopardized his own life to save another, his steel nerves prevailing over the most nightmarish of conditions. "He was the ultimate cool," Bowden told a Texas newspaper.


But Sheck Exley still had one more surprise for the world. When the guideline was pulled from the cave three days after the dive, his body came up with it, the line wrapped intentionally around his arms and the valves of his side-mounted tanks.


Later, the members of the team published a detailed analysis that concluded Exley probably fell victim to "HPNS, oxygen induced incapacitation or a convulsion" or some combination of those events (see www.iucrr.org/aa_misc.htm). Both of Exley's primary tanks were exhausted, as was one of his two side-mounted tanks (the other was untouched). The team conjectures that for unknown reasons Exley ran out of gas in his primaries and was forced to switch to the side-mount "travel mix" that was far less appropriate for that depth, making a bad situation worse. His dive computer showed a maximum depth of 879 feet; it's not clear if he was able to ascend past that point. With his bouyancy compensator fed by the empty main tanks, any ascent would require extra effort. At some point he wrapped the line around himself to stabilize his position but ultimately lost consciousness before he could deal with the situation. At similar depths in Bushmansgat he had reported HPNS tremors so intense that he had difficulty with even simple tasks such as operating the inflator. I imagine Exley hanging there trying to fight back the darkness until the side tank ran out--this could be just a minute or two at that depth--and by then he may have been too incapacitated to get another regulator into his mouth. As in most tragedies there was probably no single factor but simply a disastrous combination of things that not even Sheck Exley could overcome--but no one can really know for sure.


So how do you mourn a man who died pushing the limits of an endeavor most people consider foolhardy at best? What can you say about a person who knew the immensity of the risks and yet went anyway? "He died doing something he loved and did better than anyone else in the world," Bowden said later. Perhaps that's all that anyone can or should say. The Sheck Exleys and Reinhold Messners of this world weigh the risks, consider the consequences, and make their choices without asking for our consent or our pity.


Did Exley die in the mindless pursuit of a meaningless record, or was he a pioneer who was advancing our understanding of diving at great depths? I'd like to think Reinhold Messner would be inclined to say the latter. One of Exley's friends described him as a man who was always trying to see around the next corner. He dove to ever-greater depths because the caves he explored demanded it, because something that most of us will never quite understand compelled him forward.


There are so few unexplored places left in the world, so few true explorers!



จาก....http://www.stationr.org/caving/exley.htm

[สายชล]

Addendum, July 17, 2005

I read this week with fascination and dread a story in the August 2005 issue of Outside magazine about the death of Australian Dave Shaw in Bushmansgat, South Africa. Years earlier, Exley had been to over 880 feet deep in the cave, having a close call with helum-induced tremors. In October 2004 Shaw descended to 886 in the huge underwater shaft using a rebreather and had discovered the body of Deon Dreyer, a diver who had blacked out and disappeared ten years previously. Shaw was determined to return and bring the body up, and in January 2005 he returned to do just that. Although he had just seven years of diving experience against Exley's decades, Shaw had calculated and planned in what seems to me a very Exley-like fashion. On the surface he assembled a strong team and placed a decompression chamber attended by a physician. Ropes hung ready to hoist a striken diver up from the water, with support divers and emergency gas supplies all the way down past 400 feet.


Shaw's plan was simple: descend to the body using the line he had previously tied off, slide it into a special body bag, attach the line, and surface after spending a maximum of five minutes on the bottom. Exactly what went wrong might still be a mystery, except that Shaw wore a video camera on his head that recorded his every movement. At these extreme depths, the smallest detail--even the wearing of the camera itself--could have deadly consequences. Watching the tape later, his friends concluded that Shaw simply let himself work a little bit too hard, get just a little bit out of breath, and that started a downward spiral that killed him.


From the Outside article by Tim Zimmerman:

"Still, Shaw keeps checking the time on his dive computer. After five and a half minutes on the bottom, he's aware enough to know he has to leave, but he doesn't get far. The video shows the bottom moving beneath him. Then Shaw's forward progress stops. His errant cave light has apparently snagged the cave line tied to Deon's tanks. Shaw knows he has caught something, and turns awkwardly. His breathing starts to sound desperate. He pulls at the cat's cradle of cave line, as if trying to sort it out. Every breath is now a sharp grunt. Shaw struggles to move again but is anchored by the weight of Deon's body. The shears are still in his hand, but he never cuts anything. The pace of his breathing keeps accelerating, and there is a tragic, gasping quality to it, so painful to listen to that Herbst and Shirley will no longer watch the video with sound. Twenty one minutes into the dive, the sounds finally start to fade. Dave Shaw, with carbon dioxide suffusing his lungs, is starting to pass out. He is dying. It's heartbreaking to watch. A minute later there is no movement."

The almost spooky end to the story is that four days later, after the emergency tanks had been recovered and the lines pulled, Shaw's body floated up from the darkness with Dreyer in tow, making good on his promise to bring him home.

A handful of technical divers continue to push the limits of deep diving (including Jim Bowden, see www.onr.com/user/zacaton/). The late John Bennett was the first to break 1,000 feet on open circuit scuba gear, but this and other dives were in the ocean, not in a freshwater cave. As Numo Gomes said in 1994, "Four divers in the world have undertaken dives below 200 meters (656 feet); one is dead, another is paralyzed from the waist down, and the other two suffered DCS during their respective deepest dives." (see www.iantd.com/articles/95-1gomes.html). A new depth record for open circuit scuba was set this month (July 2005) by Pascal Bernabe, who reached 330 meters (1,082 feet) in the ocean off Corsica (see http://www.divernet.com/news/stories...5bernabe.shtml).

Yes, even in this day of poseurs driving four-wheel-drives that never leave the pavement, of lawyers who put on leather jackets and parade around on $12,000 Harleys to show they are free spirits, when it seems that everything is style over substance, there are still a few explorers out there who quietly let their actions speak for them, at least to the few people who are there to listen.


จาก....http://www.stationr.org/caving/exley.htm

[-Oo-]

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