One of the two instructors teaching the cavern-diving course was Steve Berman, a quiet man who, once he entered the caverns, seemed to be transformed into a water creature, moving smoothly, effortlessly, and then hanging weightless and motionless in the water as he monitored his students. The water was so clear that it looked to Chris as though Steve was hovering in air like a genie.
In the two-day cavern-diving course Chris and Ken learned the basics of wearing their equipment in such a way that they had extras of everything they needed to keep themselves alive inside rock caverns, where they could not immediately return to the surface if something went wrong underwater. Caverns and caves were officially termed “overhead environments,” and the extra equipment required, including a complete extra air supply and spare lights, was called redundancy. All of the lessons Chris and Ken learned about human underwater activity had come at the price of dead divers. Cave diving had led to disproportionately more deaths than open-water diving, where a diver experiencing a problem can ascend directly to the surface and its life-sustaining air.
The histories of cavern and cave diving were intertwined, yet the two had been clearly differentiated for diving and training purposes only after a 1973 study of cave-diving fatalities by the famed Sheck Exley, who had previously written two extensive cave-diving manuals.
Exley, a native of north-central Florida, had taken up cave diving in 1966, when he was only sixteen years old. Back then, there were no rules for safe cave diving—it was far too new a sport. Divers developed their own rules as they went along. As more and more divers died in Florida’s caves, both individual landowners and the state started closing cave entrances, using explosives to do so. By 1970, Exley knew that if the cave closings continued, there would soon be no cave diving in Florida. Motivated to save his sport as well as lives, Exley decided to explore what could be done to make cave diving safer. Although he had already survived more cave dives than anyone else, he knew that he and others could ensure their own and others’ long-term survival only with education and discipline. Exley analyzed the fatalities and found trends. From this study came what is known as the “rules of accident analysis,” which he published as a booklet called Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival. The manual sets forth ten representative accidents and the rules learned from each one. Exley’s catechism became the basis for all future cave training, including the first step, the cavern-diving course, which Chris Rouse and Ken Reinhart took. In a cavern-diving course, participants are limited to the area in which sunlight can still be seen, a maximum depth of 70 feet, and a linear penetration—the horizontal distance from the cavern’s rock entrance—of 130 feet.
The most important rule Exley came up with was this: Always carry a guideline that will lead you back to open water. This rule might seem obvious to most people in light of the number of divers who had become disoriented inside caves, hadn’t been able to find their way out, and had drowned. Unfortunately, the dictum had not previously proved self-evident in practice: Too many people had died who probably would have survived if they had used a guideline. Exley’s succinctly graphic presentation of how to avoid becoming a dead and bloated diving victim led to the establishment of a training regimen and code of conduct for cave diving with an effectiveness never previously achieved. The number of deaths from cavern and cave diving dropped dramatically.
Another key concept that Exley emphasized was redundancy—always having an extra of everything you need underwater. With a single tank, the tank valve onto which the breathing hoses are attached contains a dual outlet, so that if something goes wrong with the first one, the diver can use the other. Cave divers using double tanks connected with a manifold bar have to use the type of bar that contains dual outlets, a device invented by a cave diver. Each outlet has affixed to it a first stage, a mechanical device that ratchets down the high-pressure air of the scuba tank to an intermediate pressure. The breathing hose comes off the first stage and leads to a regulator, a simple mechanical device that further reduces gas pressure and provides breathing gas to the diver at the surrounding depth pressure. If any one of the links in the chain—the first stage, the breathing hose, or the regulator—fails, the diver can switch to a second regulator, which is attached to the other outlet. The diver’s second regulator, which has a hose at least five feet long, is known as an octopus. This regulator is used to give a buddy breathing gas in the event he runs out or has catastrophic equipment failure.
Underwater diving lights should also be redundant, Exley maintained. Not only cave divers but also cavern divers now always carry at least two. Although the cavern-diving certification allows divers to descend only as far as the last point where they can see sunlight, having battery-powered lights has advantages for cavern divers, letting them behold the cavern’s details; monitor gauges showing depth, dive time, and remaining gas; and signal a dive buddy.
Exley also emphasized that every dive team, including cavern divers, should also use a guideline reel, so that divers can find their way out of the cavern in the event of a “silt-out”—a situation where particles of sand, mud, or clay hang suspended in the water, erasing visibility. In this case, the divers gently take hold of the guideline and follow it out. Each diver also should carry a backup reel for use in case he or she loses contact with the primary guideline and has to search for it. Exley and his disciples also emphasized special swimming techniques that allow divers to go safely into an area without stirring up silt.
After Chris and Ken completed the cavern-diving course, they flew on to Key West for a few days of diving on coral reefs. Though exotic, Key West was far from Chris’s mind, and all he could talk about was how exciting the cavern diving at Ginnie Springs had been. “Ken, we’ve got to go back and take the cave-diving course,” he told his friend. “The training will make us much better divers. And we’ll get to see what’s beyond the warning sign.” Although Ken had enjoyed diving into the bright limestone caverns, warning flags rose in his mind—especially about venturing from the sunlit caverns to probe the murk of the caves. “Chris,” he said, “this cave-diving thing is dangerous. Didn’t you read all those warning signs?”
“Yeah, but that was for people who don’t have training and the right equipment.”
“Even with that, don’t you think there’s just too much that can go wrong?”
“If you have good training, and you practice, you learn to deal with everything. If you didn’t, everybody who ever went into a cave would be dead.” Chris leaned forward intently in a chair on the veranda of their hotel, as if convincing Ken would grant him permission to do what he wanted.
“Chris, cave diving is like pulling a tiger’s tail.” Ken took a quick drink of his juice. “You can get away with it for so long, but sooner or later the tiger is going to turn around and take a swipe at you.”
Chris sat back, looking as if his friend had just said he wouldn’t lend him a twenty. “Ken, I’m going to go back and take the training, with or without you.”
In March 1989 Chris was again at Ginnie Springs. Ken did not go. He considered cave diving too dangerous; when he dived, he wanted the assurance of knowing that if something went wrong he could shoot straight up to the surface. But Chris had just enough of a taste of cave-diving training that he felt he had to give Chrissy the experience. Father and son could now experience in real life a world as strange and exciting as any they had seen in the Dr. Who sci-fi television show they both loved so much. Chris repeated the cavern-diving training with Chrissy, to let his son catch up. Then they both went on to the cave-diving course.
The two-day “Introduction to Cave Diving” course trained both father and son to venture well beyond the cavern zone. They were allowed to carry powerful underwater lights that illuminated the vast tunnel complex of the Devil’s Cave System like a galactic movie set. The tunnel’s limestone walls were covered with a mixture of white and black patches. When they came to a bend in a wall, the light from the diver in back would cause a distorted silhou
ette of the diver in front to be thrown on the harlequin pattern, like when a child makes finger shadow figures on a movie screen. Nature had taken tens of thousands of years to create these tunnels; a diver’s shadow would play on the walls for the geological equivalent of an eye blink.
Their instructor was Marc Eyring, a man whose history and demeanor embody the word “extreme.” This rugged man had been a sergeant on the “A” Team in the Green Berets, briefly served in Vietnam, and then worked for NASA as an electrical engineering supervisor on the space shuttle. Although he did not have an electrical engineering degree, his exceptional drive and intelligence had gotten him into the space program. After the shuttle Challenger blew up, NASA fell into disarray, and future projects were either seriously delayed or canceled. Frustrated, Eyring left to become a cave-diving instructor at Ginnie Springs.
Marc Eyring was a perfectionist; he realized that what he drilled into his students was nothing less than the means of survival, the same skills and sense that had been pounded into him during his Green Beret training. His intense focus and self-imposed demanding teaching schedule would frequently lead him to go all day without eating. A student in a cave-diving class has to dive only twice a day, but Eyring, running two or more classes simultaneously, often made four or more cave dives within sixteen hours. When his students emerged into daylight, he would critique the performance of each individual, as well as that of each dive team. In his view, the divers were soldiers storming enemy barricades while wearing hundred-pound packs, which in a way they were.
Like Denny McLaughlin before him, Eyring recognized the Rouses’ natural talent as divers. Normally, after passing the introductory course, divers have to get some experience under their belts before advancing to the next level. But the Rouses’ skills and eagerness prompted Eyring to let the father-son team continue directly into the grueling four-day “full cave” course. There was no guarantee of passing any of the cave courses: An instructor had to be absolutely confident that a student possessed not only diving competence but also the right attitude and level of maturity necessary for safe cave diving. An instructor was free to fail a student for demonstrating unsportsmanlike conduct or arrogance, taking technical shortcuts, or exhibiting lack of awe at the prospect of diving the dangerous caves. This training was far more focused than anything the Rouses had previously undergone, and that was part of its appeal. Passing into the ranks of the “full cave” certified diver was an accomplishment few divers even aspired to. It would set them apart.
Usually, before students were allowed to continue their cave-diving training beyond the introductory level, they were encouraged to get a year or so of experience at the basic cave level to perfect certain skills: The guideline could be tricky to use, and care had to be taken to lay it securely on the way in; the reel could jam, and the diver had to be able to manage wrapping the line manually around the reel, often while contending with a fast current. Divers had to learn how to use their legs—which of several kicks to use in different circumstances—and when it was more efficient to use their hands and arms to gently tug themselves along, a technique known as the pull-’n’-glide. They also had to get used to wearing two full-size tanks, necessary to provide enough breathing gas for penetrations deep into cave systems—and a reserve in case of emergency.
Eyring noted that the Rouses performed as a team from the onset of their training. He’d found that this kind of teamwork was unusual among people who came to diving knowing each other from the regular world. He had witnessed a tendency for even experienced divers to react as individuals and abandon their partners in the hostile cave environment to press ahead alone out of curiosity and in the grip of an adrenaline surge. The phenomenon was common enough so that he knew students did not do it deliberately; it was the nature of the stronger partner to want to move forward, to excel. For this reason, he usually broke up husband-and-wife teams, or other partnerships where one member was clearly superior in skills to the other. Physically, the nineteen-year-old Chrissy had the benefit of youth and was stronger than his father. But Eyring saw that Chris demonstrated a maturity that came only with age: “Chrissy was the limiting factor,” he would say later. “Chris was stronger, both—I would say—in character and mentally. He took action to deal with problems, although Chrissy, being younger, was more physically fit. They each had strengths and limitations.”
Chris and Chrissy had enjoyed their cave diving so much that when they got home they both begged Sue to give it a try so that the family could all go cave diving together. Father and son were eager to camp at Ginnie Springs because it provided convenient access to the diving sites and they would not have to waste valuable underwater time traveling back and forth the long distance between the nearest motel and the water. Neither of them knew anything about camping. Sure, Chris and Chrissy had both camped there before, but they had come with a group that included experienced campers who set everything up. Sue was reluctant at first—she remembered how uneasy she had felt after her initial diving training and did not want to go through that experience again—but her two men kept insisting that she would love it. “Okay, okay, I’ll go,” Sue said, relenting. “But I can tell you now, I don’t think I’m going to like it.”
As soon as they arrived, Chris and Chrissy were both eager to go diving right away, before they had set up camp. “Oh, no, you don’t!” Sue chided. “We’ve got to put up the tent. No diving until the tent’s up.” She knew that once the diving started, she would have a difficult if not impossible time getting her husband and son focused on domestic chores. Chris and Chrissy grumbled, but they both knew that when Mom put her foot down she meant it.
“There.” Chris pointed to the first campsite he saw. “That looks like a great spot!” Chrissy agreed. The men unhooked the equipment-laden trailer they had towed behind their compact family car from Pennsylvania and unloaded the tent, which they hastily erected. Throwing their sleeping bags into the tent without much attention to where they landed, Chris and Chrissy declared that they could now all go diving.
When the family surfaced after their dive into the cavern at Ginnie Springs, they were met by a blinding downpour. “Oh, no! We left the tent open,” Chris shouted. Still clad in their rubber diving suits, the family jumped into the car, with Sue driving. Not only was it hard to see anything through the rain, but she was completely unfamiliar with the maze of roads that led through the campground. Sue drove around aimlessly until they finally glimpsed their tent, which they had unwisely set up on low ground. The rain had caused a small flash flood, and a river now ran right through their tent’s opening flap. All three sleeping bags resembled submerged sponges. Sue’s open suitcase looked like a portable washtub filled with clothes.
The Rouses grappled the tent and their belongings from the swirling water. “Well, we’ll have to do a better job of it this time,” Chris remarked as he surveyed the area for a more appropriate spot to erect the tent.
“We’re still going to camp here?” Sue asked, dumbfounded. A motel sounded like a good idea right about now.
Chris looked at her with surprise. “Of course we’re going to camp here. That’s why we came here. To camp.”
“And to dive,” Chrissy quickly added.
Sue knew how much her two men could react like little boys, and if a soaking tent and drenched sleeping bags were not spurring them toward a motel, nothing short of a major family argument would. She was too exhausted for that. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get all the stuff and go dry it out.” The family headed with their wet things to the campground’s shower and rest-room facilities, where Sue began using a blow-dryer to get everything as dry as possible. Overwhelmed by the long drive followed immediately by the dive, Sue wanted to lie down and rest, not spend hours blow-drying her sleeping bag. She complained about the selection of the campsite, the weather, the wet things, and anything else she could think of.
“Stop whining, Mom,” Chrissy pleaded. “It’s not that bad.” He quickly added, “Let’s
talk about the zoo.”
Chris walked over to his wife and hugged her. “Yeah, Puz. Let’s talk about the zoo.”
Sue woke up the next morning to still-damp clothes. But she took the two-day cavern course and then the “Introduction to Cave Diving” class. To her surprise, she found the caves fascinating, just as Chris and Chrissy had said she would.
After their initial waterlogged foray into the world of camping, the Rouses were determined to get it right on subsequent trips. A pickup truck had replaced their compact car for these excursions. Over several camping trips during the next year, the Rouses developed their camp compound so that it looked like a campsite on an expedition in deepest Africa. They used all manner of blue plastic tarps to help shelter themselves and their equipment from rain and sand. They now used a trailered, pop-up camper instead of the old canvas tent. The camper was situated in the middle of a clearing, complete with a five-foot canopy that led to their picnic table. Two additional tents-including their original old-fashioned canvas model—were erected on either side of their camper and housed their equipment, which included multiple pieces of backup gear for each of them, in case anything should not perform flawlessly. The extra tents also served as convenient places for one of them to retreat to, like Achilles, when the bickering became too much. Around the perimeter of their campsite they had roped together their five-foot-high green oxygen-supply cylinders, making a green stockade. Anyone who knew the Rouses could figure out quickly whether they were in residence at Ginnie Springs by looking for their distinctive encampment.
Every chance they got, the whole Rouse family went to Ginnie Springs. Word spread about them among the hard-core cave-diving community. And Chris and Chrissy soon got to know those hard-core divers. The Canadian diver John Reekie spent winters in Florida. He ran his own roofing business in a suburb of Toronto, where he made sure to work as much as he could when weather permitted. Once the snow set in, Reekie loaded his truck with diving and camping equipment and headed to Ginnie Springs, sometimes taking a break to go as far as the Florida Keys for some wreck diving. He dived every day from his arrival in mid-November to his departure in April.
The Last Dive Page 6
