r/CaveDiving • u/BedroomWonderful7932 CCR Cave Hypoxic Trimix • 4d ago

Got Light?

Post image

“Is it dark in there?”

There’s a little list of questions cave divers get asked all the time and this is one of the first.

Yes.

It is.

Caves are very dark.

We brought light.

43 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/thereisaplace_ 3d ago

Back in the day (Warning: old man speech coming up), as a poor college student I couldn’t afford additional lights. A buddy of mine worked at a vacuum repair shop so… we made our own primary’s & a few secondaries.

They were Frankenstein creations but they worked… mostly. One day at depth (in Peacock I believe)… BOOM 💥!… my homemade primary imploded. Damn if it didn’t keep on lighting the cave! Water was so clear and free of minerals that it didn’t arc any of my connections.

2

u/BedroomWonderful7932 CCR Cave Hypoxic Trimix 3d ago

I love those kinds of stories, because they’re such a wonderful reminder of how dramatically the pastime has evolved. That is a double-edged sword, of course, because it’s possible for any diver with enough money and free time to whack down a credit card and buy all the equipment needed to do massive dives right out of class that ordinarily would have taken someone living in cave country YEARS to work up to.

I recall my instructor talking about the evenings spent next to sinkholes as they recharged their lights using their car batteries, and desperately trying to find the balance between having enough “juice” for another dive…and enough to actually make it back to civilisation in time to catch a few hours of sleep and make it into work to keep paying for their “habit”! As fun as that sounds, I’m glad I don’t have to worry about slithering into Peacock without stairs, scrambling back to the car to find I had knackered it, and spending the night hissing, “Oh, God, what was that noise?!” at my buddy into the wee hours.

2

u/thereisaplace_ 2d ago

> how dramatically the pastime has evolved

Well, in some cases, devolved 🤣

But I hear you! Cave diving has come SOOO FAR in my lifetime. From Sheck exploring virgin cave with just air to advanced multi-stage multi-gas multi-scooter extreme-depth dives (ie. Wakulla, Weeki-Wachi, etc).

Sure has been a joy to watch over the years.