Diver Smiling Underwater

Cave CCR

Rebreather cave diving is my favorite activity. The silence, lack of time stress, and versatility of using a rebreather in a cave are relaxing and fun. CCR cave diving has more risks than Open Circuit cave diving. Rebreathers have unique risks when it comes to hypoxia, hyperoxia, hypercapnia, and more. These unique risks make rebreather cave diving a discipline that requires a unique program structure. My focus with rebreather cave programs is the student’s ability to mitigate risk, plan realistic dives, and understand their machine.

spring diver

If you are a certified rebreather diver with experience and are not a certified cave diver you can do all of your cave training on the rebreather from the start. The course will be 8-10 days, sometimes split between two trips with fun diving experience between. The course starts with dialing your existing CCr equipment in to make it appropriate for the cave environment. This means removing failure points, trimming bailout cylinders, and reducing entanglements.

The Cave Rebreather program is for rebreather divers with significant technical diving experience.

Cave CCR is an 8-10 day course.

Day 1:

Dial-in and configuration dives.

Day 2-3: Cavern and intro cave-level diving

Day 4-8: Full Cave level diving with complex navigation

Cave CCR divers need to have very precise and specialized dive abilities. CCRs are awesome tools, and to utilize them in a way that reduces risk requires practice and a strong diving skillset. We will have long days with long dives to prepare you for diving in the overhead with a CCR.

  • eLearning courses or books
  • Academic and in-water instructional time

Crossover

Crossover

“I am an experienced cave diver and an experienced CCR diver. Do I need a crossover course?”This is a common question for individuals interested in cave CCR diving to ask. The answer is “you should not”. Very few Cave CCR-specific protocols and plans are taught as part of the crossover. A competent and experienced cave diver with hundreds of cave dives who also has hundreds of CCR hours in technical environments could probably combine the two with ease. Unfortunately, that level of experience is rare. Normalization of deviance also creeps up in divers with lots of post-dive experience. The Cave CCR crossover has value, in my opinion, to enforce a hurdle of evaluation. This hurdle gives divers third-party professional input of their skills. That evaluation is crucial to mitigate risks in the cave environment.

If you’re a certified cave diver and a CCR diver – with experience in both disciplines – you can participate in an abbreviated crossover program to combine the two disciplines.

  • Certified Cave Diver with diving experience after class.
  • Certified CCR diver with diving experience after class.

Day 1:

AM – Dive 1

PM – video review and gear tweaking

Day 2:

AM – Dives 2-3

PM – Video review and fills

Day 3:

AM – Dive 4

PM – Video review and fills

Transitioning your CCR in the cave opens up areas of systems that would be logistically difficult to see using open circuit. Expect to apply the precision and risk mitigation tools used in your cave experience but with longer and more complex dives. The crossover involves a few new concepts, but overall this program is more of an evaluation than a training course. Your combined skills from both disciplines should give you a baseline from which to start.

  • eLearning courses or books
  • Academic and in-water instructional time
Cave diving

Units

I conduct the Cave CCR program primarily for Dive Rite O2ptima CM (choptima) users. If you’re on a different unit contact me to see if that’s a unit I am qualified to teach for.