Cavechat.org

You are giong to have to find a local dive shop and get fitted. you can spend a fortune on one, or you can get a cheaper one but you need to know what size first. a wetsuit is a 2nd layer of skin, it shouldnt be baggy else it wont work, you will freeze your ass off. too tight and it will extremely limit your movement. anything thicker than 5mm is going to be ridiculously hard to move in, it makes it harder to bend your knees, hips, elbows, shoulders, raising your arms, etc. thinner = more mobility but you lose warmth. everyone around here uses 5mm's. and no they arent "specially built for caving." but you shouldnt be forking out $700 on a wetsuit that is inevitably going to get trashed in a cave either. they are needed on trips where you will experience full body submersion, not knees or legs only. When your core gets wet, you really risk hypothermia.

Yeah I can totally see that - and sure it's why I got the coldest ever in a cave while in Swildon's - multiple times in chest-deep or in a waterfall type thing. A wetsuit (or, how they do it with the under/oversuit combos) would have been nice in that one. I would think a wetsuit more mobile though than an oversuit so it seems like a better investment to have when wanting to stay warmer. There is a scuba shop downtown, I'm sure they could help me then.

Figures, most areas have dive shops even when diving is hours and hours away. Take St. Louis for example..........anyway, dont let the steep prices of new suits at a dive shop turn you off. Just get fitted, try a few different styles. 2 piece, 1 piece, farmer john, shorty, full, etc. You want a good fit. but if its a relatively dry cave and you have to get submerged a few times, a wet suit would be HELL. You will overheat like a mother f!

Yeah totally. Like I said the only cave I've been in that I think a wetsuit would have been needed was Swildon's. Especially if next time I'm there we do short round and then there are freedive sumps!

Local shop is always a good first stop. Put your eyes on things, check out the fit, talk to the pros... in my experience when they hear it's for cave use, they tend to not push the super pricey stuff (since it will get torn up over time), but they do recommend more stretchy stuff for greater mobility (XSPAN, Super-Stretch, Hyperflex- depends on the brand).

I've also had really good luck calling scuba . com. I get a thickness recommendation from other cavers, and get the fit info from the guy on the phone at scuba. Height, weight, chest measurement, and the two suits I've got from them both fit just fine.

As for price, you can get a full body 7mm for $90 up to $500. No way I'm going to spend $500 on something that's going to get scuffed up in a cave, so I went for the middle ground-

http://www.scuba.com/scuba-gear-101/050 ... tsuit.html
$225 and I've been very happy with it. Fairly stretchy and comfortable for a 7mm. I wear soft knee and elbow pads over the suit, and it's still in pretty good shape so far. I've seen some cavers wear a pair or two of shorts over the wetsuit to provide a little butt armor. Warm and toasty when you're up to your neck in 47 degree water.

My 3mm is for a cave where it's dry, dry, dry, go through some wet spots, dry, dry, crawl though a shallow steam, then more dry stuff. There I wear my wetsuit, knee and elbow pads, then my cave suit over that.

Like Chad said, there are tons of options and you don't want to over or underheat, so talk to people who know the cave(s) before reaching for your $$$.

I got my 3mm farmer john used from a raft guiding outfit near me. They sell off what they don't want at the end of every year. $40 and in near-perfect condition. I've used wetsuits like this to do anything from stream crawls to wading/swimming. For low airspace and extended wading/swimming I look to have 5-7mm from head to toe. I think my ideal for most of the wet caving I do would be a super stretchy 3/5mm full wetsuit.

In short, it depends a lot on how cold/warm you tend to be in caves combined with the type of wet caving you're going to do.

jsniffin wrote:

commanderzoom wrote:*I'm* here & I'm always good for amusement--even if you're laughing AT me instead of WITH me .

The only rule is you have to tell her if you're laughing at her or talking crap about her. So its not too bad...

Hey, at least I warned you about my bizarre paranoia crap ahead of time .