Re: Cave Suit Recommendation
Posted: Feb 9, 2013 9:37 amJeff Bartlett wrote:Extremeophile wrote:I'm less impressed ... 3.5 hours per trip is hardly enough time to get out of the entrance zone. You must be bouncing a bunch of pits, and I'm not sure that each yo of a yo-yo counts as another cave trip. I don't see a bunch of survey getting done in those 3.5 hour trips.
Ha! I was WAITING for someone to call me out on what has essentially been 2 solid years of "Holy crap, I live in TAG now, let's just run through 400+ ft deep caves all the time." I used to manage 400 hours a year, now I'm racking up 4-hour trips. Go figure.
In fairness, SuperDerek, I did exclude two weeklong Lechuguilla expeditions from that figure, since we're trying to determine coverall longevity here. And, since I live about 10 minutes from several major caves, I've managed about a dozen weeknight survey trips in that time period at 2-3 hours a clip. I didn't realize cave survey only counts when you're pulling an all-nighter; I didn't realize it's only caving if it's horrible. I must just be a pit-bopper, then.
But, seriously, why are we talking about this? I'm trying to help this dude shop for coveralls, and suddenly we're dissecting whether I'm surveying awful stream passages two dozen weekends a year (like 2008-2009) or whistle-dicking my way to the bottom of two dozen deep caves a year (like 2011-2012). WHOOOOOO CAAAAAAAAAARES
Fair enough. I was just worried about you man. Those stats concerned me. You are showing a trend of going more frequently and not lasting as long. I thought maybe there was some deeper psychological or medical problem. I see now you're just adapting to a new environment.