RedRoxx
11-24-2008, 05:48 PM
My boyfriend and I had my first encounter with bad air in a cave. We had been in this cave before, but the summer monsoons down here had been fierce and a lot of the caves in this area took on water, silt, pine needles etc.
We figured the rotting vegetation and back up in the cave system created the CO2 we encountered.
This was a great lesson in know your gear. This cave had a nasty hip hugger stand on your head entrance, then about a 35 foot rap from a crack into a pit that belled out at the bottom. I went first and upon entering a narrow area down from there started noticing I seemed to be breathing pretty hard for such little effort. Brian was down and checking out a usually slimy mud crawl to see if it was blocked. We removed a few small rocks from the passage and I was feeling quite bad by this time. Less than a couple of minutes I am sure.
Brian looked at me and asked if I felt ok, I said I felt strange and short of breath. He said, "It's bad air, if we go deeper it will be worse. We need to get out of here."
Well, try getting your ascending gear and get on rope let's say after you've had more than a few shots of Tequila and have a chest cold. I felt like I had sausage fingers and my poor brain was trying to process putting the ascenders on the rope and frogging my way up. I swung about like a pendulum, Brian was busy trying to get himself together to belay me at the start or tie on a pack for some weight like we usually do.
It seemed like it took me forever to get up there and off rope. Brian made it up but forgot to put on his helmet and rung his bell pretty good on a rock horn. Fortunately no open wounds.
We both got out and seemed to recover quickly but I got a killer headache for about two hours.
We'll wait until spring to return to this cave.
Moral of the story. Know your gear and know when to get out.
We figured the rotting vegetation and back up in the cave system created the CO2 we encountered.
This was a great lesson in know your gear. This cave had a nasty hip hugger stand on your head entrance, then about a 35 foot rap from a crack into a pit that belled out at the bottom. I went first and upon entering a narrow area down from there started noticing I seemed to be breathing pretty hard for such little effort. Brian was down and checking out a usually slimy mud crawl to see if it was blocked. We removed a few small rocks from the passage and I was feeling quite bad by this time. Less than a couple of minutes I am sure.
Brian looked at me and asked if I felt ok, I said I felt strange and short of breath. He said, "It's bad air, if we go deeper it will be worse. We need to get out of here."
Well, try getting your ascending gear and get on rope let's say after you've had more than a few shots of Tequila and have a chest cold. I felt like I had sausage fingers and my poor brain was trying to process putting the ascenders on the rope and frogging my way up. I swung about like a pendulum, Brian was busy trying to get himself together to belay me at the start or tie on a pack for some weight like we usually do.
It seemed like it took me forever to get up there and off rope. Brian made it up but forgot to put on his helmet and rung his bell pretty good on a rock horn. Fortunately no open wounds.
We both got out and seemed to recover quickly but I got a killer headache for about two hours.
We'll wait until spring to return to this cave.
Moral of the story. Know your gear and know when to get out.