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Black Keld Don't Panic!Last revised: 1/3/01
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| Access to Black Keld Is Not Allowed!
Work has continued through out the Spring and Summer of 2000. |
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| Returning through sump 5 on one dive, Brian Judd stopped at 300m to pick up a staged bottle. "It should have been a routine manoeuvre, but I lost the line while putting the bottle on. It was meant to be clipped into the main line, but somehow had become detached. Feeling around the immediate vicinity failed to locate the line. |  |
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| A search was then made very carefully from one side of the passage to the other, but this was also unsuccessful. Cursing my stupid carelessness, I calculated there was about one and a half hours air remaining in the tanks, but without the line I would be extremely unlikely to find the way out. The line had to be found or I would die.
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| To survive I had to stay calm and methodical to avoid making things worse, when really I wanted to start crying! Having laid the line, I knew that around this point the inward line was belayed in the roof and the outward belayed to a lead weight on the floor at the left hand side of the passage. The best plan was therefore to slowly edge along the left wall until it was found. This plan was adopted, but there was still some doubt as to which was the left wall, because the boundary between floor and wall was not clear in the low visibility. Working slowly and carefully I edged along trying to peer through the gloom. All the time I reached out about me, trying to feel the shape of the passage and locate the line. Fortunately after less than 5m of searching, the line came into view and an extremely chastened diver grasped hold of it. The whole incident had taken several nerve racking minutes, but there was still 340 metres to swim out of Sump 5, and four more Sumps to pass before regaining the entrance. Plenty of time to think and reflect!"
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It was a classic human error during the period when alertness is often relaxed on the return journey. However lessons were learnt. It is better to stage bottles next to a belay and make sure to be clipped on to the line while sorting things out. A longer search reel would also have made things a lot less fraught!
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| search reel - a small line reel carried for emergencies such as losing the line. Better not to make a habit of losing the line! | ||
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 Sump 6
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