Question: should newcomers to caving be inducted in the more updated methods or the ones which have existed for fifty plus years?
Yes.
If it's the latter I'll retire from bothering being an instructor. Having a duty of care incumbent upon me is a fcuking royal pain in the ass and I welcome no longer being required to legally or morally fulfil it, frankly.
The task of anyone teaching SRT (and not being paid certainly doesn't exclude them from having a duty of care, which I fully accept when I'm teaching SRT for free) is to teach people how to do SRT. At the start, the person knows no techniques. Hopefully they will soon know at least one technique. They can then go on to learn other techniques. You may not teach every person the same technique. You may decide you teach every novice the same techniques, but I certainly hope nobody tries to teach every person in the same way, because that is definitely poor teaching. Different people also sometimes need different kit to make it work well (particularly chest harnesses). There is not one universally accepted 'this is the right way' to do SRT. Plenty of people say there is: but they don't all say the same thing...
There are some techniques that are clearly unsafe and have led to lots of accidents and injuries or have a very high likelihood of causing an accident. Thus we can safely say:
- Don't use polyprop rope you bought down the hardware store for your SRT
- Don't let go of the brake rope on your Simple when abseiling
- Don't only end up on one ascender (at least on traversing sections; I don't know of any accidents on vertical ropes)
- Don't end up only attached to one crappy anchor
- Don't hang people on a single crappy pulley
- Don't climb (long?) ladders unlifelined (see the bit of Race Against Time when they get to, I think, the 70s)
There are some techniques that are explicitly warned against but don't, generally, result in a lot of accidents but which are nonetheless to be avoided most of the time. For example:
- Don't hang on one resin anchor
- Don't let go of the brake rope on your Stop when at a rebelay
- Don't belay on a Microtraxion
FOR THE AVOIDANCE OF DOUBT YOU SHOULD NOT DO ANY OF THE ABOVE (usually) AND YOU CERTAINLY SHOULDN'T BLAME ME IF YOU DO
Then there's things that are dangerous, because caving is dangerous, but generally considered 'safe enough' (or should be)
- going underground
- using snapgates for cowstails on traverses
- using a Simple
- rigging caves with snapgates (because you never rely on a single anchor, after all)
There's the things that are still dangerous, because as previously noted _caving is dangerous_, but are safer
- using snapgates for cowstails outside of traverses (very safe if you always use both)
- using some more secure connection for your cowstails on traverses
- using a Stop if you are experienced enough not to clutch-and-plummet/are using a new handled version (I suspect)
- using an auto-locking Rig
I think one difference between people just teaching SRT occasionally (like me) and people who have made a career of it is not so much the depth (because plenty of hard cavers have taken their SRT to much literally deeper and harder places than is reasonable to set as a standard for instructors) but the breadth of knowledge - a full understanding of all the common kit on the market for example, and its advantages and disadvantages. The same should go to techniques - different people will end up doing different things. I will be keeping my safety cord, thank you, because I like having it
but I am more than prepared to accept people making their own choice. Generally club kit has an integrated footloop and safety cord which is an imperfect solution in many ways but we live in an imperfect world, so it makes sense to normally teach people to use what they have (for the limited amount I do). Not being able to drop things is definitely an advantage when teaching novices... but more advanced cavers are more than free to lose it if they want. Obviously that does mean they will end up on a single snapgate on traverses.
Summary: teach people so they are competent to make their own decisions! Obviously this is a long process and begins with 'this is a way'.
