On January 4th 2020, Simon Halliday entered Lancaster Hole with two friends with the intent of diving an underwater section solo. But after four hours into the dive, he had not returned….This is his story.

on January 4th 2020 Simon Halliday a cave diver with over two decades of experience would enter Lancaster hole with the intent to dive a sump by himself Simon would be diving with untested equipment that was given to him specifically for this dive Additionally the water flow was stronger than usual but it was nothing Simon couldn’t handle the dive was supposed to take 3 hours but after the fourth with no sign of him a rescue team would eventually be called it only took them 14 minutes to find Simon 196 ft within the cave it would be determined that the gear he was using had failed him an extremely experienced in love diver would drown leaving a hole in the entire community

39 Comments

  1. diving alone, not tested equipment, in unfamiliar water, in a cave and while not great condition?

    well we have old saying "Water belies the diver" no matter how "skilled" you are you can't have ego, they say water have no friends

  2. I guess he didn't put any of that experience to work. I would have had backup with me while testing something new, or tested elsewhere. That's just me with no experience talking though!

  3. This extremely experienced and skilled diver went to dive inside a cave, the water flow was stronger than usual, but it was nothing he couldnt handle, the cave was largely uncharted, but hes tackled these problems before, his equipment was untested, but this wasnt a problem for him, his legs were spontaneously missing before the dive, but hes gone through worse, unfortunately though, he somehow ended up drowning and dying in this cave, for some reason. No one saw this coming 🙁

  4. The equipment was the rebreather he was using. A rebreather recycles the air you breathe into rebreathable air. The article I read said that he most likely ran out of air sooner than anticipated since he had to work harder to fight the current on his way back (working harder means breathing harder). The rebreather would have made it possible to get back. He had to use his bailout supply and most likely ran out of that as well. It looked like the oxygen supply pipe, connecting the rebreather, detached.

  5. Even if he went with a buddy….theres nothing his buddy could’ve done when his untested equipment failed…buddy system or not, it would’ve been the same results

  6. It was a new type of rebreather. The current is significant as he had a harder swim back against the the flow and used more air. He was using his back up and its tube had pulled away.

  7. I've just come across this on YouTube. It has been put together by someone or AI who didn't know Simon nor had any idea about the dive, the equipment he was using or the circumstances of the dive.
    Whoever put this together and put it on YouTube has no regard for Simon or his family. This is cheap sensationalism trying to profit from tragedy.

  8. Well i know other cave divers that are doing this kind of stuff but in cave diving we already have redudancy principle and solo dive even more… There is no place for mistake in cave diving this is what they tell us while learning and training for it, you learn to deal with incident but incident + incident offently results in fatality

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