The Who’s Who of Sidemount

Mauro Bordignon

Italian born Mauro is an explorer and professional cave and sidemount diving instructor, a GUE Fundamentals instructor and founder and owner of Mauro Bordignon ‘sCave World. With more than 20 years of teaching experience and many kilometers of explored cave at his back, he lives most of the year in Mexico but frequently travels around the World for teaching and cave exploration projects. His experience ranges from cold European caves, altitude diving in mines of Arizona mountains, to the warmer climes of African desert and Mexican caves. Diving for Mauro is 100% passion and this is what he instills in each of his students and exploration buddies. Sidewinder.

What is sidemount to you?

Sidemount is an incredible cave exploration tool with which experienced cave divers can access extremely complicated passages, too small for a back mount configuration. It is not, in my opinion, an everyday configuration; it wasn’t created for diving off a boat for example. I think a sidemount configuration should be kept simple and sidemount training should be a slow steady progression. I don’t see the point in teaching new divers to swim with tanks in front or upside down while they should still work on mastering their basic skills.

How has sidemount impacted your exploration?

It gave me access to passages impossible to discover in a back mount configuration, not only from a restrictions point of view but for moving gear in multi-sump caves. In the famous Cala Luna cave, in Sardinia, no significant progress was made in exploration since 1995 until we dove in sidemount there in 2019 and discovered vast unexplored areas. Another example is Izvor Licanke in Croatia, where last summer we were invited for the 7th expedition in 9 years, thanks to our sidemount configured CCRs we extended 900 meters on our first visit, starting from remote sump five and reaching finally the ninth sump, where we had to stop just because the exploration window was over. Also in Acqua Nera, Northern Italy where I have been exploring with friends for more than 20 years, sidemount was a game changer, in July 2022 we extended it by 700 meters and turned with open passage going because we reached our bailout safety range.

Was there an epiphany moment for you with sidemount?

My most memorable experience with sidemount dates back to 2008, just a few minutes into my first dive with it, trying out my brand new and first  harness. I stuck my head under a ledge and saw a large passage that looked promising. A few dives later this brought me my first connection between two different cave systems.

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Mauro Bordignon ‘s Cave World: Grotta dell’Acqua Nera 2018

Mauro Bordignon ‘s Cave World: No mount cave diving 2011

YouTube: Mexico Cave Diving – Major Restriction (part 2) Cave Divers and Instructors Mauro Bordignon and Jason Renoux dive in the Palomita cave section of the Xunaan Ha system (2011).

Instagram: maurocaveworld