Supercaving: Good Luck With All That

I just finished James Tabor’s new book on supercaving, Blind Descent, about the race to find the deepest cave on earth. I’m still scratching my head as to what drives cavers to spend weeks underground under conditions such as these (page 16):

Drowning, lethal falls, premature burial, asphyxiation, hypothermia, hurricane-force winds, electrocution, earthquake-induced collapses, poisonous gases, and walls dripping sulfuric or hydrochloric acid. There are also rabid bats, snakes, troglodytic scorpions and spiders, radon, and microbes that cause horrific diseases like histoplasmosis and leishmaniasis. Kitum Cave in Uganda is believed to be the birthplace of the ultra-term the Ebola virus.

Caving hazards related to equipment and techniques included strangulation by one's own vertical gear (primary and secondary ropes, rappel rack and ascender connections, et cetera), rope failure, running out of light, rappelling off the end of a rope, ascenders failing on muddy rope, foot-hang (fully as unpleasant as it sounds), and scores more that, if less common, are no less unpleasant.

One final hazard, so obvious that it’s easy to forget, deserves mention: getting lost.

Supercaves create inner dangers as well, warping the mind with claustrophobia, anziety, insomnia, hallucinations, personality disorders. There is also a particularly insidious derangement unique to cavers called The Rapure, which is like a panic attack on meth. It can strike anywhere in a cave, at any time, but usually assaults a caver deep underground.

And, of course, there is one more that, like getting lost, tends to be overlooked because its omnipresent: absolute, eternal darkness. Darkness so dark, without a single photon of light, that it is the luminal equivalent of absolute zero.

Those who explore supercaves endure all this for weeks, knowing that getting out will take you hours if not days of patient climbing back up over the same treacherous route you took getting down (page 93):

Helicopters make extractions from jungles, deserts, oceans, and even the highest mountains possible. Similarly, submersibles enable rescues from deep beneath the sea. No such technologies could come to the aid of these supercave explorers.

Um, yeah. Good luck with all that….