Truesday: Into The Abyss

“Well what should we do here then, Craig? There’s cave victims a-waitin’ for savin’!”

“No rest for the weary, eh? For starters, fuck this ‘birth canal’ hole, as it’s obviously prejudiced against the pleasantly plump. Let’s go find the topside to their bottomside instead. I’d guess they’re somewhere beneath Last Call by now. Start in the women’s shoe department and just start digging down until you hear them screaming for the ability to stand up. Done.”
Aside from the potential to get on every news channel in Austin, I’m not sure that delving deep into the earth beneath Barton Lodge apartments is such a good idea. Ever been in that complex? I was there helping a friend move out of her place a year ago, and some beach-volleyballlin’ dude-ish bro-hams wandered up to congratulate us on “moving someplace prolly decenter”. Those guys were awesome, but their fleet of Ford F350 Diesel Dually King Cabs aren’t exactly what you’d prefer rumbling over the wafer of sandstone floating above your head as you snake your way through death-blackness in a subterranean maze of caves which all dead-end in a tomb-like room of misted bling beneath a strip mall.

But beyond my irrational fear of cave collapse (kinda unlikely given the cave’s age) what really gets to me is the claustrophobia. Dear lord, just the descriptions of the space KILL me. Hours and hours of processing through the thing. Like you go into its tiny maw as a clean and pretty piece of cake, spend ten hours squeezing through the Airman’s bowels, and then you come back out (the same hole, which kinda ruins the metaphor) all filthy and turdish.

Dude Tynan’s got a pretty well-rounded play-by-play on his approach to the cave in question. Verdict: a very-well written FUCK THAT SHIT.

A friend of mine, Edward (pictured here, #8 and #9, with some other spelunking rescuers) is a rather avid cave wanderer. I respect this, as he’s most passionate about it, but I make absolutely no claim to actually relate to it. This type of activity requires a particularly robust sense of self within overwhelmingly confined physical space in order to endure the psychological rigors, as well as the physical. In fact, I’d say there’s much more psychological stamina required to enjoy caving. It’s probably helped by the physical fatigue your body is guaranteed to experience. Otherwise, you’d have the energy to freak the fuck out every ten minutes. I imagine that I’d simply stop at some point, and demand that they lift open the earth up above my head, like a pop-top, so I could stand up and go get a drink somewhere.

I’m simple like that.

I remember as a kid we used to explore the underground sewer systems in Houston. That’s right, HOUSTON. Filthy, what-you-fuckin’-lookin’-at, Houston. The condition of those sewers were no surprise given what it looked like above ground. Lots of oozing chemicals, dumped paint, shopping carts, shreds of clothing, and sewer sharks.

I’m kidding. There were no shopping carts down there because the sharks obviously ate them all.

But those underground networks were manmade, and intentionally large enough to handle storm surges and rivers of dead bodies. So, aside from the sharks, those 'caves' were hardly a source of disastrous anxiety. They definitely had a start-finish combo, as well as room to stand. Airman’s cave? Shit’s got NEITHER. There's an in/out-hole, and that's the extent of the amenity list. For hours on end, either your ass or your nips ruthlessly scrape along rough-hewn rock, only made slightly more comfortable by the tears and blood from those* who’ve dragged their will and determination through there before you. And once you reach the belly of the beast, you have to come to terms with the reality of returning the same way you came.

So in my non-hole-exploring opinion, it’s double the suck.

Of course, I’m discounting the love of cavers here. Their passion and dedication, again, is something I simply don’t understand entirely. So I asked Edward Gemar (again, the dude from those rescue photos) what he expected to get out of caving, and this was his answer to my question.

Happy to offer my $0.02. Just to set some context, those were inexperienced novices that have absolutely no affiliation with the UT Grotto or any other caving organization. The quote from one of the lost cavers that kills me the most is, "We did our homework, we were prepared and nothing went wrong except getting lost." Under the circumstances that's akin to "Besides that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" Caving is reasonably safe if done correctly, but can potentially be very hazardous and costly to both people and cave when the inexperienced and unprepared get in over their heads. There is an old saying among cavers that you'll hear them say if asked the difference between spelunkers and cavers: "Cavers rescue spelunkers." I haven't truly appreciated it until now. The saddest part of this incident is that one of the last open caves in Austin may very likely be gated because of this incident. We are lucky in Austin to have places of incredible beauty literally hidden right underneath our feet, but they are fragile and potentially dangerous and must be respected for their own preservation and for the safety of those that venture into them. The best way to gain knowledge and experience is to get in contact with a local caving organization like the UT Grotto who offer free training trips and have access to many of local gated caves in the area that blow Airman's away and frequently take expeditions to some of the best caves in the world in Mexico and across the globe.

To attempt to answer your question, while it's a cliché, it's true that there are as many reasons that people cave as there are cavers. There are biologists, geologists, sport cavers (what I'd consider myself) even astro-biologists and astro-geologists that study caves as a model for the conditions under which life may exist on other planets. In fact, several cavers are working with NASA to develop an autonomous robot that will be used to search for life on Europa. They use deep sinkholes in Mexico as testing grounds.Pretty cool stuff. Caves are one of the few last unexplored frontiers on Earth and you have the opportunity to potentially go where no other human being has ever been before and concretely add to the collection of human knowledge about how the world works. In some cases, research cavers trek a thousand or more meters underground and are days away from the surface.

Speaking for myself, I enjoy the challenge of overcoming the psychological and physical barriers and pushing my limits. Probably much the same reason that people train for marathon relays or some such. ;-) Seriously though, the first time I ever went really caving, I was expecting to just stroll into some big cavern, but instead we crawled into a hole in the ground and I just about lost my shit. We weren't prepared and all in all it was a miserable experience. After that I told myself I was going to go back and do it right. I did (after finding the UT Grotto) and now I've been caving for over ten years.

One of the most rewarding things specifically about leading trips of new cavers is helping people overcome their own limitations. One of the girls on a trip that I led a while back never considered herself athletic, but after surprising herself both mentally and physically during that trip has now trained for and completed several triathalons. How cool is that!

Also, it's great to be in the outdoors get close to nature. Often times, just getting to the cave is half the fun. Be they in mountains of Mexico or even somewhere in the woods locally. And when you do get underground, you are rewarded by getting to see things that 99.99% of the population never will, beautiful cave formation that may have been there for thousands of years and entire underground ecosystems.

Lastly, cavers are a great group of people. When you go underground, you are putting your trust in the people with you. Be in a vertical cave on rope or exploring Airman's all the way to the back you need to know that you can count on the people that you are with and that definitely bonds you to them. Given that caving can be dangerous and life threatening if done wrong, cavers take it very seriously, but don't sweat much else. When you're crawling around underground for dozens of hours or descending a rope into a 500m pit, things like work, taxes, car payments, etc. suddenly become put into the proper perspective.

Don't know if that answers your question at all, but I tried.

Damn. I think that's plenty explanation right there. Edward brings the sensibility, and gives me the notion that I might not know myself too well unless I'm willing to confront some cave fear... A heh. Heh-heh. Heh. Contrary to how my comments may be read, I have nothing but respect for those who knowingly stare into the abyss and then dive into it with little more than the expectation to return.

Kudos to all hole divers.

*Aggies, apparently, due to a room of clay sculptures buried down in there in a slightly less constricted section of the cave referred to as “Aggie Art Gallery”. There’s a billion jokes that could be sliced off that, but I’m too lazy to mine them.