Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth

by James M. Tabor

The deepest cave on earth was a prize that had remained unclaimed for centuries, long after every other ultimate discovery had been made: both poles by 1912, Everest in 1958, the Challenger Deep in 1961. In 1969 we even walked on the moon. And yet as late as 2000, the earth’s deepest cave—the supercave—remained undiscovered. This is the story of the men and women who risked everything to find it, earning their place in history beside the likes of Peary, Amundsen, Hillary, and Armstrong.

In 2004, two great scientist-explorers are attempting to find the bottom of the world. Bold, heroic American Bill Stone is committed to the vast Cheve Cave, located in southern Mexico and deadly even by supercave standards. On the other side of the globe, legendary Ukrainian explorer Alexander Klimchouk—Stone’s polar opposite in temperament and style, but every bit his equal in scientific expertise, physical bravery, and sheer determination—has targeted Krubera, a freezing nightmare of a supercave in the Republic of Georgia, where underground dangers are compounded by the horrors of separatist war in this former Soviet republic.

Genres: Nonfiction, Adventure, Science, Travel, Biography, History, Nature

286 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

http://www.jamesmtabor.com/bio.htm

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 2 out of 5]

My willpower fails me when it comes to food, but for books, I can stick at them, I can finish them even when it is mind-numbingly boring, like this one. If Jon Krakauer had written it, there would have been scene-setting, interesting characters and a narrative that led to a climax followed by the aftermath. There was none of this in this book. Of the two characters, there was nothing I liked about Stone and his succession of young and younger women and ignoring of his family and by the time it got to Klimchouk I didn't care.

This is what I wanted to know:
What sort of people become cavers rather than say, polar explorers or mountaineers? Is there a particular physical shape necessary? Why do they do it?

What preparations do they have to take physically and mentally? Do they have to spend time in dark chambers do accustom themselves to the lack of light? What about bodily functions when they are not in a position to pull down their pants and use the ziplock bags (!). What do they do with all these ziplocked turds? Is there a designated turd-carrier or are they compacted or what? Pee? Are they allowed to pee anywhere? Periods? Vomit?

What do they wear? Do they have special boots with crampons or whatever? How long do their lights last? Are they on batteries? How do they communicate with other members of the team as I wouldn't think cell phones would work deep underground. How do they find their way back to the entries after having gone miles underground? Do they put ropes, luminescent paint or what? Are there noxious gases like in coal mines? If so how do they detect them since they might be odourless?

Where are their base camps, above ground and below. What do they do when they are resting since they can't read books or watch a film - or can they? Do they need power sources, if so what? Do they carry water? What emergency suppliers does each caver have with them? What effects deep caving have on the body meaning there is a time limitation on how long they can stay down, if there are any? What are the sort of physical problems that occur underground apart from the raptures (nitrogen narcosis, same as divers)?

Are there any animals or even bacteria that live in the depths of the world? If so what? Does it become hotter as you go down further or colder, no matter how the cave started off? What about diving - is the water affected by the air temperature or not? What about crystalline structures as in some South American caves? How were the caves formed, exactly, not just briefly about limestone, water and sulphuric acid. Where does the sulphuric acid come from, how do they protect themselves from it?

Does their circadian rhythm re-establish itself immediately on surfacing and having a good night's sleep or does the caving rhythm persist? Are there any long-term effects from prolonged darkness and being deep underground?

One thing I learned from this book and Antarctica on a Plate was that if you are going on an expedition and can choose between Americans and Russians, choose the Russians. The Americans bring basic supplies, just what they need, the Russians bring plenty of vodka and lots of luxurious goodies to snack on and revive the spirit.

There will never be a cave that is "the world's deepest cave", only "the world's deepest cave so far". How can we know if we can't see?

So the book raised a lot of questions because the author's focus is the book's subtitle, "The Quest to Discover the Deepest Cave on Earth." But the 'quest' means nothing to me without a lot more information to round it out.

I'm out of step on this book, a lot of people really liked it. You might too. But it's only a 2 star book to me.

Sherpas Something I really didn't like was calling the people who did the labour, portering supplies back and forth 'Sherpas'. "Sherpa' is the name of a people from Nepal who are renowned for their bravery, mountaineering skills and strength. They typically are the porters for those attempting Everest and although much esteemed by the professional climbers are underpaid for their efforts, in other words disrespected because they aren't first-world people and have to put up with lousy wages. So calling the American cavers who supply the explorers 'Sherpas' seems to me to be racist and very disrespectful, but I don't think it's intentional.

[Mateo · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book about a race to discover the deepest cave on earth has the potential for Krakauer-like suspense, but Tabor destroys whatever tension might be present--and there should be a lot, since spelunking is at least as difficult and dangerous as mountain climbing, if not more so--by constantly and oppressively hyping the excitement and pushing the thrill in our face. It's as though he doesn't trust the subject enough to leave it alone. One can imagine him amping up the prose describing a trip with a stroller down to the park:

A pram pushed along a sidewalk as narrow as Main Street must navigate a frightening corridor of death and danger. On one side, inches away from its wheels, are rose bushes, each thorn of which can rip tender flesh open like a meat hook. Every bush may have dozens of roses, each with several thorns, and Main Street was lined with dozens of bushes. One false step, and unprotected skin could become lacerated with wounds so badly it would resemble a packet of Red Vines in a hurricane.

But that's the safe part. Only two or three feet to the left lay the open macadam of Main Street itself, a pulsating river of deadly metal. Consider that the top speed of a sprinter is somewhere around 20 to 23 miles per hour. Yet on Main Street, cars and buses weighing up to several tons flashed by at speeds close to twice that--any one of which could flatten a human being instantly, or crush it underneath its indifferent wheels. After the indescribable agony of a bus-on-carriage accident, death would be a pleasure.

Two other factors put this book well south of Krakauer territory. First, the picture captions pretty much give away the endings. I don't know if this is Tabor's fault, but having a photo caption like "Bill Smith, 1995. He would later be crushed to death by petrified turtles during the assault on Cave B" kind of blows a few hundred pages worth of suspense. Second, the race itself is undermined by the fact that it's only to the deepest known cave; if tomorrow someone finds a deeper one, then it's Game On all over again. A good book to read if you need an adrenaline drip; otherwise, easy to skip.

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humanity is very concerned with great height. Flying, scaling Everest and walking on the moon are obvious examples. But can you name the deepest cave on earth? I didn’t think so. Neither can most people. But there are explorers who live for the challenge of finding the deepest part of our planet.

There are many wonderful books about explorers and adventurers. Among them are Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, which looks at those who climb (or try) Everest and Richard Preston’s The Wild Trees, which looks at a group of climbers who seek to scale the world’s tallest trees. Blind Descent joins their ranks as an info-rich report on the world of deep-earth explorers who risk all to descend deeper into the earth’s crust than anyone has gone before, to find that deepest place.

Tabor takes us into the world of two top-tier cave explorers, the Shackleton, Peary, Edmund Hilary and Amundsen of contemporary cave exploration, American Bill Stone and Ukrainian Alexander Klimchouk. Like their renowned predecessors, Stone and Klimchouk were involved in a competition to find the “est.” Not the top or bottom of the planet, but the deepest place on it. It was billed as The Great Cave Race of 2004, an extreme effort to be the first to the deepest cave on earth, seen as the last great terrestrial discovery to be made.

Stone is a classic Type A personality, intensely focused, brilliant and unrelenting. He personally succeeded in designing a new underwater breathing apparatus, a re-breather, which the US military had spent tens of millions of dollars failing to develop. This SCUBA-on-steroids was a critical tool without which underground exploration, which entails having to traverse considerable distances underwater, was seriously limited. But the drive that defined Stone’s accomplishments did little for his relationships with people. His missions were subject to team mutinies more than once. It cost him his marriage and personal relationships beyond. Tabor, armed with full access to expedition materials, gives us a very detailed look at Stone’s efforts, in particular his attempts at the depths of the Cheve super-cave in Mexico.

Ukrainian Alexander Klimchouk is a polar opposite to Stone in many ways. Whereas Stone is a large man, six feet four inches, two hundred pounds of rock-like muscle. Klimchouk was a much more modestly proportioned caver, about one hundred fifty pounds, well under six feet tall, and just as solidly muscled. Whereas Stone was a hyper determined individual who expected all around him to mimic his fundamentalist dedication, Klimchouk was a team-player extraordinaire, as focused on organization building and planning as he was on caving. Unlike Stone, who, while admired and respected, is also reviled by many, Klimchouk is admired and respected to the exclusion of most negativity. Whereas Stone was a control-freak who needed to be point man in most aspects of actual caving, Klimchouk was willing to put others in control in the field, particularly as he got older. Klimchouk’s candidate for deepest was the Krubera cave in Abkhazia, a part of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains

If the notion of cave diving makes you think of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar or of Verne’s Professor Hardwigg burrowing from Iceland to Italy beneath the surface, or even Abraham Merritt’s fictional adventures in The Moon Pool, forget about it. Real caves do not harbor ancient lost human civilizations, or sport a wealth of relatively easy tunnels hither and yon. Blind Descent will give you a taste of what real cavers experience.

He wormed his way in and was digging out the floor to enlarge the passage when he spotted a mass of daddy longlegs hanging from the ceiling inches above his face. Seen from a distance, a daddy longlegs colony looked like a giant black beard growing on the rock. Seen from inches, the insects looked like big, hairy spiders. For the life of him, Clemmer could not remember whether they had a venomous bite. As long as he did not breathe or move, the colony was quiet. When he did either, the black beard burst into frantic motion. It could have been a scene straight from a Stephen King novel.

It was interesting to learn that in terms of safety deep cave exploration has a lot more in common with extra-terrestrial exploration than it does with, say, mountain climbing. In case of injury, rescuers would have to not only complete the descent the explorer had already done, which could include having to scuba through extended underwater passages with only a few feet of visibility, but then bring the injured party back the way they came, possibly through passages that are so small that one must squeeze through inchworm-style. It is comparable to being stranded with an injury on Mars. A severe injury at great depths constitutes a death sentence.

As with all such tales of specialized areas, there are new words to learn and new concepts to absorb. “Rapture” to a caver, for instance, bears little resemblance to what it might mean to a fundamentalist. Here it means a super-freakout panic attack, one with life-threatening implications. To cavers “sump” is a bit more dramatic than the hole in your basement floor. It is a water-filled hole that one must traverse to get to the next section of a cave system.

This is not a book you rip through. It takes some concentration, but that is not to say that it is a tough read. It is not. It is just not a fast one. No big deal, really, in a book of this modest length.

I was left with a question at the end of reading Blind Descent. While it is possible for us to identify the tallest mountain, the longest river, even the biggest pumpkin, how can we really know for certain that this or that cave is the absolute, final-word, no question deepest. Surely a little tectonic tango might dislodge a bit of this or a hunk of that to open up currently-blocked passages in candidate holes. But for now, we do have a world champion. No, I am not telling.

This is such an interesting read that once you dive into it, you will have a hard time coming back out until you’re done.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

The BEST COVER PHOTO in the last 100 books--easily, hands down! It’s the picture of a smooth, vertical chimney about 500 feet long in Cheve cave in Oaxaca state, Mexico, the deepest known ‘supercave‘ in the Americas. It’s about 150 feet in diameter and could hold the water volume of 750 Olympic-sized pools. AND THERE--near the bottom of the picture, the black profile of a person on rappel, tiny, underlit, and for a flash, suspended against the bright red, orange, and tan striations of rock with no visible bottom. Beautiful, austere, dangerous, monolithic, vertiginous, hard, wet and cold. Stay away from this review if you’re claustrophobic or acrophobic.

There’s another photo in the book that says a thousand words about the sport of supercaving. It’s a woman from Ukraine at 5000 feet deep in the Krubera cave in Caucasus Range of Abkhazia, Georgia. She’s on her back, pinched into a long horizontal flue, bevelled and tapered toward her heavy boots and hard hat. In her one visible arm she’s holding the jagged brown bottom of the Arabika Massif above her, all 5 trillion tons of rock, just waiting for a tremor to drop and fill this space, squishing the woman into protoplasm fifty feet wide, and sealing forever her wet remains in a darkness that’s so cave-black that your eyes feel dead.

Blind Descent captures the challenge and characteristics of supercaving. It requires at least the preparation of an ascent to Mt. Everest; the endurance of a trek across the South Pole; the athleticism to endure a triathlon; and the perseverance to know, that if injured, it’s much easier for an extraction if several of your long bones are broken and folded over to conserve space in the wormy pitches and oblique faults you’ll be pushed and pulled along like a ball, eventually reaching the top several days later.

There’s another picture in the book of what’s called a terminal sump. A sump is a low spot along a cave passage where water has accumulated, but won’t drain. There may be dry passage on the other side, or the cave may continue vertically at the bottom of the sump. The sump is not the end of the cave. Instead it’s just another barrier (like a chimney, a flue, a worm hole) in a cave that wants ‘to run.’ You may encounter several of these along the passage, and they are the single most dangerous obstacle in supercaving. The water could be a balmy 45 degrees like in Cheve, or it could be 33 degrees like in Krubera; it could have 30 feet of underwater visibility, or it could have zero visibility. The picture, then, is a couple divers suited up at 4000 feet deep, with special re-breathers that they can push or pull through tight spaces. Everything is tangled and secured by different colored rope, just in case you drop something, lose your way, experience vertigo, lose your light, or simply get stuck. 2 people died during the writing of this book while diving in terminal sumps.

James Tabor shows us supercaving by following 2 teams racing to THE BOTTOM, an American team and a Russian team, one in Mexico the other in Asia. In the 1970’s and 80’s, technology finally made supercaving tenable. Freeze dried food, super light weight gear, man-made fibers, carbon dioxide re-breathers, battery life, etc. It takes an entire season just to prepare an 8-person team for an attack. There’re people called ‘mules’ to cart weight to staging camps at increasing depths; there’s ‘ropers’ to set the miles and miles of belay stations; there’s divers to plumb the sumps; and there’s a final team to make the last push to the end--if there is one. And, all this has to be done during an unpredictable dry season, for all caves are made by rushing water, and that water--from rain or melting snow--seeps into the cave at unpredictable rates. God help you at 5000 feet if the water starts to surge. You’ll die a dark, cold, unknown death, and be sucked away into an anfractuous tight spot never to be found.

I went spelunking once with a friend in a dry cave in the North Carolina mountains. The traffic on it was maybe a group every few weeks or so, and the major passages had spray painted arrows. We didn’t intend to spend more than an afternoon. We had the right clothes, a couple of mag-lights, and some power bars. If you’ve never been in a big cave, there are some things that are immediately evident. It’s cold, sharp, insanely dark, windy in tight spots, and solid. (Why is ‘solid’ important? Because when you wriggle your way into tight spots, this is friggin’ rock; it will not yield--instead, your body will have to find a way to conform it’s way free.)

So everything was fine. We worked our way in about 800 meters and took a trajectory that was upward. We were now several branches off the main path...well, let’s not fool ourselves, there were no main pathways. It was all branches now. We were halfway up a 50 meter pitch that was oblique in 2 axis, very jagged, but great handholds--and it was tight enough that you could wedge yourself between both walls and hang. There was a ledge just big enough for two butts, so we rested and ate our snacks. I don’t remember whose brilliant idea it was to turn off the lights, but we did want to experience cave-black. It was so dark that after a few minutes to acclimate, it felt like my eyes were poking out and trying to grab a lumen somewhere. It was beyond dark. It was negative light. My eyes couldn’t even find the static and white fuzz that jumps around when I close my eyes at night. And there was no echo, no one to hear us scream.

What happened next? My buddy dropped his mag light. An expletive, then a tiny skittering, followed by a jangling that meant it was broken, and silence. I think we laughed. It was a nervous moment. Could we have groped our way out? Bruised, scraped, in 10 hours--yes, but there were some sketchy ledges and some pits we would have had to crawl upon and find with our hands, and then jump across in the cave-black. Being deep in a cave gives you a palpable sense of emergency, a purely animal sense you might only experience 4-5 times in your life. Our spelunking was over. Immediately. We were now in egress mode, and we were extremely gentle. Every hand hold was measured. The mag light was gripped in my teeth. No spare batteries--hey we were young, whad’dya want?!? Frankly, we were as scared as Caris when he talks to women.

Well, we made it out, but I have a deep and cautious regard for supercavers. How would you feel if you were inside 7 linear miles, and 6000 feet, and 9 terminal sumps, and 5 days climb back to the surface? Now take away your light. Break one of your belay ropes. Add a fractured leg.

Blind Descent is a good, quick read. However, Tabor spends unequal time with the American team and its enigmatic leader, Jim Stone, instead of the Russian team and it’s friendly, charitable leader Alexander Klimchouk. The Krubera was the deeper, more hostile cave and the team seemed more interesting to me, yet he follows more closely the Cheve team. Tabor’s notes were all apocryphal, so you can see which team (which people) he had greater access to. I think I would have preferred it written more dramatically, more like an actual race to the bottom, even though it wasn’t. A little more cave geology and pictures wouldn’t have detracted from the story. I would have especially liked a cross section drawing of both caves, maybe overlapped so you could see the sheer magnitude of the accomplishment. Tabor also ends his story in 2004, even though wikipedia shows a lot more activity at the Krubera cave since 2004.

Hey, there’s cave sex, a nasty mangled fall with subsequent extraction, and Russian police, if nothing more. This is a Goodreads if you’re on a long car trip with someone you're not going to talk to that much. I recommend.

[April Helms · Rating 2 out of 5]

My best friend and I listened to this on CD while working on various projects. The topic it covers is fascinating -- supercaving and trying to find the deepest point on the planet. The perils of supercaving make climbing Mount Everest look like a vigorous weekend backpacking trip. At least from Mt. Everest, there is a chance of rescue if you get into trouble, within a reasonable amount of time. Where these cavers go, if you get hurt you are up a creek, to put it politely. The book covers two explorers, American Bill Stone and Ukrainian Alexander Klimchouk. Stone and his expeditions through Cheve and Huautla comprise about 2/3 of the book; Klimchouk's ventures through Krubera almost seemed to get the short shrift.
The book does a good job in explaining the technique of caving for the layperson, without getting too technical. Tabor is also very good with detailing the many (many) things that can go wrong in a caving expedition, and the consequences of illness, injury or bad planning. When he is on a role, the author does a commendable job with creating tension and suspense.
There are problems with the book, though. Many problems. One, things seem out of order. There were good passages, but there should have been more if things would have been sequenced properly. Some things, especially in the beginning, felt out of order. Also, sometimes Tabor gets too repetitive. Yes, it is important to stress the dangers of caving --but every other chapter? (It felt like every other chapter, at any rate). The reader on the CD wasn't bad (I've heard far worse) but wasn't spectacular either. He was a bit monotone.
All in all, what saves the book is the topic in general and the story about Bill Stone, a very interesting and colorful person indeed. But the book needed a better editor.

[terpkristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an alright book. I was weary of reading it at first, since I've actually met one of the "super cavers" that this book is about a number of times (Bill Stone), and I find him to be an utter twat. I really didn't want to read a book that glorified this man in any way, shape, or form.

Sadly, this book did just that. Even though the cave that Stone was exploring is NOT the deepest cave in the world, more than 3/4 of the book was devoted to him. It may as well have been a biography of Stone, and if I'd know that, I wouldn't have read it (why bother reading so much about a man I find disgusting?).

One crazy "small world" experience happened in this book. It turns out that my former physical therapist, Pat Stone, is Bill Stone's ex-wife. Who knew?

I think if I did not know Stone, I might have enjoyed this book more. It certainly does do a good job of describing the joys and frustrations of caving in general, and seems to do a good job of describing expedition caving (which I have never done, though in a past life I did enjoy going underground and was involved in a local grotto, vertical work, and rescue work). Alas.

[Todd Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bill Stone woke and walked into his kitchen, known for being the most dangerous room of any house. Kitchens kill 480 people each year, on average. It takes only as few as 10 bacteria to make people sick, and your sponge or counter-wiping cloth has 134,630 bacteria. Your kitchen faucet handle has 13,227 bacteria. Knives, sharpened to a razors edge and capable of slicing flesh to the bone were ubiquitous in Stone’s home. Even a superficial wound could result in infection, sepsis and a slow agonizing death. Stone, heedless of the lurking danger, casually buttered his toast.
- Me making fun of the book that is the subject of this review

Blind Descent is about The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth, although I suppose you probably already knew that from the subtitle. Well, here’s something the cover doesn’t tell you … it’s specifically about discovering the deepest place IN A CAVE on Earth. It’s an important distinction since there are spots at the bottom of the ocean that are much, MUCH deeper than those discussed in this book.

The book describes two expeditions, one led by American Bill Stone, the other led by Ukrainian Alexander Klimchouk, to find the deepest cave in the world. Stone was working in Cheve Cave located in the Sierra Juárez mountain range in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca, while Klimchouk explored Krubera Cave located in the Arabika Massif, of the Western Caucasus in Abkhazia, Georgia. Although these turned out to be two deepest caves yet discovered, it was really no competition as to which was the deepest with Cheve coming in at 4,869 feet and Krubera at 7,208 feet.

The topic of the book is really quite interesting, but the prose is laughably over the top as Tabor focuses to an absurd extent on the risks involved in the endeavor. Yes, there are real risks involved in cave exploration, but that's no reason to hyperventilate. In case you still want to read it, check your local library in the “danger-porn” section.

In retrospect, the very first sentence should have put me on my guard: “As the fifteenth century began, we believed, absolutely, that the earth was flat.”
That is what literary scholars traditionally refer to ‘unmitigated horseshit’ (made more egregious by the unwarranted confidence Tabor exhibits through his use of the word ‘absolutely’). I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but humans (thanks to the Greeks) have ‘absolutely’ known they ‘absolutely’ lived on a spherical planet for more than 2,000 years and certainly everyone ‘absolutely’ knew this was the case by the fifteenth century … ‘absolutely’. I suspect this is probably just mindless repetition of the myth that Columbus thought the Earth was flat. He didn’t, which certainly makes one wonder about Tabor’s fact checking ability.

[Alisa Kester · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's always interesting to read about people undergoing tremendous physical ordeals - and deep caving definitely counts as an ordeal. The conditions under which these explorers lived (sometimes for weeks) defies belief. At the same time, however, I'm shaking my head at the stupidity of it all. Despite the author's repeated claims that all of this is done for "science", no mention is ever made of what "science" got out of a bunch of people tormenting themselves in a deep hole. It's pretty clear it's all done for adrenaline, kicks, and fame.

Spoiler warning:

That said, this would have been at least a four star book, except for the author's blinding arrogance. He claims that caving is the last exploration left to mankind. Space exploration, done. Undersea exploration, done - despite the fact that less than 5% of the world's oceans have been explored! He also discounts any exploration left on the surface of the world, despite the fact there are still place left that human eyes have never seen. This is an arrogance laid out in the prologue and repeated often, ending with this:

"They (the cavers) knew they were experiencing one of the signal moments of history, the last link in a long, hallowed chain created by Peary at the North Pole, Amundsen at the South, Hillary and Norgay on Everest, Piccard and Walsh in the Challenger Deep, and many other, earlier great who had paved the way for modern explorers. Kasjan and his people knew: they had just made the last great terrestrial discovery."

This, despite the fact that a large portion of the land and sea has never been SEEN by humans? This, despite the fact that they only established the current world's record for the deepest cave, and more caves are being discovered and explored all the time? And I found this quote humorous as well:

"...they worked their way down three more vertical pitches...and finally dropped into a triangular-shaped room...with a flat, clay bottom and nondescript walls.... This was it. The bottom of the world."

The bottom of the world? Considering the fact that they started 8,000 feet up on a mountain, and made it down 6,562 feet through the cave, their 'bottom of the world' wasn't the bottom of anything...except for maybe the mountain. They ended up basically at sea level!

[Cori · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't believe I finished this book. While the underlying content was good, the pacing and organization was off. A big chunk on one team (Stone’s), a small chunk of the other (Klimchouk’s), mingle them a bit at the end, and blah. I’m glad I did push through to get to read about Klimchouk’s experience as an Ukranian.

Yes it was non-fiction, but it didn’t find a good balance in engaging and informing. If it was boring and straight forward I would have preferred it. The writings style tries to make every little event exciting and dangerous. What it failed to do is make me want the teams to succeed. I really didn’t care who discovered the deepest cave, I wasn’t pulled in and cheering them on. I think that adding more characters, teams, or background about caving was needed. I was seriously mouthing 'blah blah blah' while reading at parts of it.

I think what made me the most annoyed is the author never portrayed the satisfaction of caving and help the reader understand why these people do it. My very limited caving experience showed me the wonders, challenges, and the joy of caving.

Basically, its an option out there if you want to learn about extreme caving. If you don’t need the content, don’t bother.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

..But cave explorers like Vesley and Farr could not see the route and so could not anticipate the dangers, a partial list of which includes drowning, fatal falls, premature burial, asphyxiation, hypothermia, hurricane-force winds, electrocution, earthquake-induced collapses, poison gases and walls dripping with 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 that ultragerm the Ebola virus.

Super caves create inner dangers as well, warping the mind with claustrophobia, anxiety, insomnia, hallucinations, personality disorders. There is also a particularly insidious derangement unique to caves called The Rapture, 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.

Holy Crap.

I read this while laying in bed and it frightened me more than I could ever tell you.

I live in an area on the Canadian coast that I'm pretty sure has NOTHING remotely close to what was just described. We have a lot of forests..maybe some wild animals. Actually, a coyote attacked and killed a hiker late in 2009. When I read stuff like this, it only intensifies this fear I have of nature. I don't even like going to the beach anymore. That water belongs to the creatures of the ocean. I'm not going in their house! Also, I can't swim - so that kind of makes me live bait for anything that has the munchies.

I can't understand why anyone would want to go caving. Well, let me rephrase that. I cannot understand why anyone would want to go somewhere where they cannot see any further than a few feet in front of them. The laundry list of dangers involved with going that deep into caves is just terrifying.

Last year, I suffered through some pretty relentless panic attacks. Some nights, I couldn't sleep - I might manage 2 or 3 hours total but it would be in short spurts. Nothing really brought them on; I'd like to think I have a great life that is as comfortable as you could possibly imagine, so it was pretty upsetting that I was having this problem. It has since been rectified but what they describe in regards to The Rapture, is quite possibly one of the most chilling things I've ever heard of.

I'm not saying "all cave explorers are insane and shouldn't do this". Aside from everything I alluded to earlier, I still found the book fascinating. I had no idea that by going that far down, you were subjecting yourself to dangers such as electrocution or horrific diseases. I just assumed that maybe it was just a bunch of sharp rocks and perhaps some bats. You might even stumble upon Bruce Wayne. I didn't expect powerful winds and deadly waterfalls.

It's certainly not in my all time favorites as I felt it was pretty dry in spots. However, the sheer amount of danger involved kept me interested throughout.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've grown to really love adventure and survival books and thought this would definitely be an interesting read in the genre. I wasn't disappointed. Blind Descent tells of cave exploration adventures in 2 of the world's deepest caves. I was initially concerned that the author wouldn't be able to make me see the cave in my mind as he told the story and that the author couldn't possibly hold my interest throughout the entire book, but I was absolutely enthralled and found myself daydreaming of cave diving between reads.

When I first thought what I might encounter in this book, I wondered what fun there could be in dropping into a deep hole that went down thousands of feet, but these caves aren't simply deep holes. The process includes rappelling down some very large shafts as well as walking some straight stretches before hitting another shaft or waterfall. Sometimes they have to send divers to swim through water they call "sumps" in order to find another opening into the cave beyond. Other times they find themselves trying to squeeze through very tight openings between rocks or even digging to make room for their bodies to fit though tinier openings carved by water over time. The experience is physically demanding and sometimes even deadly. And the exploration can last, sometimes, decades.

This particular caving book chronicles (as much as possible) deep cave discoveries in the Cheve Cave of Mexico and the Krubera cave in The Republic of Georgia. The caves are very different and so are the leaders of the expeditions. The Mexican cave is climatically normal and fairly open while the Georgian one is very cold and filled with very tight, slippery spaces. The leader of the Cheve Cave expeditions (an American) is hot-headed and lusty while the leader of the Krubera expeditions (a Ukranian) is level-headed and systematic.

There's far more information in the book about the Cheve Cave expeditions than the Krubera expeditions. I think this partially is because of language barriers for interview and partially because there probably was much more of a story to tell about the Cheve cave expeditions. In fact, I was glad the Krubera section of the book was fairly short because I wanted to get back to reading about the Cheve Cave.

I wish the book would have had pictures. I'm sure the book would have been more expensive to publish with pictures. However, a quick search online yields many pictures from various sources, including some really nice pictures of Cheve Cave on Flickr.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves adventure or survival stories or caving.

Note: While I critique both purchased and free books in the same way, I'm legally obligated to tell you I received this book free through the Amazon Vine program in return for my review. Blah blah blah.

[Jo O'Donnell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Deep cave exploration is an interesting topic that James Tabor does his best to ruin. I knew I was in trouble from the lazy mistakes around basic facts in the first chapter (people in the 15th century did not think the world was flat, Kitum Cave is not in Uganda and is not where Ebola is from, it's in Kenya and is thought to be a possible origin site for Marburg virus) that continued throughout the book (Sochi is a city in Russia, not Georgia!) and that, added to the cheap thriller style of short chapters ending on cliffhangers, a lot of 90s pop psychology, plus the author's chauvinism whenever Mexican authorities or faith practices came up, made this slim book something of a slog.

However, none of that compares to Tabor's odd defensiveness around the subject of 80% of the book, Bill Stone: an empty husk of a man whose pathetic attempts at achieving a degree of immortality include a disregard for casualties and increasingly-younger girlfriends. Try as he might to make Stone into a Shackleton-esque great man of exploration, even Tabor can't paper over what an absolute prick that caver is. There's never any mention of Stone's teams undertaking any research on caves' biology, geology, hydrology, no science at all. It's all just a crude race to Stone to find the deepest cave system on earth and get his name in the history books (which is another flaw of the book, it treats the discovery of the deepest cave system on Earth in Georgia as that's it, donezo, no possibility of a new cave discovery that's deeper even though the text mentions again and again how small and overlooked the entrances to supercaves can be).

The only positive outcome on sociopath Bill Stone's 3 decades of exploring Cheve cave in Mexico is that for all his effort and his dissolved marriage he didn't even make the cave's Wikipedia page.

As I said to start, deep cave exploration is an interesting topic, Tabor simply fumbles it like a child balancing an egg on a spoon. I would have much preferred the entire focus of Blind Descent to have been on Alexander Klimchouk, the Ukrainian speleologist who actually does scientific research on his cave expeditions but then we would have be bereft of Bill Stone's dead-eyed lack of charm.

[Cav · Rating 4 out of 5]

"As the fifteenth century began, we believed, absolutely, that the earth was flat.
As the twenty-first century began, we believed with equal certainty that every one of the earth’s great discoveries had been made. Almost a century had passed since Peary first trod the North Pole and Amundsen the South. Hillary and Norgay summited Mount Everest in 1953, Piccard and Walsh dove the deepest ocean in 1960. Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon in 1969. We played golf and drove a dune buggy there not long after.
Surely that tolled discovery’s death knell.
But flat-earthers were wrong, and so were those who had prematurely mourned the death of discovery. When the third millennium rolled around, one last great terrestrial discovery did still await: the deepest cave on earth.
The supercave."

Blind Descent was an interesting look into extreme spelunking. I am generally a fan of books about incredible real-life sagas, and enjoyed this one, too. The book opens with the quote above.

Author James M. Tabor is the writer and on-camera host of the acclaimed national PBS series The Great Outdoors. Tabor was also co-creator and executive producer for the 2007 History Channel special Journey to the Center of the World. Tabor is a former contributing editor to Outside magazine and Ski Magazine; his writing has also appeared in Time, Smithsonian, Barron’s, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and many other national publications.

James M. Tabor:


Tabor writes with a decent style that keeps the book fairly engaging. It gets off on a good foot, with a lively intro.
The quote from the start of this review continues:

"In fact, the subterranean world remains the greatest geographic unknown on this planet—called “the eighth continent” by some. Mountains, ocean depths, the moon, and even Martian scapes can be—and have been— revealed and explored by humans or our robotic surrogates. Not so caves.
They are the sole remaining realm that can be experienced only firsthand, by direct human presence..."

The author lays out the aim of the book in this bit of writing:

"As the new millennium dawned, the stage was thus set for an exploration drama unlike any since Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott competed, head-to-head, with results both horrible and historic, for the South Pole.
This book is the story of the race to make the last great discovery, and of the men and women who won and lost it."

The writing here centers around the cave explorer William (Bill) Stone; an intrepid explorer of the world's most extreme caves. The writing in the book proper begins by detailing the death of inexperienced caver Chris Yeager.
The book goes on to cover the exploration of Chevé Cave; a deep cave located in the Sierra Juárez mountain range in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca.

Bill Stone:


The author drops this quote about "Supercaves:"

"Supercaves create inner dangers as well, warping the mind with claustrophobia, anxiety, insomnia, hallucinations, personality disorders.
There is also a particularly insidious derangement unique to caves called The Rapture, 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 it’s omnipresent: absolute, eternal darkness. Darkness so dark, without a single photon of light, that it is the luminal equivalent of absolute zero..."

Personally speaking; I find the topic of exploring deep, dark, tight underground caves to be nothing short of insanity. Not for all the tea in China could you pay me to enter one of these death traps...
Although you'd never in your life find me wedged in some tiny crevasse deep underground, it did make for some interesting reading here:

"...It was not unusual for a digger to be wedged head-down in a vertical hole so tight that he could neither wear a helmet nor turn his head. To dig, he extended one arm down in front of his face, clawed and scraped material from the front of the hole, and ferried it backward, using his other hand to push the dirt out behind. Working this way, the digger resembled a swimmer doing the sidestroke.
Behind the digger came an assistant, who filled a bucket or pan and passed it back. And so on. Inverted in the hole, a digger was showered continually with dislodged dirt that worked its way into nose, mouth, ears, and eyes. Because carbon dioxide is heavier than air, the hole’s atmosphere became increasingly foul, requiring breaks to avoid blackout. Charco diggers spent many long hours like this..."

[~Talk about NIGHTMARE FUEL... JFC]

********************

Blind Descent was a fairly well-done book. I would recommend it to anyone interested.
3.5 stars.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent but flawed book. I would rate it 1.75 stars if it were possible.

The writing was very inconsistent; at times it was interesting and well written but at many other times it was stilted and ham fisted. The first hundred times the author talked about the dangers of spelunking were bad enough but the next hundred times were completely annoying. Everything about cave exploring is dangerous and he means EVERYTHING! And over and over again he described the environs: cold, dark, wet, loud, forbidding. Repeat again, and again... Did I mention it's extremely dangerous in these caves?

His description of the race to find the deepest cave was flat and and completely lacking in drama. The author spent far too much time writing about Bill Stone (the American type A fearless super human and brilliant alpha wolf whom I will gladly and easily forget) and far too little time writing about Alexander Klimchouk (the modest Ukranian).

The book would have dramatically benefited from the inclusion of sketches and diagrams of the caves. The descriptions were completely insufficient to provide a sense of their direction and scale.

The pictures in the book were helpful and interesting and gave a very good sense of what segments of the caves were like. Many more pictures would have been useful. One strange thing about some of the pictures (which were all located in the middle of the book) and related captions is that they revealed the location of the deepest cave which helped kill some of the drama. Although the tiring and repetitive writing is mostly responsible for killing the drama.

I can think of a few authors who would have made this book far more interesting. Instead of reading this book I would highly recommend The Last Dive by Bernard Chowdhury. The writing could have been better but the story and information about diving were fantastic. That book had me literally (that's for you Todd) gasping for breath at times.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Why do you climb the mountain?" The answer, the trite "Because it's there!" Simple, but in the case of Blind Descent, you've still got to wonder. The explorers here are not climbing mountains but diving and exploring caves in hopes of finding the deepest ever, the bottom of the world. They endure the worst conditions to realize their dream. Cold, wet, dark and dank; no other way to describe it. Darkness that leaves them virtually blind, sound that is so intensified all else is blocked out, narrow passages, flooding, falling rock, sleeping bags attached by a shoestring, lack of oxygen, too much oxygen, hallucinations, the journey down, the realization that all must be done in reverse; months on end of bleak conditions that would leave me insane. And the gear, no light load, that must be carried, checked, doubled checked and used properly to assure survival.

This is a parallel story of two teams, the first led by Bill Stone, an American scientist explorer who is out to prove that Cheve Cave, in southern Mexico is the super cave. The second is led by Ukrainian explorer Alexander Klimchouk who is equally certain that Krubera, in the republic of Georgia, will earn the super cave distinction. Reviewers have called Stone and Klimchouk polar opposites and this seems true. Their style of leadership is very different but the means to the end for both is driven by science, discovery, bravery and a stubborn determination to succeed in their goals.

James M. Tabor does an excellent job of taking the reader along for the dive, allowing us to experience the adrenalin of the adventure from our safe and warm homes. If you're at all claustrophobic, you might want to skip Blind Descent. If you liked Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson or Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, I think this would be a book to put on your list.

[meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't understand the reviews calling this "boring" bc it is ANYTHING BUT

however I do have some other problems namely

1) why do we spend 220/300 pages with the American team in Mexico when the Ukrainian team is the one who found the deepest cave

2) this contains an awfully sympathetic portrait of a man who seems like an egomaniac with little care for the safety of others. like I know nothing about this man besides what this book shows me but it sounds like he kinda sucks

3) it's also randomly juuuuuuust a lil sexist for absolutely no reason. just in case you were wondering, it is good to be a "type a alpha male" and being so excuses all sorts of rude, controlling, and general bad behavior. Also there are very few female cave explorers but all of them are young and beautiful :)

4) generally felt a bit sensationalistic and would've liked to see a bit more scientific / historical background

that being said I still had a great time reading it and recommend it to anyone with a morbid cave fascination. CAVES, MAN!!!

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, I loved this book. I'm a sucker for adventure books, and Krakauer Tabor is not--but the story was exciting and fun, and Tabor cast the characters well. Bill Stone in particular seems like a complete jackass, which Tabor never said straight-out, but if he wanted me to hate Stone, he did a great job.

This book has problems, no question. Tabor keeps up the excitement by waxing ridiculously eloquent on all the dangers of the caves. Someone below imitated spot-on how he'd narrate a trip to the kitchen (e.g., "Kitchen counters are populated by trillions of deadly bacteria that could enter your bloodstream through a small cut, never mind the danger of walking on slick floor holding razor-sharp knives..."). Honestly, though, the segment about Stone and his partner dropping their lights deep in the cave was riveting, and we all need some fun mid-quarantine, right?

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent true-life story with more thrills, excitement and occasional horror than most fiction. Great story beautifully written, for all armchair adventurers.

[Juushika · Rating 1 out of 5]

Caves are great! Caving is interesting! The hero-worship here decidedly is neither, and the tone (presaged by the early unironic use of "alpha male") irritates. DNF at 15%.

[Paulina Przyborowska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. I had no clue how intense cavediving was. Very well written, captivating, with some humor.

[Ms.pegasus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blind Descent; the quest to discover the deepest place on earth, by James Tabor, chronicles the last great competition for terrestrial exploration: part of a tradition which included the race to the South Pole, and the first to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. The drama, , however, lies with the personalities of these X-treme cavers, and not the actual competition. Bill Stone is the leader of the American expedition exploring the Cheve system in Mexico. Indomitable, competitive, aggressive are all words that describe his energy level and focus. One of his inventions is a complex scuba re-breathing apparatus for scrubbing carbon dioxide and recycling it back into oxygen in order to extend the length of dives. On the other side of the world in the Krubera system in the western Caucasus Mountains of the Ukraine, Alexander Klimchouk directs a team he has spent a lifetime organizing and training. Klimchouk embodies the scientific soul of exploration, and his goal is to build a network of X-treme cavers who will pass on this passion to a succeeding generation.

The list of dangers entailed in caving are astonishing. Imagine the actors in “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” descending steadily, and at the bottom, still looking like they stepped out of the pages of a Banana Republic catalog. Then look at the reality: Drowning, falling, asphyxiation and hypothermia are ever-present dangers. The damp promotes infection from the slightest cut, and exotic bacteria are a further threat. Tabor notes that Kitum Cave in Uganda is believed to be the ultimate source for the Ebola virus. Poison gas, almost constant darkness (it is important to conserve light as much as possible), and remoteness from any outside assistance add to the danger. Finally, there is a phenomena called “the Rapture” – a panic attack or disorientation brought on by the darkness which can descend on even experienced cavers.

Tabor chronicles the exploration of these two caves with precision and insight. He also looks at the disrepair this passion wreaks on personal relationships. We admire the resourcefulness, skill and dedication of these explorers. Yet, in the end, it is a passion only a select few can understand. Most of us will understand the complaint of a novice caver: But is it fun? It is difficult to accept the answer that fun is besides the point.

NOTE: Bill Stone's efforts are updated in "In Deep; the dark and dangerous world of extreme cavers," by Burkhard Bilger. The piece appears in THE NEW YORKER, April 21, 2014, p.62-75. The article tracks Marcin Gala, continuing the exploration of the Chevé cave system under Stone's supervision. The project is being filmed by the Discovery channel. (note added, 5/26/2014)

[Timothy Neesam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update: I reread this book before seeing a talk by National Geographic cave photographer Robbie Shone. The book holds up, and I hold the same opinion upon rereading my review. It feels a little crooked, with far more time and detail given to Bill Stone, but the notes help me understand that the author had more access to Stone and his circle. It's still a good book and worth reading if you're interested.

------

I recently read "Into the Planet," Jill Heinerth's memoir about cave diving. On several occasions, she mentions working with Bill Stone, the engineer, caver, explorer, and Stone's CEO. Aerospace (where he uses the underwater breathing technology developed for caving in his pursuit to help explore space). A short while later, I stumbled across Blind Descent by James Tabor.

Tabor's book documents Stone's determination to map one of the deepest caves in the world, Cheve Cave, located in southern Mexico. Using the death of team member Christopher Yeager as a way to start the book and explain the challenges and dangers of extreme caving, Tabor documents Stone's unwavering determination to explore Cheve at almost any cost, both personal and professional. Stone's adventures take up about two-thirds of the book, and it's evident that extreme caving is only a pastime for some. Describing frightening, gruelling, cold, wet, arduous, cramped exploration in hazardous situations is fascinating. However, it's hard to understand why this is so appealing (though the descriptions of cave interiors are highly evocative).

Ukranian explorer Alexander Klimchouk's exploration of Krubera in the Republic of Georgia is used almost as a counterpoint. Klimchouk seems nearly the antithesis of Stone. A team player who always puts colleagues before himself, he is methodical and careful. Both leaders and their teams undertake almost unbelievable hardships for weeks to explore two of the deepest caves in the world.

Tabor provides a narrative path that explores how and why these leaders and their teams would want to explore caves. Afterward, Tabor talks about his own experiences caving and clarifies that his descriptions of the difficulties are as much from first-hand experience as having been recounted by people who participated in the explorations. Blind Descent almost feels like two books, with the first half recounting Stone's exploits and the second half Klimchouk's discoveries. I'll take Klimchouk as a leader any day, though admittedly, Stone's adventures make for a highly compelling read.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caving=scary, but like watching a train wreck, I'm intrigued! Sort of like reading "Into Thin Air" or "Eiger Dreams" about climbing the most dangerous, forbidding places on earth, only going the opposite direction INTO the mountains.

The cave descriptions also reminded me of how "House of Leaves" describes the spaces behind that closet door ... naming indescribably huge openings things like 'the cathedral room', etc.

This book is so reminiscent of Krakauer's accessible journalistic prose put to use in extreme environments, where people WILLINGLY go. The quest for the deepest cave involves several weeks of downward climbing, sometimes vertical black pits estimated 500ft down, and setting up camps all underground in pitch black, with roaring, echoing waterfalls amplified by the cave, being continually dirty and wet. Then add cave diving into the mix when cavers reach 'sumps' where water gathers in a pit and they decide to underwater dive to find the next opening! And after they've got the farthest they can go, or they've run to the end of their expedition time, they have to climb OUT!! It's just mind-blowing that anyone does this!

The focus of this book is on two speleologists, Bill Stone & Alexander Klimchouk, who have dedicated their lives to finding the deepest cave. Stone mounts expedition after expedition with nearly tunnel-vision drive, into Cheve cave in Mexico, while Klimchouk mounts expeditions with a lesser need to control and lead every descent, into Krubera Cave in the Arabika Massif in the Abkazia region of the Western Caucasus in the Republic of Georgia.

[Garrett · Rating 1 out of 5]

Blind Descent by James M. Tabor is about the exploration of super caves in different areas around the globe. The story is split into two sections the first 2/3 of the story is about Bill Stone and his exploration of Cheve cave in southern mexico but, is mostly a biography about bill stone rather then about trying to find the deepest cave in the world which he doesn't even come close to doing in the end and the end of the story revolves around Alexander Klimcouk and the exploration of Krubera cave a cave located in the former soviet republic of Georgia. If you like stories about adventure and danger this would be the book for you but if you want to have your imagination wander while reading this book , look elsewhere because James m. Tabor kills all suspense and imagination by explaining in excruciating detail just about every move the explorers make. This makes the read boring and hard to get through. As well as boring the book is supposed to be about "The QUEST to DISCOVER the DEEPEST CAVE on EARTH" as the cover of the book states but it feels more like James Tabor is a middle school girl and bill stone is lead singer in a boy band. The book is glorifying this man Bill Stone that in my opinion shouldn't even be talked about because he didn't find the deepest cave in the world, he didn't care about anything but this cave, basically let his entire family just leave because he was to obsessed with his re breathers and his cave, he pushed the limits of the cave by sending other people in for him resulting in many deaths and the author also seems to glorify the sexual relations bill stone has with younger women old enough to be his granddaughter.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I chose to read this book because I have spent the past 3 months traveling in the country of Georgia, a fascinating and breathtakingly beautiful country and region of the world.

Considering Krubera Cave is the deepest cave in the world located in Georgia and the most intriguing fact of this book, I was shocked that basically only the last 20% or so of the book (if that) even spoke on Krubera.

This book might as well have been a biography for Bill Stone who by the way sounds like a pompous asshole (as has been attested by other reviewers also). Sure he’s made some cool feats (no doubt mostly to feed his ego), but at what cost. Oh yeah, the cost of severalllll cave explorers that used HIS invention for breathing longer in the waters while caving. How did the guy not get investigated???

I will never understand the desire for humans to push themselves to places and goals beyond what any human body can and should endure. I will never understand the desire to go thousands of feet into the unknown earth to look for rocks and caves and water. But that same fascination is what brought me to pick up the book, confirmed my suspicions that people that do this have to be insane, that I will never do such a thing, and that’s the earth itself is super cool.

I like learning about this stuff even if it causes spikes in my heart rate. But I didn’t think this book in particular gave the credit or answered the questions that go deeper into caving and particularly the impressive Krubera cave.

[Danielle · Rating 1 out of 5]

The physical descriptions of the caves and their dangers were inherently interesting but the author does what he can to make even that boring. The book is organized terribly and the writing jumps all over the place. And, it might just be me, but a sense of sexism seemed to spread itself throughout the book. Debating women's presence on teams, describing the parade of young women the very obnoxious and unlikable main character brings along on the various cave trips, characterizing his former wife as a henpecking nag, and even the author's offhand comment about a man knowing the sounds of the river just like he knows his wife's voice "in all her moods". Whatever.

I also have huge reservations about humans spoiling yet another pristine environment as is described over and over in the book. Human excrement of all sorts filling hole after hole dug into sand, dead bodies left behind to putrefy, rotting leftover food scattered around various camps, candy bar wrappers washing miles downstream, equipment dropped and left, drilling, hammering, and digging into rocks, etc. Top to bottom, we've literally spoiled the entire planet. Blech. I should have just looked at the pretty cover and moved on.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anybody who knows even the slightest bit about me can probably tell you that I have a pretty strange obsession with extreme, outdoor, one-tiny-mistake-and-you-die sports. Not that I regularly participate, mind you. I just like to read about them and live vicariously through people insane enough (or passionate enough?) to willingly hang their bodies out over thousand foot drops in the middle of nowhere; or sail blindly into unknown waters for months-long journeys in tiny sailboats; or venture miles below the surface of the earth with only a ziploc bag to shit in and crappy freeze-dried food to eat.

I’m the quintessential lazy-boy supercaver, what can I say?

No surprise, books like Blind Descent are all time favorites for me. Adventurous, outdoorsy, and oh-so-delightfully-morbid, this trip down the world’s deepest supercave was everything an (admittedly weird) girl could ask for. Enormous underground cliffs were rappelled, sumps were navigated, a few casualties were endured… all in a noble, twisted effort to get closer to Hell than any other human being has ever been before.

If that’s not worth the read, I don’t really know what is.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caving isn't my cuppa, but I liked reading this well-written, dramatic account of Bill Stone, a Ph.D. and super-caver driven to discover the deepest cave on the globe. The lady cave explorers (Laura Croft saw nothing like this) take on the most dangerous tasks. All sorts of thorny dilemmas and obstacles, especially diving in the cave sumps, are thrown in Stone's way. The intricate details of the cavers' plying their trade (knots, tools, equipment, etc.) has its appeal. When Stone isn't caving, he's lobbying for grants ($$$) from the big sponsors like National Geographic. This book is a nice diversion from reading fiction, my usual cuppa.

[Kristina Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at cave exploration.

[Nicholas Lefevre · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm afraid of heights. Partly it's the crazy part of my brain that fears I will jump. Worse than my vertigo is my claustrophobia. Neither is debilitating. I've been on high ledges and in cave passages. When I think about heights, I think about beautiful views. When I think about depths underground, I think about dark and being buried.

Thus, it was with some trepidation that I started Blind Descent. Blind Descent is a fair survey of the history of cave exploration but it is mainly the story of two caves and the men and women who explored them. It is also the tale of a sporting/scientific contest - the quest to find the deepest cave on earth.

I love adventure reading and like to imagine I'm solo circumnavigating the globe under sail, hiking the Pacific Crest, exploring Patagonia, or rafting through the Grand Canyon. At no point did I want to imagine myself deep within these caves. Cave explorations require getting past "sumps." Remember that deep caves are created by underground water. Well, I hate to tell you this, but that means that in pitch dark you must submerge yourself in frigid water and, with or without breathing apparatus, swim through a narrow cave opening with rocky projections hoping to get to where you can find surface or otherwise find some air. While you're doing this, nitrogen narcosis increasingly renders you incapable or rational thought. Panic in an underwater channel can be fatal as you'll learn too vividly in Blind Descent. Who wants to go with me? Anybody?

As you can imagine, the people who choose to do this are not ordinary people. Blind Descent gives us vivid portraits of some of these characters. These are not efforts where a few guys go cave exploring for the day. These are huge teams and logistics operations with camps established along the way like for Everest climbs, only upside down with the hardest part at the end.

I can't say that I actually enjoyed going along for the ride here and we'll see what it does to my dreams in the next few nights, but it is certainly fascinating.