In 1914, famous explorer Ernest Shackleton placed an ad in London newspapers. It read:
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success.”
In Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth, James Tabor compares this vintage ad to the one more suited for today’s extreme cavers:
“Participants wanted for journey to the center of the earth. No wages, constant wet, cold, and darkness. Weeks underground. Safe return doubtful. (Honor and recognition equally so.)”
And these casually enumerated conditions are only the beginning of the challenges facing those willing to crawl, climb, rappel, dig, and dive their way up to two miles beneath the earth’s surface. These veteran divers and climbers spend weeks in complete darkness, using light only when absolutely necessary. They’re often wet, soaked by underground rivers and magnificent waterfalls, with little hope of drying out. They transport heavy equipment, fuelled only by freeze-dried food and chocolate bars, shedding up to 25 pounds on one expedition. All of this in the name of exploring earth’s final frontier.
Tabor’s book serves as a good introduction to supercaving (likened to climbing a mountain in reverse . . [...]
