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mdavid
Big Wall climber
CA, CO, TX
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The folks in the NSS boards indicate that he went into a passage that was not common, that it would have been obvious based on the map and condition in the passage.
Apparently he crawled upward in a small passage that then turned down and he was unable to reverse. Really sad.
This ppt created by experienced cavers does a good job explaining the hazards.
I cannot believe scout leaders take their kids there....just totally irresponsible
http://jonjasper.com/Presentations/SavingNuttyPuttyCave/
You are totally incorrect; experienced, trained and smaller cavers were on scene and tried their best to recover him. Maybe it's possible to recover him in the future but maybe it isn't.
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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"Truly nuts"? I resemble that comment!
With respect to caves and caving in general [not the rescue attempt and John's death in particular] I am AMAZED at some of your responses above! You of you guys really DON'T "get it", do you? I'd have thought climbers, who are familiar with reducing risk and having fun in situations that would appear "crazy" or "dangerous" to non-climbers would be a bit more cognizant of the realities of caving, but evidently knott. Wow.
Some of your comments are not all that far removed from parallel comments in climbing like, "how do you get the ropes up there?"
If I get some time before I leave for a four-day underground caving camp in Kentucky tomorrow, I'll write a myth-fact post and address some of the more amusing and off-base comments above. In the meantime, if you are interested in a recent real caving story, and a near-miss on an in-cave climb, please have a read here, which is where I'm heading.
This was my last trip to Roppel Cave, Kentucky, a ninety-mile-long section of the Mammoth Cave System, which contains approximately 400 miles of known surveyed passage.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1011488
As for Nutty Putty Cave, I strongly disagree it be closed. The body could probably be removed, or possibly sealed in concrete like they did with Neil Moss in Peak Cavern back in the 50's.
Such a tragedy. The cavers who were there to perform the rescue are every bit as qualified, experienced and bitchin' as Werner and his crew in Yosemite.
I routinely 'push' virgin passageways almost as small as where John got stuck and died, because this is how you discover new cave, but you really have to know when to say when. Often, the passage is so small that it is impossible to turn around, and you have to back out the way you came in. You really need to be careful not to force yourself into something that you can't get out of, though! For instance, you will be much more willing to attempt a squeeze if you are trying to go up, because if you get stuck, you have gravity on your side when coming back out. Where it gets dangerous is a downhill squeeze like where John got stuck.
A few years ago, the chief cartographer in Roppel told me of a "lead" only fifteen minutes from the entrance. It is along the main drag, and virtually everyone visiting the cave walks right by it - hundreds of people every year. Anyone who has been in the cave just about has walked by the beginning of this lead.
It is a small canyon above a pit, the passage being about one foot wide by three or four feet high, above about a twenty-foot drop. "You'll need a boost to get in. I crawled down there a couple hundred feet without reaching an end. You should check it out sometime."
So one day on a warm-up photo trip, I got someone to give me a boost. Getting into this canyon was tricky and awkward, but not too desperate. Well, not for me. The rest of you would assume I'm crazy to perform such an impossible and death-defying feat. Anyway, I found buddy's footprints [really kneeprints] in about a three foot x three foot crawlway, and followed them beyond where he had turned around. I had to squeeze under a somewhat loose block - without touching it! - and then force my body through a very tight S-bend that a taller person might not be able to make. You're in contact with the walls the whole way, and the rock is quite "snarly". It completely shredded the sweater I was wearing. The passage gets smaller and smaller until it was just a little tube maybe one foot in diameter.
It didn't go, so I backed out. As I was backing out, I noticed a small black hole off to my right, and felt some airflow going into it. The hole was far too small for me to fit into it, but the floor was composed of stream cobbles. So I started digging, pulling out cobbles and tossing them away. After maybe half an hour of this - lying in a crawlway too small to get up on my hands and knees - I was able to pop through into a kitchen-sized room. It looked to be the end, except that there was a mud-flow coming in from the ceiling.
I climbed up, and popped up into a virgin passageway ten feet high by fifteen feet wide! Wooo-hooo!!!
Nobody could believe this passageway I had found existed! Remember, I started only fifteen minutes from the entrance! But this just goes to show you that in Roppel Cave, "anything can go anywhere anytime." This is why we push small passages.
I returned along the route of my solo push, and brought in others the next day to explore and survey the passage. Not sure how much new passage we found, maybe 1500' total? A thousand? At any rate, at one end of the passage, in which there were beautiful stalagmites rising out of a crystal-clear pool, you could crawl over a near-plug in flowstone, follow a flat-out section maybe a foot high for thirty feet, and pop out into another huge passage from beneath a ledge! Super easy, avoiding the nasty solo push section. This passage, named Lexington Avenue, is another place where hundreds have passed, but without noticing the low crawlway coming out from under the ledge.
When we told the others that the new section had connected to Lexington Avenue, everyone said, "Holy frig, I don't believe it! I've been along that passage dozens of times and never noticed a thing!" But that's cavin'.
As for Floyd Collins getting stuck in Sand Cave back in the 1920's, the cave rescuers I have spoken with tell me that were this to have happened today, they could have rescued him.
Caves are gated to prevent the general public from entering them and vandalizing them. If you leave a cave accessible to the "flashlight and blue jeans" crowd, before long you are guaranteed to find spray paint, broken beer bottles and busted speleothems [cave formations like stalactites and stalagmites].
Most caves are not gated, and are protected by a general secrecy among cavers. If ungated cave locations were publicized, what I describe above would follow. But this is knott to say that it's difficult to find caves and go caving. If you demonstrate any degree of competence, which all climbers do since they avoid death in "crazy" and "dangerous" situations, then it is not hard to find cave entrances.
Hell, you can write the NSS and buy old convention guidebooks that give you step by step driving and hiking descriptions to cave entrances, and which provide you a detailed survey of the cave and step-by-step instructions on how to find your way through the cave. Cavers are not secretive amongst themselves for the most part.
Cheers,
Pass the Carbide Lamp Pete
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jstan
climber
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Enjoimx:
Have you ever been in a tight winding crawl? Even outdoors have you ever tried to lift 190# dead weight? In 1925 to recover Floyd Collins they sank a shaft from the surface. From what I have seen and read here it seems that was probably the only option. This rescue will be remembered for decades just as that of Floyd Collins has been.
And as to carbide lamps they were real fun in a rappel using a nylon rope. If you looked straight ahead the lamp could easily melt your rope.
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pud
climber
Sportbikeville
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Pete,
As a lifelong motorcyclist (donorcycle, etc...) it's old hat to hear others speak of that which they don't understand with fear and incorrect information.
I have great respect for adventurers, no matter what the chosen sport/hobbie.
Have fun on your adventure. Be safe and take some pics so you can share your experience here on the taco. Maybe enlighten a few souls along your journey.
-w
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Floyd's attempted rescue turned into a media circus, literally. There were carnival hucksters and midway rides set up outside the cave.
The shaft was sunk behind Floyd, but they reached him too late. Nowadays, they'd have sent in a little 80-lb cave girl who probably could have squeezed over Floyd, and pried the rock off his leg.
Floyd perished of exposure after lying in his own excrement for a week.
Pud, you motorcyclists are CRAZY. That's totally insane! Why, I would never EVER do what you do on a bike! They're so FAST, and loud, and there's all that traffic. And racing one? Forget it, you're nuts.
LOL!!!!!!!!!111111111
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cliffhanger
Trad climber
California
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Rokjox's winch idea would work very well if the tie in to the victim was with bungee cord. A 20' bundle of bungee cords could be stretched to 30'(max stretch = 35') with the winch, giving a uniform pull of 10' before it would need more stretching from the winch. You could increase or decrease the force at the victim by adding or removing bungee cords from the bundle. As long as you kept within the operational window of the bungee stretch, the victim would not be pulled with excessive force.
With a winch you may not even need redirects, just some smooth plastic or other material for the rope to run over at corners.
Lumber could provide excellent anchors wedged in the tight passages. Have some precut lengths and bring a saw to trim.
A right angle hammerdrill, if they exist, could have force applied to the bit with a small jack (like in a chalking gun) that pushes off the opposite wall and compresses a spring for an even, correct force. This could also work with a regular hammerdrill.
Pumping in gallons of vegetable oil would grease the works if things aren't going smoothly. After a few years the vegetable oil will decompose and disappear unlike mineral oil. Lay as much plastic down as possible for a smooth surface to pull the victim over.
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cliffhanger
Trad climber
California
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ok Rokjox is right that if there is alot of energy built up from stretching the bungee many feet, it could pull the victim farther and faster than wanted. Just stretch it a little at a time and it will act to keep a stuck victim from being pulled apart. Just a few feet of bungee could serve this scenario.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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The news said they will complete the closure of the cave today.
They have been using concrete and explosives.
If I die on a climb, let it be known that I do NOT want that climb erased or banned.
This is a doubly sad story.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Layton said he climbed it nearly a year later and found some small bones; digits perhaps.
But wasn't it a tourist, not Madsen?
(Didn't he rap off Dihedral?)
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jstan
climber
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Roper's "Camp 4", that Amazon won't allow me to search, says the person who died in the LA Chimney was named Irving Smith. When we climbed that route around 1970 there was no evidence remaining of the incident.
Earlier someone has presumed their NSS # was later than mine. You never know about these things. So I pulsed the NSS and they were so kind as to pull my card up.
5176
Without help all I could remember was the "76". Hey. At least I remembered that much.
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GBrown
Trad climber
North Hollywood, California
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I joined the NSS in 1962 or '63 and got # 7216. You beat me JStan!
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jstan
climber
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Gary:
That's questionable. I was too fat to get through the really small holes so I never amounted to much.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there say, 'pass the pitons' pete,
i had never heard about this rescue of floyd, until you all mentioned it here... this sadness has now reminded me of this film that i saw as a kid, at my folk's home...
and some parts of it, i really just could not watch... yet, it can truely happen, even sadder still--only good folks, stepping in and being strong, can help rid the media of making a "circus out calamity", it is a good warning for folks in the media, if they dare to listen and check themselves:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews32/ace_in_the_hole.htm
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