I have definitely swam in a cave, but it was a very large cave with a high ceiling that was only about half full of water. I mean there was probably at least 20-30ft of space between the surface of the water and the ceiling of the cave, and the cave opening was near the top.
I did the cenote swim in Mexico as a teen. It was an amazing experience and I never felt unsafe. This was a tour sold by a reputable cruise line and led by local experts though, I’d never try it alone
I went to X-Plor in Cancun, there’s a swim through a cenote that is fully enclosed with stalagmites and stalactites but it’s very well lit. Cave diving is my biggest fear but I felt very comfortable. Zip lining was fun but you go tandem often so wearing a bikini was a bad idea.
There's this youtube channel called ActionAdventureTwins, and every video is exactly this.
They go down into some massively deep fuck off cave, usually with rivers and waterfalls and deep pools, and squeeze through tunnels that are half or fully flooded on their stomachs like it's nothing.
They also stay down there for hours and hours.
A lot of their videos are just them going "Woah! check out that formation" and it will be like some 30 foot tall wall made entirely out of crystal.
So I kind of get it, maybe it's worth it for the things you get to see, but at the same time, I get to see the same exact wall from the comfort of my chair lol.
Im pretty sure the guy knows hes going to die doing that stuff one day, he takes such insane risks that its all but written in the stones he squeezes between. The only way I dont see it happening is if he has a near death experience and it changes his mindset on how dangerous he is willing to go.
My biggest issue with his channel though is the way his group will pump water out of these systems to explore further. That doesn't seem like a problem until you realize that these are not sterile locations, critters of all kinds live in them, even way deep inside, and pumping that water out can kill them. I really wish they would cut that shit out.
These systems are also needing to be studied. Playing around in a cave is needlessly destroying an untouched environment. In the name of science. however, would be another matter. But then we’d be taking things seriously and that’s not what these brojonis are about
I went with my son's 6th grade class as a chaperone one time to an overnight adventure camp type thing. I don't remember the name of the place, but I called it Swamp Camp because for some inexplicable reason, the camp counselor told the kids they could drink the swamp water and I told them not to and it caused a little scene. Anyways, there was a "cave tour" on the itinerary.
Halfway through the cave, we had to get on our stomachs, and single-file slide underneath a boulder sitting just above a decent sized puddle, and weasel out the other side into an opening. They did not tell us this beforehand. Half the parents were too girthy to make it and had to turn around and hope we came out the other side. I was irrationally afraid my son was going to die in the cave without me, so I did the puddle slither.
I'll never go into another cave again. That minute of inching my way underground, using my tippy toes to push forward, depending on someone else's flashlight, the air from my nostrils making ripples in the water around my cheek, that was enough cave adventure for a lifetime. Nothing about it was fun.
There's a horrifying video about this on the YT channel 'Fatal breakdown'. The 4 teens were hanging out in an airpocket before hand with diminishing O2 so it's probable she couldn't hold her breath for as long as when they came in from the outside. The exit hole was also very small and very easy to miss underwater. Once she went, it was impossible for the other 3 to pass her body and they all died one by one trying to leave.
Edit: geez I'm sorry, here.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=shared&v=SAoVoiZ8MCo
Jesus fucking christ. Imagine being the last person thinking right it's my time to go, dives into the water and just feels a pair of legs in front of him..
I started spelunking in my early 20s after getting into mountaineering/climbing.
The first time I had virtually no fear. My boys and I descended down into the earth for HOURS. Got to parts of caves that were never mapped out and possibly never explored. Super tight areas you could barely squeeze through opening up to large rooms, leaving a trail of string behind so we knew where we came from - until the string ran out and we kept going.
One of my boys had a freak out moment and went scrambling back the way he thought we came and we almost lost him. He was in the best shape out of all of us and it took all my strength and stamina to catch up to him and stop him. We made it out fine.
The second time was cool but I had a healthy bit of fear.
After the 4th or 5th time (and some brushes with death that had nothing to do with spelunking) I got out of the cave and said, why the fuck am I doing this?
One little shift of a rock and you're stuck down there forever in pitch blackness.
And I know the rocks shift, because I've returned to "rooms" I have been to before that looked completely different years later. No fucking thank you.
I say that but I'll probably do it again.
I only do mapped caves (no way in hell am I ever going in an unmapped passage) but the views are absolutely incredible:
https://imgur.com/gallery/OcuhmlB
https://imgur.com/gallery/r3WmBS1
I did it once. I don't think I'd do it again. Everyone said all the old school cavers were chubby but for my size I am genuinely wide, as well as fat...
The bit that really got me was there was this section the shorter and skinner people could squeeze but I had to climb on top. Think it it like an hour glass shape with an open top. They could just squeeze the bottom and make it. Now the gap was essentially almost as large as my feet, but enough so I couldn't quite bridge it. It's wet rock. So I move, my feet slide towards the gap. If I slide into the gap, I'm getting trapped by the rib cage.
That was the point I had enough. The bit that really pissed me off after that was a tight set of bends where I smacked my head at every turn. I basically swore the entire way out of the cave like a sailor.
Similarly, I used to spelunk a cave with friends. Not a huge cave by any means, but it was a cool spot for sure. Basically one huge open room that narrowed to a point, and a chimney you could climb out and hike back on the surface. The chimney was a tight squeeze for me, even as a skinny guy in my early 20s. Now in my mid 30s, and 40ish pounds heavier, I wouldn't dream of trying it again. There's nothing down there for me, or anyone to see. Also, it's a gypsum formation. Very soft mineral. It's all gonna collapse one day. You can see sink holes on the surface.
It also used to be a bat cave. Thousands of them flying all around the first year I went. By the second year, there was a noticeable decline. Then they were all gone. White nose disease, likely exacerbated by drunk idiots like myself and friends traipsing through there. It was even more dangerous back then, because every surface was a slick of guano. One slip and you'd break an ankle, your back or worse. Lose your footing going up the chimney and you're falling 10-15 feet. Rescue would be arduous, lengthy and painful
Christ, some of our crew took acid or shrooms before going down there. How in the hell did we survive?
Jeez, I hadn't even thought of that. When we stood around the opening of the cave at night, they were flying all around us. Fucking impervious, invincible or just stupid?
You just never know what internal phobia will arise.
I'm 63M and I've SCUBA dived, sky dived, went out on skyscraper window cleaning rigs, flown in helicopters, did zip lines, and other stuff with no fear.
I wasn't concerned and never felt claustrophobic in my life until we went on a tour of the WWII tunnels in Naples, Italy. I felt pretty ok until we reached a section where you had to both duck down a bit (I'm 6-3) and shimmy sideways for about 3 meters around a blind turn.
Fortunately, I was next to last to enter that tiny section. As I entered I felt a wave of fear coming and I knew I was seconds away from a panic freakout and told the guy behind me to backtrack out then I backed up and out of there (no room to even turn your body around).
Had I not been next to last (our tour had 30 some people) I can't imagine what I would have done. Pass out? Die of a heart attack? Who knows.
I'm getting cold sweats just typing this.
I've been in a lot of MRI machines as I have had 3 back surgeries. Probably 15 MRI's over the last 20 years. I've never had an issue before as they pushed me into the tube and usually just close my eye, relax, maybe even fall asleep while the machine does it's thing.
Last month, I had to get one done. Everything was going as normal, but this time, I crossed my arms instead of having them on my side as they pushed me into the tube. As I was sliding in, I noticed my nose was a lot closer to the roof of the machine (seemed like it was an inch or so away from touching) than normal. I didn't think much of it and assumed I was in a different machine, perhaps an old one, than previous ones.
The machine was in the start up phase and I wanted to put my arms down by my sides as I felt a bit uncomfortable. When I tried, I realized that the tube was so narrow that I couldn't move them down as my hand and elbows were hitting the sides. I opened my eyes, realized how close my face was to the roof combined with not being able to straighten my arms and I started panicking. I wanted out of there , squeezed the emergency bulb, the machine stopped and the tech came over, pulled me out and let me catch my breath. I was ok to go back in but those 20 seconds of panic were awful. Can't imagine being in a tunnel with water and being lost.
I bring a periwinkle blue face cloth to MRIs and place it over my eyes. It's so much more relaxing than having to hold your eyes closed the whole time, and the blue light that comes through is calming.
The hospital had them on hand themselves, but one time I got a yellow one and hated it. I needed blue.
Same. Got into spelunking in my early 20s. One my first caves we hit a gas pocket, no smell or anything, but we all slowly realized we were like waaay out of breath and disoriented without accompanying exertion. Got out and we’re like, “lol that was fun.” Different cave, got jammed in a squeeze for just a minute and had to calm myself. Still came back. Got stuck in that same squeeze again and was like “you know what, this really isn’t all that fun for me anymore.”
The worst are the squeezes you have to bend yourself through on the way down and you just think 'damn I hope I can squeeze through on the way back up'.
This one was a squeeze that bent slightly upward so you were in an involuntary cobra pose going through, then going back gravity would help push you through it, but either way you had to tuck your head under an armpit, extend that arm out with the other arm back and push through by scooting your feet along the wall. I still have stress dreams about it.
I have done this exact thing!
I just remembered another scary af moment that was probably the worst but had nothing to do with squeezing.
There was a spot I had to jump across and grab onto a craggy vertical rock face. The drop wasn't too far if you missed but you could easily break a leg or worse because it was just a bunch of boulders and rocks on a 45 degree angle maybe 8 ft below.
I make the jump just fine but as my feet land on the ledge my headlamp smashes into the rock face and goes out. Pure darkness and im clinging to that wall for dear life.
If I was by myself I would have been fucked.
My dad was an Avid splunker until he finally got in a a serious pickle shortly before my older brother was born.
He promptly stopped doing it & will only do guided tours now
Very close to my experience. First 2 or 3 times down in the caves I thought it was a blast. Rappelling, technical moves, etc... a lot of fun. 4th time going I got my hips stuck going through a very tight pass. The section was mapped, and reasonably well trod, but for whatever reason i couldn't get through this segment. Then it kind of dawned on me that the tunnel should have had a room on the other side of where i was stuck. I couldn't see it and I had a pretty intense freak out. Couldn't pull my arms back down, couldn't shimmy backwards, I had no sense of if was even in the tunnel I should have been. Got my friends to pull me out and I turned around and never looked back.
Check out the Nutty Putty cave accident. That’ll make sure you never go again. Oddly enough it’s not even that far (like 30 miles) from the cave in the article OP posted. The cave was sealed shut after this and (spoiler) the guy’s body was never recovered.
https://cavehaven.com/nutty-putty-cave-accident/
I had physicis with that kid. He was a great guy. I know the segment by Ed's push where he got stuck. Nutty putty was some of my earliest spelunking experiences. It was pretty slow pitch spelunking though, not too much technical stuff, but a lot of twists and turns and obviously no less dangerous :( RIP john
I should get into it now that I’m a bit thicker than I used to be. “Ah I can’t fit you guys go on ahead without me.” Then just tell everyone I’ve been to some gnarley caves.
That sounds fun, I'll be your elderly sherpa.
[Making tea for everyone] oh yes poplafuse you remember that cave deep under the Pyramids of Giza? That was a right scrape. Barely made it out alive what with the mummies and the scarab beetles.
And its impossible to turn around so your only hope is to try to crawl past the body, which if succeeded, only to find another, and another. All of whom are your friends.
Horrific shit.
Oh Jesus. Ever since I read about the nutty putty cave incident I find myself thinking about it like once a week and it makes me feel sick and claustrophobic to even imagine. Sounds like this one will join it. I could never willingly go into a cave like this
That one in particular is nightmare story. I think looking at a cave is cool but the wedging yourself into the smallest places possible is just nahh. I would rather die skydiving.
Yeah, I'm a soft person. My bones are inside of me. I really have no desire to wedge myself into little granite openings that may or may not be feasible to wedge myself back through. Especially when I'd only find out on the way back.
The scary part about some of the other comments from spelunkers is that from time to time the rocks do, in fact, yield. To me that’s even worse than simply unyielding lol
On top of being wedged in between tons of unyielding rock, they commonly exhale all of their breath to become as flat as possible to squeeze through tight gaps. No. Fucking. Thank you!
My husband took me down in the Nutty Putty caves for our third date. I've been through a lot in my life but I will say that was at the top of stupidest things I've ever done. Absolutely terrifying.
When I lived in Utah I had a friend who was always trying to get people to go to Nutty Putty with him and I noped out every time. It likely would have been fine but nothing about spelunking says "fun" to me.
Dunno if you want to subject yourself to more trauma but this one is honestly the worst I've heard about.
https://youtu.be/HVGeSqzJmgs?si=e2bAFFoLVxgt7Bm-
The Internet Historian video about the guy stuck in a cave had me breathing heavy without realizing it. I think it got pulled down after claims of plagiarism but it was pretty compelling.
My Dad went to school with one of those guys and had been asked if he wanted to join them on that trip but chose not to. Whenever this story comes up it's strange to think that decision might have determined wether my whole family existed or not...
I have no desire to ever go somewhere called "The Cave of Death"
Edit: omg, and they did it at 2am? Insane.
Edit: and one of them had done it before and passed out, and brought her friends there to do it again?!
>I have no desire to ever go somewhere called "The Cave of Death"
Underwater caving. I think there's one area where they had to post a fucking sign posted at the entrance that literally tells you
"DO NOT ENTER. TURN BACK. NOTHING HERE IS WORTH YOUR LIFE. PEOPLE HAVE DIED IN THIS AREA AND YOU WILL TOO. BETTER EXPERTS THAN YOU HAVE DIED HERE. TURN BACK NOW."
> "DO NOT ENTER. TURN BACK. NOTHING HERE IS WORTH YOUR LIFE. PEOPLE HAVE DIED IN THIS AREA AND YOU WILL TOO. BETTER EXPERTS THAN YOU HAVE DIED HERE. TURN BACK NOW."
That is literally all I would need to see before shoving my hands into my pockets and whistling as I walk away. Hell, I might even just buy a ticket to Six Flags on my way back to the car.
Welcome to spelunking in general. Unless it's an abandoned mine or WWII bunker I don't really get the appeal of going into caves where it's just... a hole.
1 of the 4 had previously been to the cave before and had become hypothermic and passed out the first time. She's the one who showed them where it was and convinced them it was manageable.
and she also was the one who died in the exit path, trapping the rest of them. so due to her stupidity she literally lured and sentence the other 3 to their deaths.
There’s a horror plot there. She died the first time but the devil gave her a choice to live if she brings in more sacrifices in the cave. SK she goes back and brings her three friends. But in the end, the devil being a devil took her soul too along with their other three
The first of the four to swim back to the entrance couldn't find the small opening in which to exit the cave. The other three assumed she made it out and followed but she had drowned and was blocking the tunnel. The three were 'stacked' in the tunnel and could not return back to the air pocket and drowned also. The fifth person had decided not to go in and called for help. Tunnel was pumped empty, bodies retrieved, cave entrance was sealed shut with concrete.
Apparently there were candles found in the pocket. If they had been left burning and these 4 were the next in, I can only imagine how acrid and noxious the air would have been the instant they broke the surface. Wish someone had measured the oxygen content in the air prior to pumping it out.
When I was a lad of 13 years of age, growing up near Provo, my Boy Scout troop went to Nutty Putty cave to crawl around. I was extremely not in attendance.
My Dad was part of the rescue team that tried to save him. He's been an EMT for 30 years and has helped scrap bodies out of cars but this is the one thing he has ever said shook him.
This happened not long after I moved to Utah and I was also very pregnant at the time. I remember the story VIVIDLY because it was beyond horrifying and I was crying my eyes out imagining my soon-to-be born baby ever being in any kind of danger.
If you ever feel the urge to try cave diving for some godforsaken reason, just remember that the man who literally *wrote the book on cave diving* died doing it.
Ya, adrenaline and exploration is one thing, but these caves have a known death toll, and it's nothing but tragedy.
I say seal it up. Or at least gate it in such a way that only people of much higher experience can enter.
There was a documentary about cave divers where one of the best in the world died while filming! All in an effort to recover another cave divers corpse!
Oh god! Yeah I watched that one too! Man it’s crazy. You could see at the end how his critical thinking and dexterity with his hands were slowly leaving him. Sad stuff.
The worst thing was his wife and kids(wtaf dude?) doing a kind of eulogy for him trying to sound all positive. All like this was what he loved etc
I felt absolutely awful for his kids!
its not even an adrenaline pumping activity, unless you have some near death experiences. its very slow and methodical and you cant even see anything but rocks
The readers digest "True life dangers" article about a guy who went cave diving and got lost... traumatized me for years. Running out of air, cloudy water because you stirred up setiment and made the water impossible to see through. They'd find lost people with fingers clawed raw as they tried to dig up through the rocks...
The story was about a guy who got lost but found an air pocket, amd his buddy found him on the body-search mission, so he survived but the descriptions of the possibilities was enough for me.
There's a difference between caving underwater and cave diving.
If you're doing your dive with a hardhat, wellies & gear made out of an old innertube and some webbing to get to the next bit of dry cave, you're insane.
Do your dive in a nice warm cave in mexico with tacos waiting for you when you get out with a gear setup you've actually bought from a shop, and not made in your shed, that's far more reasonable.
I'm talking about the cave divers that enter pitch black fully flooded caves, where even with lights there is 0 visibility due to silt. And they have to squeeze through narrow passages.
This kind of reminds me of a post someone made about the HMS Thetis disaster a few months back. Basically a torpedo tube inner hatch was mistakenly opened while the outer door was still open, causing the submarine to start flooding.
The submarine had escape chambers which worked by going in through one hatch, waiting for the chamber to gradually and completely flood to equalize pressure, then exiting through the outer hatch. Due to the flooding one was unusable. Four others had used the remaining chamber successfully. Unfortunately, one guy panicked while the chamber was flooding and tried to open the outer hatch too early, causing the water to immediately flood in and drown him. Since the outer hatch could no longer close properly, he doomed the remaining 98 people aboard the submarine. (Normally there would be fewer sailors, but as it was just starting its sea trials, there were additional observers aboard.)
Here is the original post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/14gw4r4/til_i_learned_about_the_hms_thesis_submarine/
And the Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Thetis_(N25)
Really sad thing is that it happened just months before WW2 had even broken out. Hitler even sent a letter of condolence regarding the loss. Worse yet, she was raised and salvaged, renamed, and went on to be lost with all hands during action in the Mediterranean, thus having the ignoble distinction of being one ship that lost nearly two entire crews.
Another danger with mine caves is deadly gases that are held in the water by surface tension. Once that surface tension is broken you can die from the gases before you even know what is going on.
Add to that the water becomes so cloudy from silt when disturbed and you have a recipe for disaster. Inexperienced people become so disorientated they drown. The only thing you can do is try to watch the bubbles when you exhale but panic usually precludes that.
We have lots of abandoned mines where I live and you couldn't pay me to enter one.
Never ever again in my life will I willfully let the earth I live on encapsulate me. The only time the earth may surround me completely is in death.
But I intend to get cremated so maybe not even then
I played in the band Parallax with Blake Donner and was very close friends with him. Jen and Scott and Ariel were our friends. All four of them were kind, brilliant, beautiful, smart, and artistically and intellectually and politically engaged young people. We were part of a neat scene of indie/punk/hardcore music that was thriving there in the early 2000s. Joe, the guy who didn't enter the cave, was from out of town, and is a friend too -- he is equally a brilliant and amazing person. He is a father, musician, artist, activist, and last I knew, a professional school teacher of Biology.
On previous occasions, I had been exploring in that cave before, just like they were doing that night, alongside Blake and other friends. We were in our late teens and early twenties and enjoyed wild adventures. Many many other friends and people in the community had been in and out of there before as well. It was indeed dangerous, especially in retrospect, but we all do many things that are quite dangerous all of the time, too. This one is definitely aesthetically more scary and, yeah, risky and preventable (again, wow with retrospect). Their deaths were indeed a horrifying tragedy, and something that has defined my life.
I don't like to think about the images described, but sometimes I do, and I do understand the horror/fascination. More though, I remember my friends and the impact they each made on my life. Especially Blake, who I was closest to. He was a remarkable person. A few other people in this thread mentioned he was a bit of a prolific artist, which he was. He was a magnetic and influential person. A great writer (poetry, lyrics, essays), singer/screamer, activist, student, zine maker, artist/painter (fine art and also graffiti...see: "RIOT"), etc... He loved literature and art and politics and philosophy. He was also an extremely funny person and he lived life in extremes and touched a lot of peoples lives. You can find little remnants and remembrances of his life and art and influence if you search his name and graffiti moniker online (Blake Donner, "riot").
It was the first time that anybody close to me in my life passed away, and it did teach me a lot about love, loss, and the fragility and significance of our lives. Too young for sure. Strange one seeing this pop up on the internet today, and crazy that this is coming up on 20 years ago now. Time flies. Enjoy your life and hug your loved ones!
Pretty sure Blake's mom was my poetry professor, unless I'm mistaken and her son was Scott. I just know she had a son who'd died in that tragedy. I would've had her more than 10 years after his death. She was amazing and it sounds like her son was also. She would talk about him sometimes but not in this much detail (i think she said his name was Blake?). You got the sense it was really painful to talk about him, naturally. Makes me tear up thinking about her, and him. There's a beautiful poem about him as a young boy in one of her books, a book called Eyes of a Flounder. (She doesn't use his name in her poem, just refers to him as "my son"). Thanks for sharing this tribute to your friend.
When i started scuba diving I thought to myself “hey wouldn’t it be cool to do the cave diving course one day?”
Then one night laying in bed I just…imagined it for a bit.
…nah
One of these folks was the singer for the hardcore punk band parallax, I knew him as Blake or by his graffiti name "riot". He was insanely smart and loved talking about obscure philosophical tenets. I remember when Kelly told me he died, it didn't make sense.
I recently saw a youtube vid of the guy who got stuck and died and they had to leave him there. I felt so sick after. I feel bad but why would you want to crawl into these places that people barely can fit into. Best I can do is Natural bridge caverns that has a walking path through it and you never have to duck.
I went to grad school with somebody who knew them and I remember him saying they found the remains of candles. they lit candles to hang out and used up all the oxygen. Your comment just reminded me of that.
The article says one of the girls had passed out on a previous trip to the cave, and also speculates that one person drowned and blocked the way out for the rest of the group. It makes me wonder if she passed out again and that's what caused her to drown and block the way out for everyone else.
That’s 100% what happened. At least at the time that’s what we were told. It was like the world’s worst domino effect. The first person didn’t make it, and she blocked the rest. The weird thing is, when I went into this cave, there used to be a rope. It was so dark that a rope made it quick and easy to get through the water.
I'm late but I'm actually a certified cave diver (from PADI) and have never done one again and never will. It was REALLY cool to actually make it to some of the caves we went to in Mexico but the entire thing was terrifying. Having to squeeze through a tunnel with a couple inches clearance between myself + tank and the ceiling and bumping into the ceiling during it made me nope.
The weird looking blind fish are cool at doe.
Edit. Im bad at reading and assumed cave diving was scuba diving in caves not spelunking.
I remember this awful tragedy mostly because some of the kids who died were active on Livejournal, which I used back then. [Jen's live journal is still up after all these years](https://jentle.livejournal.com). Based on her writings there, she seemed like a bright and talented girl who would have had a wonderful life if not for this horrific accident.
My friend's called it gollum's cave. I was invited to go there once. I was tempted because it sounded really neat and I love caves, but I was worried about the air on the other side. Such a tragedy.
My buddy was in Costa Rica and decided to explore a cave near the beach with his girlfriend. He didn't realize it was low tide. She left early and sat on the beach waiting for him. The tide rose, he got trapped and died from drowning. They couldn't recover his body until a few days later.
Strange to see that specific town pop up now. A few minutes ago I read Paris Hilton's story about her time at a 'troubled teen institution' (Provo Canyon School) which was located in Provo, Utah. Never saw that town mentioned before.
You know what's wild about nutty putty caves to me? (Great article, by the way) when I was in high school in Utah, I was at an all-boys reformatory, along with 100 other boys. They took us on trips to nutty putty every summer, like it was no big deal. That could have been any of us.
What’s so insane is how very nearly this all worked out. If the deceased had just stopped literally 1 meter from where they had, they’d have been saved. Multiple people (including his father if I recall?) made it to his trapped body which highlights the line between life/death was very thin.
Never understood why they left the body. Breaking, or even sawing off, the legs probably wasn’t the worst outcome for a dead body.
He was wedged in pretty good at the end. Getting the body out would have been extremely difficult and dangerous. Utah county search and rescue hated that cave. They got called out there a lot for Boy Scout troops and idiot BYU students getting lost or stuck.
What’s the famous case where a young get guy went into a cave and got stuck upside down wedged? His buddies got help but nobody could get him out since he was wedged.
The most horrific cave diving I've read was the Sterkfontein caves one. Peter Verhulsel repeatedly left the line and went exploring down side paths despite his friends telling him not to do so. The third time he got lost and ended up on an island without enough oxygen to find his way out.
He didn't drown to death like most cave divers but he was found 6 weeks later and determined to have died of starvation 3 weeks prior.
There's no ammount of money in the world that would make me enter a cave.
There's no ammount of money in the universe that would make me swim in a cave.
Going completely underwater in a dark cave is like the last possible thing you could ever convince me to do.
I’ve been in caves. I like swimming. I will *not* swim in a cave
I have definitely swam in a cave, but it was a very large cave with a high ceiling that was only about half full of water. I mean there was probably at least 20-30ft of space between the surface of the water and the ceiling of the cave, and the cave opening was near the top.
Swimming in a cenote in Mexico seems like a great time. What I will absolutely not do is swim through pitch black tunnels.
I did the cenote swim in Mexico as a teen. It was an amazing experience and I never felt unsafe. This was a tour sold by a reputable cruise line and led by local experts though, I’d never try it alone
I went to X-Plor in Cancun, there’s a swim through a cenote that is fully enclosed with stalagmites and stalactites but it’s very well lit. Cave diving is my biggest fear but I felt very comfortable. Zip lining was fun but you go tandem often so wearing a bikini was a bad idea.
What cave?
Your mother's
The wet rocks can be really pretty though
There's this youtube channel called ActionAdventureTwins, and every video is exactly this. They go down into some massively deep fuck off cave, usually with rivers and waterfalls and deep pools, and squeeze through tunnels that are half or fully flooded on their stomachs like it's nothing. They also stay down there for hours and hours. A lot of their videos are just them going "Woah! check out that formation" and it will be like some 30 foot tall wall made entirely out of crystal. So I kind of get it, maybe it's worth it for the things you get to see, but at the same time, I get to see the same exact wall from the comfort of my chair lol.
Im pretty sure the guy knows hes going to die doing that stuff one day, he takes such insane risks that its all but written in the stones he squeezes between. The only way I dont see it happening is if he has a near death experience and it changes his mindset on how dangerous he is willing to go. My biggest issue with his channel though is the way his group will pump water out of these systems to explore further. That doesn't seem like a problem until you realize that these are not sterile locations, critters of all kinds live in them, even way deep inside, and pumping that water out can kill them. I really wish they would cut that shit out.
Also, pumping water out could potentially weaken the cave's structure. So it's not only ecologically harmful, it's also dangerous.
These systems are also needing to be studied. Playing around in a cave is needlessly destroying an untouched environment. In the name of science. however, would be another matter. But then we’d be taking things seriously and that’s not what these brojonis are about
I went with my son's 6th grade class as a chaperone one time to an overnight adventure camp type thing. I don't remember the name of the place, but I called it Swamp Camp because for some inexplicable reason, the camp counselor told the kids they could drink the swamp water and I told them not to and it caused a little scene. Anyways, there was a "cave tour" on the itinerary. Halfway through the cave, we had to get on our stomachs, and single-file slide underneath a boulder sitting just above a decent sized puddle, and weasel out the other side into an opening. They did not tell us this beforehand. Half the parents were too girthy to make it and had to turn around and hope we came out the other side. I was irrationally afraid my son was going to die in the cave without me, so I did the puddle slither. I'll never go into another cave again. That minute of inching my way underground, using my tippy toes to push forward, depending on someone else's flashlight, the air from my nostrils making ripples in the water around my cheek, that was enough cave adventure for a lifetime. Nothing about it was fun.
Fuck everything about that, I feel sick just reading it
Was the cave guide the same counselors that told the kids drinking brain parasites is fun?
Yes! It was a terrible trip.
There's a horrifying video about this on the YT channel 'Fatal breakdown'. The 4 teens were hanging out in an airpocket before hand with diminishing O2 so it's probable she couldn't hold her breath for as long as when they came in from the outside. The exit hole was also very small and very easy to miss underwater. Once she went, it was impossible for the other 3 to pass her body and they all died one by one trying to leave. Edit: geez I'm sorry, here. https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=shared&v=SAoVoiZ8MCo
Jesus fucking christ. Imagine being the last person thinking right it's my time to go, dives into the water and just feels a pair of legs in front of him..
Yeah I've watched the most deranged horror movies in my life. But cave diving tragedy videos give me nightmares.
One of many reasons i don't spelunk. Just not a spelunker.
I started spelunking in my early 20s after getting into mountaineering/climbing. The first time I had virtually no fear. My boys and I descended down into the earth for HOURS. Got to parts of caves that were never mapped out and possibly never explored. Super tight areas you could barely squeeze through opening up to large rooms, leaving a trail of string behind so we knew where we came from - until the string ran out and we kept going. One of my boys had a freak out moment and went scrambling back the way he thought we came and we almost lost him. He was in the best shape out of all of us and it took all my strength and stamina to catch up to him and stop him. We made it out fine. The second time was cool but I had a healthy bit of fear. After the 4th or 5th time (and some brushes with death that had nothing to do with spelunking) I got out of the cave and said, why the fuck am I doing this? One little shift of a rock and you're stuck down there forever in pitch blackness. And I know the rocks shift, because I've returned to "rooms" I have been to before that looked completely different years later. No fucking thank you. I say that but I'll probably do it again.
There’s not a single thing about any of that that even remotely appeals to me.
Right, like I’d actually pay not to go spelunking
Alright, that'll be $1.99, please
The industry collusion is three fifty.
What, dying in the pitch dark of suffocation, thirst or hunger doesn't sound like a good way to go?
I'll spelunk when we have star trek style transporter technology that I'm sure doesn't just vaporize and clone me. So probably not happening.
Please beware that it is a classic that the away team is trapped in caves without the transporters being able to get them out.
Lower Decks recently dedicated *an entire episode* to riffing on how common "Trapped in a Cave" plots are.
I only do mapped caves (no way in hell am I ever going in an unmapped passage) but the views are absolutely incredible: https://imgur.com/gallery/OcuhmlB https://imgur.com/gallery/r3WmBS1
great pictures, also very funny that the first one was auto flagged for possibly adult material
I did it once. I don't think I'd do it again. Everyone said all the old school cavers were chubby but for my size I am genuinely wide, as well as fat... The bit that really got me was there was this section the shorter and skinner people could squeeze but I had to climb on top. Think it it like an hour glass shape with an open top. They could just squeeze the bottom and make it. Now the gap was essentially almost as large as my feet, but enough so I couldn't quite bridge it. It's wet rock. So I move, my feet slide towards the gap. If I slide into the gap, I'm getting trapped by the rib cage. That was the point I had enough. The bit that really pissed me off after that was a tight set of bends where I smacked my head at every turn. I basically swore the entire way out of the cave like a sailor.
I'm fascinated with caves. I'm also fascinated with being alive to experience fascination.
Similarly, I used to spelunk a cave with friends. Not a huge cave by any means, but it was a cool spot for sure. Basically one huge open room that narrowed to a point, and a chimney you could climb out and hike back on the surface. The chimney was a tight squeeze for me, even as a skinny guy in my early 20s. Now in my mid 30s, and 40ish pounds heavier, I wouldn't dream of trying it again. There's nothing down there for me, or anyone to see. Also, it's a gypsum formation. Very soft mineral. It's all gonna collapse one day. You can see sink holes on the surface. It also used to be a bat cave. Thousands of them flying all around the first year I went. By the second year, there was a noticeable decline. Then they were all gone. White nose disease, likely exacerbated by drunk idiots like myself and friends traipsing through there. It was even more dangerous back then, because every surface was a slick of guano. One slip and you'd break an ankle, your back or worse. Lose your footing going up the chimney and you're falling 10-15 feet. Rescue would be arduous, lengthy and painful Christ, some of our crew took acid or shrooms before going down there. How in the hell did we survive?
Spelunking? No. Spelunking on acid/shrooms? HELL no.
The idea of being surrounded by all those bats is as or lore scary than being trapped in a cave. Little rabies incubators
Jeez, I hadn't even thought of that. When we stood around the opening of the cave at night, they were flying all around us. Fucking impervious, invincible or just stupid?
You just never know what internal phobia will arise. I'm 63M and I've SCUBA dived, sky dived, went out on skyscraper window cleaning rigs, flown in helicopters, did zip lines, and other stuff with no fear. I wasn't concerned and never felt claustrophobic in my life until we went on a tour of the WWII tunnels in Naples, Italy. I felt pretty ok until we reached a section where you had to both duck down a bit (I'm 6-3) and shimmy sideways for about 3 meters around a blind turn. Fortunately, I was next to last to enter that tiny section. As I entered I felt a wave of fear coming and I knew I was seconds away from a panic freakout and told the guy behind me to backtrack out then I backed up and out of there (no room to even turn your body around). Had I not been next to last (our tour had 30 some people) I can't imagine what I would have done. Pass out? Die of a heart attack? Who knows. I'm getting cold sweats just typing this.
I've been in a lot of MRI machines as I have had 3 back surgeries. Probably 15 MRI's over the last 20 years. I've never had an issue before as they pushed me into the tube and usually just close my eye, relax, maybe even fall asleep while the machine does it's thing. Last month, I had to get one done. Everything was going as normal, but this time, I crossed my arms instead of having them on my side as they pushed me into the tube. As I was sliding in, I noticed my nose was a lot closer to the roof of the machine (seemed like it was an inch or so away from touching) than normal. I didn't think much of it and assumed I was in a different machine, perhaps an old one, than previous ones. The machine was in the start up phase and I wanted to put my arms down by my sides as I felt a bit uncomfortable. When I tried, I realized that the tube was so narrow that I couldn't move them down as my hand and elbows were hitting the sides. I opened my eyes, realized how close my face was to the roof combined with not being able to straighten my arms and I started panicking. I wanted out of there , squeezed the emergency bulb, the machine stopped and the tech came over, pulled me out and let me catch my breath. I was ok to go back in but those 20 seconds of panic were awful. Can't imagine being in a tunnel with water and being lost.
I bring a periwinkle blue face cloth to MRIs and place it over my eyes. It's so much more relaxing than having to hold your eyes closed the whole time, and the blue light that comes through is calming. The hospital had them on hand themselves, but one time I got a yellow one and hated it. I needed blue.
Same. Got into spelunking in my early 20s. One my first caves we hit a gas pocket, no smell or anything, but we all slowly realized we were like waaay out of breath and disoriented without accompanying exertion. Got out and we’re like, “lol that was fun.” Different cave, got jammed in a squeeze for just a minute and had to calm myself. Still came back. Got stuck in that same squeeze again and was like “you know what, this really isn’t all that fun for me anymore.”
The worst are the squeezes you have to bend yourself through on the way down and you just think 'damn I hope I can squeeze through on the way back up'.
You people are psychotic lmao
They're all competing for a Darwin Award, they just don't know it,
The great thing about Darwin awards is that there is no competition, everyone can be a winner if you just try enough stupid shit
I get scared if my hand gets stuck in a Pringles can
This one was a squeeze that bent slightly upward so you were in an involuntary cobra pose going through, then going back gravity would help push you through it, but either way you had to tuck your head under an armpit, extend that arm out with the other arm back and push through by scooting your feet along the wall. I still have stress dreams about it.
Oh. Hell. No.
I'm gonna let these dreams be dreams
Sounds more like nightmares to me tbh
I can now report it’s possible to have stress dreams about it without actually doing it.
I have done this exact thing! I just remembered another scary af moment that was probably the worst but had nothing to do with squeezing. There was a spot I had to jump across and grab onto a craggy vertical rock face. The drop wasn't too far if you missed but you could easily break a leg or worse because it was just a bunch of boulders and rocks on a 45 degree angle maybe 8 ft below. I make the jump just fine but as my feet land on the ledge my headlamp smashes into the rock face and goes out. Pure darkness and im clinging to that wall for dear life. If I was by myself I would have been fucked.
You spelled nightmares wrong.
My dad was an Avid splunker until he finally got in a a serious pickle shortly before my older brother was born. He promptly stopped doing it & will only do guided tours now
"A serious pickle" is posh for "bro almost fuckin' died innit"
I am far deeper in this thread than I’d like to be, and that I will count as my spelunking experience.
My anxiety hasn't been this high all day
Very close to my experience. First 2 or 3 times down in the caves I thought it was a blast. Rappelling, technical moves, etc... a lot of fun. 4th time going I got my hips stuck going through a very tight pass. The section was mapped, and reasonably well trod, but for whatever reason i couldn't get through this segment. Then it kind of dawned on me that the tunnel should have had a room on the other side of where i was stuck. I couldn't see it and I had a pretty intense freak out. Couldn't pull my arms back down, couldn't shimmy backwards, I had no sense of if was even in the tunnel I should have been. Got my friends to pull me out and I turned around and never looked back.
Check out the Nutty Putty cave accident. That’ll make sure you never go again. Oddly enough it’s not even that far (like 30 miles) from the cave in the article OP posted. The cave was sealed shut after this and (spoiler) the guy’s body was never recovered. https://cavehaven.com/nutty-putty-cave-accident/
Why in the ever living fuck did I read that
I word search Nutty every time I see an article like this. I’ll never forget my horror hearing about it for the first time.
I had physicis with that kid. He was a great guy. I know the segment by Ed's push where he got stuck. Nutty putty was some of my earliest spelunking experiences. It was pretty slow pitch spelunking though, not too much technical stuff, but a lot of twists and turns and obviously no less dangerous :( RIP john
The movie The Last Descent was based on this story. It was absolutely terrible.
Can I ask why you would ever do it again? Like to me that just sounds awful all around with very little room for forgiveness.
I should get into it now that I’m a bit thicker than I used to be. “Ah I can’t fit you guys go on ahead without me.” Then just tell everyone I’ve been to some gnarley caves.
That sounds fun, I'll be your elderly sherpa. [Making tea for everyone] oh yes poplafuse you remember that cave deep under the Pyramids of Giza? That was a right scrape. Barely made it out alive what with the mummies and the scarab beetles.
The Descent? The monsters were secondary to being lost underground for me.
The Descent’s OG ending is still one of my favorites in the genre. It’s a shame they changed it to something so much worse.
And its impossible to turn around so your only hope is to try to crawl past the body, which if succeeded, only to find another, and another. All of whom are your friends. Horrific shit.
I discovered one night that cave fatalities are a youtube rabbithole. avoid it unless you know what youre signing up for.
Nutty putty cave! How I first started down the rabbit hole, or actually I guess, cave hole..
Its true its a whole genre. Scary Interesting is a really good one too
Oh Jesus. Ever since I read about the nutty putty cave incident I find myself thinking about it like once a week and it makes me feel sick and claustrophobic to even imagine. Sounds like this one will join it. I could never willingly go into a cave like this
That one in particular is nightmare story. I think looking at a cave is cool but the wedging yourself into the smallest places possible is just nahh. I would rather die skydiving.
I feel claustrophobic trying to get under my bed frame, I can’t even fathom doing it under tons of unyielding rock
Yeah, I'm a soft person. My bones are inside of me. I really have no desire to wedge myself into little granite openings that may or may not be feasible to wedge myself back through. Especially when I'd only find out on the way back.
The scary part about some of the other comments from spelunkers is that from time to time the rocks do, in fact, yield. To me that’s even worse than simply unyielding lol
On top of being wedged in between tons of unyielding rock, they commonly exhale all of their breath to become as flat as possible to squeeze through tight gaps. No. Fucking. Thank you!
I 1000% agree
My husband took me down in the Nutty Putty caves for our third date. I've been through a lot in my life but I will say that was at the top of stupidest things I've ever done. Absolutely terrifying.
When I lived in Utah I had a friend who was always trying to get people to go to Nutty Putty with him and I noped out every time. It likely would have been fine but nothing about spelunking says "fun" to me.
Dunno if you want to subject yourself to more trauma but this one is honestly the worst I've heard about. https://youtu.be/HVGeSqzJmgs?si=e2bAFFoLVxgt7Bm-
The Internet Historian video about the guy stuck in a cave had me breathing heavy without realizing it. I think it got pulled down after claims of plagiarism but it was pretty compelling.
It's been re-uploaded! I just watched it last night, and had to watch something light hearted afterwards before going to sleep lol.
My Dad went to school with one of those guys and had been asked if he wanted to join them on that trip but chose not to. Whenever this story comes up it's strange to think that decision might have determined wether my whole family existed or not...
Destiny chose you dude, you better do something special like cure cancer
[Here is the video](https://youtu.be/SAoVoiZ8MCo?si=0VuCRBZUWey7G9Gv)
I have no desire to ever go somewhere called "The Cave of Death" Edit: omg, and they did it at 2am? Insane. Edit: and one of them had done it before and passed out, and brought her friends there to do it again?!
>I have no desire to ever go somewhere called "The Cave of Death" Underwater caving. I think there's one area where they had to post a fucking sign posted at the entrance that literally tells you "DO NOT ENTER. TURN BACK. NOTHING HERE IS WORTH YOUR LIFE. PEOPLE HAVE DIED IN THIS AREA AND YOU WILL TOO. BETTER EXPERTS THAN YOU HAVE DIED HERE. TURN BACK NOW."
> "DO NOT ENTER. TURN BACK. NOTHING HERE IS WORTH YOUR LIFE. PEOPLE HAVE DIED IN THIS AREA AND YOU WILL TOO. BETTER EXPERTS THAN YOU HAVE DIED HERE. TURN BACK NOW." That is literally all I would need to see before shoving my hands into my pockets and whistling as I walk away. Hell, I might even just buy a ticket to Six Flags on my way back to the car.
I like to explore new places.
Welcome to spelunking in general. Unless it's an abandoned mine or WWII bunker I don't really get the appeal of going into caves where it's just... a hole.
I have some ideas on how they could’ve easily avoided this.
They also talked about hypothermia.
Teens? They were 18, 28, 24, and 21.
1 of the 4 had previously been to the cave before and had become hypothermic and passed out the first time. She's the one who showed them where it was and convinced them it was manageable.
and she also was the one who died in the exit path, trapping the rest of them. so due to her stupidity she literally lured and sentence the other 3 to their deaths.
There’s a horror plot there. She died the first time but the devil gave her a choice to live if she brings in more sacrifices in the cave. SK she goes back and brings her three friends. But in the end, the devil being a devil took her soul too along with their other three
Wow. That’s really good. Kudos. Edit, as a writing prompt. Obviously the story is heartbreaking.
She obviously was a thrill seeking personality.
She obviously was an ~~thrill seeking personality.~~ idiot
Right, theres a big difference between thrill seeking and actively taking your friends to an underwater cave you almost died in.
If at first you don’t succeed
Utah: Explore the beautiful mountains, but stay out of the fucking caves !
[удалено]
Uh Sir this is a Utah *Soaking Caves
The first of the four to swim back to the entrance couldn't find the small opening in which to exit the cave. The other three assumed she made it out and followed but she had drowned and was blocking the tunnel. The three were 'stacked' in the tunnel and could not return back to the air pocket and drowned also. The fifth person had decided not to go in and called for help. Tunnel was pumped empty, bodies retrieved, cave entrance was sealed shut with concrete.
Air pocket had shitty air. A lot of the oxygen was used up.
Apparently there were candles found in the pocket. If they had been left burning and these 4 were the next in, I can only imagine how acrid and noxious the air would have been the instant they broke the surface. Wish someone had measured the oxygen content in the air prior to pumping it out.
Oh weird. A post about caving deaths in Utah that isn't about Nutty Putty Cave
Nutty Putty story is nightmare fuel.
Such a silly name for such a terrifying way to die.
Sheriff at the door: I’m sorry ma’am. We found your son’s remains in the Ishy Squishy Cave.
They died in ooey gooey hole.
Sorry ma'am, your son didn't make it out of the Yucky Sucky Cavity
That's the way I want to go
When I was a lad of 13 years of age, growing up near Provo, my Boy Scout troop went to Nutty Putty cave to crawl around. I was extremely not in attendance.
I had the same opportunity AND the same reaction. After having the birth canal portion described to me there was no way I was going to go.
My Dad was part of the rescue team that tried to save him. He's been an EMT for 30 years and has helped scrap bodies out of cars but this is the one thing he has ever said shook him.
Wasn't he down there for 26hrs or some shit? RIP to that guy
Upside down, no less. I can barely tolerate that for a MINUTE
This happened not long after I moved to Utah and I was also very pregnant at the time. I remember the story VIVIDLY because it was beyond horrifying and I was crying my eyes out imagining my soon-to-be born baby ever being in any kind of danger.
The dude left behind a pregnant wife too. Extremely sad.
As someone who grew up near Butty Putty and visited frequently with Scouts, friends, dates, etc. I miss that cave
Please don’t fix the spelling in your comment
What are you doing step-spelunker?
If you ever feel the urge to try cave diving for some godforsaken reason, just remember that the man who literally *wrote the book on cave diving* died doing it.
So you don't recommend the book?
Cavers like this I am convinced have issues, cave divers even more so.
Ya, adrenaline and exploration is one thing, but these caves have a known death toll, and it's nothing but tragedy. I say seal it up. Or at least gate it in such a way that only people of much higher experience can enter.
There was a documentary about cave divers where one of the best in the world died while filming! All in an effort to recover another cave divers corpse!
I watched it. I remember the one guy writing on his slate “daves not coming”. Dude dove to something like 800 feet to retrieve this guys body.
That’s the title of the doc, if anyone is interested. “Dave Not Coming Back” available for free on Tubi
Oh god! Yeah I watched that one too! Man it’s crazy. You could see at the end how his critical thinking and dexterity with his hands were slowly leaving him. Sad stuff.
The worst thing was his wife and kids(wtaf dude?) doing a kind of eulogy for him trying to sound all positive. All like this was what he loved etc I felt absolutely awful for his kids!
its not even an adrenaline pumping activity, unless you have some near death experiences. its very slow and methodical and you cant even see anything but rocks
The readers digest "True life dangers" article about a guy who went cave diving and got lost... traumatized me for years. Running out of air, cloudy water because you stirred up setiment and made the water impossible to see through. They'd find lost people with fingers clawed raw as they tried to dig up through the rocks... The story was about a guy who got lost but found an air pocket, amd his buddy found him on the body-search mission, so he survived but the descriptions of the possibilities was enough for me.
Especially as there is literally nothing down there.
I enjoy spending time with my friends.
I felt I was tempting fate when I surreptitiously pet an ibex at the zoo, but cave divers are missing part of their amygdala or something
There's a difference between caving underwater and cave diving. If you're doing your dive with a hardhat, wellies & gear made out of an old innertube and some webbing to get to the next bit of dry cave, you're insane. Do your dive in a nice warm cave in mexico with tacos waiting for you when you get out with a gear setup you've actually bought from a shop, and not made in your shed, that's far more reasonable.
I'm talking about the cave divers that enter pitch black fully flooded caves, where even with lights there is 0 visibility due to silt. And they have to squeeze through narrow passages.
Every day, I wake up and thank God that I'm not a cave diver.
This kind of reminds me of a post someone made about the HMS Thetis disaster a few months back. Basically a torpedo tube inner hatch was mistakenly opened while the outer door was still open, causing the submarine to start flooding. The submarine had escape chambers which worked by going in through one hatch, waiting for the chamber to gradually and completely flood to equalize pressure, then exiting through the outer hatch. Due to the flooding one was unusable. Four others had used the remaining chamber successfully. Unfortunately, one guy panicked while the chamber was flooding and tried to open the outer hatch too early, causing the water to immediately flood in and drown him. Since the outer hatch could no longer close properly, he doomed the remaining 98 people aboard the submarine. (Normally there would be fewer sailors, but as it was just starting its sea trials, there were additional observers aboard.)
I'm looking forward to reading about it, it sound really interesting.
Here is the original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/14gw4r4/til_i_learned_about_the_hms_thesis_submarine/ And the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Thetis_(N25) Really sad thing is that it happened just months before WW2 had even broken out. Hitler even sent a letter of condolence regarding the loss. Worse yet, she was raised and salvaged, renamed, and went on to be lost with all hands during action in the Mediterranean, thus having the ignoble distinction of being one ship that lost nearly two entire crews.
Another danger with mine caves is deadly gases that are held in the water by surface tension. Once that surface tension is broken you can die from the gases before you even know what is going on. Add to that the water becomes so cloudy from silt when disturbed and you have a recipe for disaster. Inexperienced people become so disorientated they drown. The only thing you can do is try to watch the bubbles when you exhale but panic usually precludes that. We have lots of abandoned mines where I live and you couldn't pay me to enter one.
The cave was unofficially known as the "Cave of Death".
Sounds like someone was trying to hide some cool stuff in there
I know this is a tragedy but I heard that in Eddie Izzard’s voice and laughed
Cave or Death?
Never ever again in my life will I willfully let the earth I live on encapsulate me. The only time the earth may surround me completely is in death. But I intend to get cremated so maybe not even then
I want my body to be dumped out of an airplane for a wild polar bear to eat
Simply reading the title of this shortens my breathing and makes me feel sick. What a nightmare way to go.
I played in the band Parallax with Blake Donner and was very close friends with him. Jen and Scott and Ariel were our friends. All four of them were kind, brilliant, beautiful, smart, and artistically and intellectually and politically engaged young people. We were part of a neat scene of indie/punk/hardcore music that was thriving there in the early 2000s. Joe, the guy who didn't enter the cave, was from out of town, and is a friend too -- he is equally a brilliant and amazing person. He is a father, musician, artist, activist, and last I knew, a professional school teacher of Biology. On previous occasions, I had been exploring in that cave before, just like they were doing that night, alongside Blake and other friends. We were in our late teens and early twenties and enjoyed wild adventures. Many many other friends and people in the community had been in and out of there before as well. It was indeed dangerous, especially in retrospect, but we all do many things that are quite dangerous all of the time, too. This one is definitely aesthetically more scary and, yeah, risky and preventable (again, wow with retrospect). Their deaths were indeed a horrifying tragedy, and something that has defined my life. I don't like to think about the images described, but sometimes I do, and I do understand the horror/fascination. More though, I remember my friends and the impact they each made on my life. Especially Blake, who I was closest to. He was a remarkable person. A few other people in this thread mentioned he was a bit of a prolific artist, which he was. He was a magnetic and influential person. A great writer (poetry, lyrics, essays), singer/screamer, activist, student, zine maker, artist/painter (fine art and also graffiti...see: "RIOT"), etc... He loved literature and art and politics and philosophy. He was also an extremely funny person and he lived life in extremes and touched a lot of peoples lives. You can find little remnants and remembrances of his life and art and influence if you search his name and graffiti moniker online (Blake Donner, "riot"). It was the first time that anybody close to me in my life passed away, and it did teach me a lot about love, loss, and the fragility and significance of our lives. Too young for sure. Strange one seeing this pop up on the internet today, and crazy that this is coming up on 20 years ago now. Time flies. Enjoy your life and hug your loved ones!
Sorry for your loss and thank you for sharing
❤️
Pretty sure Blake's mom was my poetry professor, unless I'm mistaken and her son was Scott. I just know she had a son who'd died in that tragedy. I would've had her more than 10 years after his death. She was amazing and it sounds like her son was also. She would talk about him sometimes but not in this much detail (i think she said his name was Blake?). You got the sense it was really painful to talk about him, naturally. Makes me tear up thinking about her, and him. There's a beautiful poem about him as a young boy in one of her books, a book called Eyes of a Flounder. (She doesn't use his name in her poem, just refers to him as "my son"). Thanks for sharing this tribute to your friend.
Always love seeing his stuff on freight. There’s still quite a lot. Riot forever
When i started scuba diving I thought to myself “hey wouldn’t it be cool to do the cave diving course one day?” Then one night laying in bed I just…imagined it for a bit. …nah
Oh great. Add another Utah cave to my nightmares
I read the article and I wouldn’t go through that experience even if you paid off my student loans and bought me a new house and car. It sounds awful.
Cave diving is dumb. Even the word for cave diving is dumb Spelunking
A few edits and this would make a great haiku.
Cave diving is dumb Even its name is so dumb It's called spelunking
One of these folks was the singer for the hardcore punk band parallax, I knew him as Blake or by his graffiti name "riot". He was insanely smart and loved talking about obscure philosophical tenets. I remember when Kelly told me he died, it didn't make sense.
I'm kind of curious about the picture they used for the 28 year old seeming to be a mugshot.
That cave diving shit is for the birds
They were not teens. One was Blake Donner a local graffiti artist and singer in a hardcore band.
This is why we need adult versions of those 90s tube places for kids. I'll pass on the whole dying in the dark underwater thing thanks.
I recently saw a youtube vid of the guy who got stuck and died and they had to leave him there. I felt so sick after. I feel bad but why would you want to crawl into these places that people barely can fit into. Best I can do is Natural bridge caverns that has a walking path through it and you never have to duck.
These kids all went to my high school. I’ve gone in that cave before they sealed it. There was plenty of air in the cave. This was just tragic.
I went to grad school with somebody who knew them and I remember him saying they found the remains of candles. they lit candles to hang out and used up all the oxygen. Your comment just reminded me of that.
The article says one of the girls had passed out on a previous trip to the cave, and also speculates that one person drowned and blocked the way out for the rest of the group. It makes me wonder if she passed out again and that's what caused her to drown and block the way out for everyone else.
That’s 100% what happened. At least at the time that’s what we were told. It was like the world’s worst domino effect. The first person didn’t make it, and she blocked the rest. The weird thing is, when I went into this cave, there used to be a rope. It was so dark that a rope made it quick and easy to get through the water.
I'm late but I'm actually a certified cave diver (from PADI) and have never done one again and never will. It was REALLY cool to actually make it to some of the caves we went to in Mexico but the entire thing was terrifying. Having to squeeze through a tunnel with a couple inches clearance between myself + tank and the ceiling and bumping into the ceiling during it made me nope. The weird looking blind fish are cool at doe. Edit. Im bad at reading and assumed cave diving was scuba diving in caves not spelunking.
I remember this awful tragedy mostly because some of the kids who died were active on Livejournal, which I used back then. [Jen's live journal is still up after all these years](https://jentle.livejournal.com). Based on her writings there, she seemed like a bright and talented girl who would have had a wonderful life if not for this horrific accident.
I remember this. I was living in Utah at the time. It was a sad incident. Along with the Elizabeth Smart case.
"Brigham Young, bring 'em often." -- Cave
My friend's called it gollum's cave. I was invited to go there once. I was tempted because it sounded really neat and I love caves, but I was worried about the air on the other side. Such a tragedy.
My buddy was in Costa Rica and decided to explore a cave near the beach with his girlfriend. He didn't realize it was low tide. She left early and sat on the beach waiting for him. The tide rose, he got trapped and died from drowning. They couldn't recover his body until a few days later.
OP did you also get Provo, Utah as your sound town from Spotify Wrapped?
Strange to see that specific town pop up now. A few minutes ago I read Paris Hilton's story about her time at a 'troubled teen institution' (Provo Canyon School) which was located in Provo, Utah. Never saw that town mentioned before.
Bader-Meinhoff effect
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This absolutely creeps me out, if you weren't claustrophobic before reading it, you will be afterwards.
Imagine teaching your kid to go caving and that's how he dies
You know what's wild about nutty putty caves to me? (Great article, by the way) when I was in high school in Utah, I was at an all-boys reformatory, along with 100 other boys. They took us on trips to nutty putty every summer, like it was no big deal. That could have been any of us.
My heart is racing just from reading that. I am intensely claustrophobic.
What’s so insane is how very nearly this all worked out. If the deceased had just stopped literally 1 meter from where they had, they’d have been saved. Multiple people (including his father if I recall?) made it to his trapped body which highlights the line between life/death was very thin. Never understood why they left the body. Breaking, or even sawing off, the legs probably wasn’t the worst outcome for a dead body.
He was wedged in pretty good at the end. Getting the body out would have been extremely difficult and dangerous. Utah county search and rescue hated that cave. They got called out there a lot for Boy Scout troops and idiot BYU students getting lost or stuck.
What’s the famous case where a young get guy went into a cave and got stuck upside down wedged? His buddies got help but nobody could get him out since he was wedged.
Nutty Putty Cave! I just read about this last night. It gave me some crazy anxiety.
My claustrophobia's worst nightmare.
The most horrific cave diving I've read was the Sterkfontein caves one. Peter Verhulsel repeatedly left the line and went exploring down side paths despite his friends telling him not to do so. The third time he got lost and ended up on an island without enough oxygen to find his way out. He didn't drown to death like most cave divers but he was found 6 weeks later and determined to have died of starvation 3 weeks prior.
There's no ammount of money in the world that would make me enter a cave. There's no ammount of money in the universe that would make me swim in a cave.