# When There Was No Wood To Touch



## Ado (Mar 31, 2008)

_Work and family commitments have meant that it's been a long time since I was able to write about something relevant - like kayak fishing. So here's another of my 'short' stories, caving this time, that has a distinct safety theme. The photos aren't mine. I took few and they are on slides, I stole these of the web (suitably attributed). Enjoy or ignore as you see fit._

When there Was No Wood to Touch

The word 'safe' is used by people with insufficient imagination.

There is no such thing as safe. There is only relatively safe. Did you feel safe while sliding sideways, sparks a spattering, on the ball bearings of your first billy-cart? Would you now? Did you feel safe doing your final exams, or opening the results' envelope that would signal your destiny? Did you feel safe before your first date with the person that showed you how strong an emotion love could be? Did you feel safe when you bet a large amount of someone else's faith on your yet untested ability to conduct open heart surgery, machine the cylinders of your bosses Porsche, or design a multi-million dollar biochemical sewage treatment process that looked a lot less committing on the drawings and spreadsheets than after they'd poured the concrete and&#8230;never mind. There are many moments of abject terror in our lives, and many more of humble anxiety. Each feels just as unsafe as the last. Each stimulates the maximum response from our adrenal glands. We are hardly going to die but we can imagine situations where death could be a preferable alternative. Relatively safe never feels relatively safe at the time.

The body's chemistry amplifies stress. It's Darwinian. Stress targets moments in our lives that exude the spectre of consequence. Decisions and actions are distilled through the crafty deployment of hormones. Adrenaline heightens the senses and (if harnessed) clarifies the thought. It is used by the body to protect itself against the usual lack of wits, dexterity and thoughtfulness in our autopilot lives. There is an opposite response during actual trauma. This response is packaged under the neat title of 'shock'. The body usurps the control over our conscious mind and stops it from freaking out in situations where we could do ourselves some real damage. Shock makes us calm in situations that are too dangerous for us to be&#8230;us.

The only thing that feels safe is imminent or realised danger.

This is why I prefer the situations that _seem_ dangerous as I know they're really not. It's not until you start breaking the rules because you _think_ the situation is merely dangerous (relatively safe) that any real harm can come to you.

Caving in Tasmania is not something to fool around with (see _'KD'_). It commands respect and only yields to determined regimentation. It demands the study of new laws and the undying commitment to stick to them. Just surviving the cold and fatigue is worthy enough. Somehow you also have to maintain enough wits to undertake complex rope-work where a thoughtless mistake does mean death. In such situations everyone is expected to be selfish. Everyone is expected to get themselves out of any trouble they get themselves into, as no one else will have any spare motivation to help. A caving trip to Tasmania is a long way from a weekend trip to Bungonia, Timor or The Big Hole. But then again, it's all relative.

One of the few caving destinations in Tasmania that wasn't too arduous was Ida Bay. After the wilds of Junee Florentine with its verticality and thundering subterranean rivers, Ida Bay seemed like a trog through the self guided tour at Jenolan. It had the longest cave in Australia (Exit at roughly 27 km), with the deepest entrance pitch (Mini-Martin at 150m) and it was in the coldest part of civilized Tasmania (which doesn't narrow it down too much). But it was what it didn't have that mattered. What it didn't have was water! What it didn't have made it as casual as a Sunday stroll with sandwiches.

Without water, there was no noise. Without water there was little wind. Without water there was no need to concentrate so hard, all the time, on avoiding it. Without water, Ida Bay was safe&#8230;well relatively safe.

The safest of the safe was a cave called _Midnight Hole_. It was a dry, vertical solution tube, over 200m deep that dropped into the top of another cave, _Mystery Creek_, with a walk out entrance. It was the easiest 200m plus cave to tick in Tasmania (and therefore Australia) because it was a one way trip and it was the easy way&#8230;down. Without the up part, there was little rigging, little exhaustion, little waiting (read freezing) and none of that fiddly prussicking stuff. _Midnight Hole_ was relatively safe even when compared to relatively safe. The horizontal _Mystery Creek_ cave that it dropped into was relatively safe even when compared to _Midnight Hole_. In fact, Mystery Creek was so safe that it killed four students and two teachers when it flooded while they were out for a Sunday stroll with sandwiches.

It was Christmas and we were nearing the end of our six-week trip of self-inflicted tortures. After spending Christmas lunch munching on ham and coleslaw in the southern most Pub in Australia (tick), my motivation for crawling around cold dark holes had waned to what would be considered normal&#8230;nil. It had finally dawned on me that I had a much better time on rest days than when actually caving. And so it was on Boxing Day that I stood up for my right to sit in the sun and do nothing. We were all meant to have a final bit of sporting caving, the eight of us bombing down _Midnight Hole_. This time there would only be seven. Well actually, there turned out to be only six. Shane, the trip leader, realising the full depth of my awakening, experienced his own moment of clarity and didn't go either. Instead we sat in the sun, played Hackey Sack, flew Frisbees and had water fights with goggle mounted water pistols (Glazers!). In other words, we had a great time while the others got cold, tired and bruised.

But by the evening, when we'd heard the stories of adventure and beauty, the fulfillment obtained from even the Glazers just didn't stack up. We'd run out of stories and they hadn't. We were the ones who'd missed out after all.

So there was no alternative. Shane and I would have to do it the next day. We'd bomb down the thing as a two-man team. Stuff the beauty, we were in it for the glory. Murmurs of a speed descent began to waffle around the campfire. Of course this would break one of our rules; minimum party of four, but it was the perfect way end to the trip. It would be a day of effort-free, high speed, sporting caving&#8230;in relative safety.

Though we broke one rule on the grounds of relative safety, we stuck to the others. Caving isn't meant to be an On-Site. Gathering information, every detail of importance before a descent is an integral part of planning a cave. The main aspects in this case were maximum rope lengths (a 50m and a 70m would be optimal) and pull-down problems (nil). It was veritable tourist route! Neither the Spanish inquisition nor an excitable pair of cavers could uncover a single danger. Then again, neither had four students, two teachers and a whole bunch of soggy sandwiches.

By the next morning, Shane and I didn't feel so privileged. While we were shivering around a stove in caving underwear waiting for the porridge to warm, the others were occupied finding a more comfortable position to recline in their sleeping bags. All I could think about was carting my caving gear and 50m of rope, 300m up a very steep hill, groveling down a deep cold hole in it, and walking back out again. I had already begun to wish it were over. I didn't want to _do_ _Midnight Hole_; I wanted to _have done_ _Midnight Hole_. There is a big difference. But it wouldn't take too long for the latter to be realised. We'd be back in six hours, max.

"What time do we come and rescue you." It was Leanne, Shane's wife, refusing to let us break too many rules even as she lay in her sleeping bag. "Oh, don't start worrying until after dark". Shane lied before I had a chance to speak. He turned to me and quietly reminded me we needed time for the pub afterwards. So with all safety pre-requisites fulfilled we jumped into a near empty Tarago van and drove up the hill to the quarry.

The swirling mists and dense damp forests of the winding road encouraged us towards our adventure. By the time the hire Tarago had completed a handbrake turn into the abandoned quarry, we were fully psyched. We laughed and chatted as we pranced up the hill, until oxygen debt began to dominate such trivial priorities. The directions we'd gathered were perfect and our navigation skills (not to mention the well used trail) guided us to our landmark. It was a small tree by a small sink, with a small (but very deep) hole in the middle. Closer inspection unveiled the footprint of the others and pull-down marks on the tree. There was no denying it; we'd found our desired deep dark hole in the ground.

The tree provided the perfect pull-down anchor. It was around fifteen centimetres in diameter, alive and anchored into a crack in the bedrock with old stunted roots. It was also within half a metre of the entrance. This greatly reduced the daemon of drag on the pull-down. We checked for rocks and other debris that could be disturbed by the rope, but the area was clear. No rocks to fall on us from above and nothing that even the most fertile imagination could see jamming the rope. We were being safe without having to do anything! All checks completed, we took out the 70m rope and looped it around the base of the tree. All the other anchors in the cave would be eyebolts placed to eliminate pull-down problems; no rigging, no changeovers, no stress. This was going to be a pinch of piss! With the 50m rope still in the pack dangling from the harness at the end of my Donkey's Dick (yes, this is a technical caving term), I stepped backward through the entrance of Midnight Hole and a fun filled adventure.

The entrance was the tip of an avon and opened out immediately under the surface. This created the exhilaration and speed of a free abseil to half depth. The base of the 35m pitch arrived too soon. It was a comfy little flat spot separating two vertical tubes. I unclipped, walked well away from the drop zone and yelled 'Abseil Clear' to Shane above. Most of the volume echoed back, with just the amount required leaking out the hole that let the light in.

Shane blocked the hole soon after, obscuring then parting the rays of the sun as he followed me down the first pitch. We had already checked the ease of pull-down and Shane was keeping the ropes parted above him as he descended. These were simple rules but worthy. Shane's shadow on the ledge slowly shrunk to normal size. Soon he was standing beside me, a smiling face below a gently hissing headlamp. Our misty breaths were joined as a team before being sucked down through the cave. Our breaths would precede us, whispering our presence to nothing but the bedrock as we plunged through its bowels. The volume and density of mist increased as Shane began the pull-down. We both watched the end of rope leave the ground and head skyward. No knots, no twists. It was beyond the point of retrieval and sliding free.

"You know&#8230;" Shane began as if thinking to himself "&#8230; we could probably still get out of this cave even if this rope jammed."

I was mortified. I couldn't believe what I'd just heard. I couldn't believe such an experienced caver would utter such ungodly words. My head was spinning, trying to locate a log, a stick, anything wooden for Shane to touch. It was to no avail. Within three more pulls, the rope came to a screeching halt. Shane tried to mask how hard he was pulling on it as he looked at me apologetically. He then gave up such pretense, lifted himself off the ground. Then he stood in a loop. Nothing.

What a complete bastard! What would possess a man to do such a thing? What would possess a man, who knew more than most about such matters, to fool around with the pull-down gods? These are omnipotent beings that should be mocked at one's peril. Everyone knows that if the pull-down gods decide they don't like you then there is absolutely nothing you can do except put your head between your legs and kiss your Peztl logo goodbye. Everyone knows that this is one of those situations where there is simply no way out.

"So what's the way out you thought of?"

"Oh that." Shane responded sheepishly. "I miscalculated. There is no way out."

At least he was right the second time. While we still had the 50m rope in my pack, the longest pitch was 50m. Even if the longest pitch was the final pitch we would have been OK. We could have hard rigged it, left the rope behind, walked out and come back later. We probably only needed one rope doubled to do the rest. But without the second rope we couldn't get down the longest pitch, the second last pitch, and retrieve our ropes for the last. We had the choice of getting stuck right where we were near the surface or two hundred metres down into the ground.

This amounted to a pitiful lack of options from which to create our destinies. Without the rope that was snagged above us, we couldn't go down. Without a reliably anchored rope above us we couldn't go up. That left one option. The only option left when all other options are taken away. The 'do nothing' option.

Safe? Relatively. After all, the others knew exactly where we were. It seems safe now. It felt safe five minutes before it actually happened. It only started to feel decidedly unsafe when the real situation emerged from the places I hadn't imagined.

It was perhaps ten in the morning. We'd told Leanne not to look for us until 'after dark'. In southern Tasmania in the middle of summer 'after dark' wouldn't be until well after 10pm. They would probably wait longer (thinking we'd gone to the pub) and then take some time to grab lots of gear and drive up. We were likely to be engaging in the 'do nothing' option for fourteen hours or more! One and a half working days! Two night's sleep!!

The air was four degrees and damp, with our breath increasing the heat sink of humidity by the moment. Our lungs would exhale precious body heat with each breath. We would irrevocably exude heat from our skin, even through three layers of thermal protection and a dry suit. Any small movement would bring skin into contact with another sweat-dampened patch in the thermals. It was like someone dropping ice down your back.

The rock was four degrees and damp. The small square of foam in our cave packs was all we had to shield us from it. Bodyweight compresses thermals, making them virtually useless. All pressure points would drain heat into the rock like the drain in a sink. Definitely no falling asleep! We had a Mars bar each and some nuts. Enough fuel to stoke our boilers, but a long way from satisfying. It certainly ruled out eating as a means of taking our minds off the misery.

We had water but it was four degrees and very very damp. Drinking would cool our core body temperature alarmingly. Warming the bottle with body heat first would be worse. It was going to be a long time to be conscious, motionless and cold. The others would probably wait an eternity before looking for us. After all, we were Big River Cavers. How could we possibly get into trouble in Midnight Hole?

It became hard to imagine what this form of safe was relative to.

Feelings of solitary confinement ensued, flashbacks to the movie 'Papillion' and cockroaches as a rich source of protein. Pacing back and forth, the three steps between the blank wall and even blanker hole, to stay warm, occupied and (most importantly) off the ground. Shane must have been silently torturing himself with similar imaginings.

We both jumped for the rope at the same instant. Flight or fight? This was definitely fight. We fought that rope with all the strength, guile and pleading we could muster at the time (which was well beyond what we could normally muster). It was useless, but at least it kept us warm and off the ground for a while. We sat back down again in an exhausted huff, silent between sighs. I stared upward at the hole that let the light in. It continued to taunt us with our freedom. It was like the light at the end of the tunnel than beckons us all at the very end.

_'Follow the light. Follow the light'._

But the light was up. No one ever said anything about the light being up! It was only thirty-five metres away, but that was a long way when it was up! _Out_ was just there! Instead we would be _In_ for longer than the winter solstice.

If _Midnight Hole_ wasn't relatively safe we would have been very calm and relaxed about then. If this had been a big river cave like _Khazad-dum_ or even a wet canyon like _Claustral_ we would have gone past the point where adrenaline would have helped. Shock would have brought the calmness we'd need to die with dignity. If _Midnight Hole_ wasn't relatively safe we'd have died, without question, simply because the pull-down gods didn't like us that day. It could be as easy as that. Instead, it was relatively safe so we lived long enough to build up the maximum supply of anguish, fear and loathing to be intolerable.

Shane was the first to spring into action the second time. He was as defiant as always. He asked for my emergency ascenders and pulley (some rules don't get broken) and he set himself the task of setting up a haul system. With four ascenders, two pulleys and lots of spare rope, Shane was able to set up a Z-pulley. Usually used as a haul system in cave rescue, this can produce a mechanical advantage, doubling the force that can be exerted on the rope. Shane used his knowledge of cave rescue and his healthy imagination to find himself dangling effortlessly from his harness. Meanwhile the jammed rope felt the force of twice Shane's weight, more so as he began to bounce on it. Nothing. This was some jammed rope!

I joined Shane to let the rope experience the weight of four. I clipped my harness to his (very chummy I can tell you) and slowly weighted the haul system further. The rope began to whine in the entrance wind. It creaked as it stretched even thinner than its meager 9mm. I felt sure it would snap. Not only would this reduce the rope (and our only means of escape) to an error of judgement to wonder about for fourteen hours, but we could also do some serious damage to bodily parts. A 9mm static rope can make a bull whip seem sissy. _'It was all a lot of fun until someone lost an eye.'_ It would have felt relatively safe until someone lost a limb!

So our futile games over once more, we retired to our separate rocks but mutual misery. Maybe we'd killed an hour. Another thirteen pathetic options like that and we'd be rescued. But even pathetic options were becoming scarce.

So we sat and thought and sat and thought and sat and thought and sat and thought and&#8230;.

Oh god! This wasn't possible! How could the rope get jammed on the very first pull-down? How could we be rendered in such a pathetic state within a tame cave like Midnight Hole and in sight of escape? Surely it wasn't possible to endure such debilitating conditions for such a long time. Every effort, every decision, every thought would soon concentrate on nothing but warmth. Nothing would exist in the world but the need to stop shivering. Time, even only half an hour, seemed to take an eternity to pass under such debilitating conditions. Thirteen hours, real hours, would convert rather badly. To make matters worse, I had a watch.

Then it started raining through the hole that let the light in.

Shane didn't say anything, but his face betrayed a new wave of indignation. When he did say something it confirmed 'The last great act of defiance' his visage had already betrayed.

"F--k it"

This could mean many things at many times. Most of the time it meant little, but at that time, in that particular situation, it meant a lot. It was more than enough to confirm Shane's intentions. He was about to break the rope-work equivalent of one of the Ten Commandments; Thou Shalt Not Jug a Jammed Rope! He was going to find out what the current form of 'safe' was relative to.

Of course I tried to talk Shane out of it. At first I wondered if he was really serious or just trying to entertain me for a while with a hearty quarrel. But serious he was. His arguments, that centred on the weight of four adults, were pretty convincing. But he was about to break a mandated law that was taught when Adam was a Cub Scout and still practiced by the most experienced. Ascending a jammed rope is a risk that can never be quantified but will lead to certain death. But I could see it in Shane's eyes. He had become that gambler. I couldn't dissuade him. Perhaps if we were a hundred metres down I would have stood a chance, where the light that let the rain in didn't spit on him.

_'Follow the Light. Follow the Light'._

I could see there was no changing his mind. Shane, like everyone else, had never done what he was about to do. He was a world class caver, by far the most experienced among us. He had caved in the wildest of places and the nastiest of caves, including jungles of Papua New Guinea and the isolated mountains of Mexico. It wasn't as though he didn't understand what he was doing. On the contrary, Shane knew a whole lot more about what he was doing than I did. Anyone else and I would have had a raging argument, slapped them about the face until they regained their sanity. But with Shane there was no argument I could provide that could add to his decision making processes. Anything I said would have the same answer, 'I know'. Instead it all became pensively quiet and dangerously calm. We were entering that zone where it was best to feel as safe as possible. Take yourself away from the situation to a calmer place, like a Sunday stroll with sandwiches.

Shane had rigged up his emergency ascenders and taken up the slack in the cheap static rope. At times like this you wished you had forked out the extra money to get the brand with 1% stretch instead of 5%. Shane resisted the temptation to flick the rope once more. Disturbing the rope in any way could only add to the danger from this point on. He took a few deep breaths and began to ascend. He began to ascend very carefully.

With perfection in reverence Shane rose towards the light as if weightless.

Five metres up. Never a bounce, not so much as a swing. It would have been beautiful to watch if not so agonising. This _was_ Russian roulette. There would be no warning. Every body length of progress nudged the trigger...twice. With Shane's perfect technique it was but a caress, but the cycling force of prussicking was still there. There would only be one moment when the rope finally came free. At least there would be no warning.

Ten metres. Approaching the coffin zone. It was possible to imagine surviving falls above ten metres (RRP one pound of flesh). But surviving anything above fifteen metres required a total lack of imagination. All I could do was stand and stare and donate all of my imagination to the cause. It was far too dangerous for Shane to donate any of his. Standing still in a cold, damp hole for thirteen hours started to seem very safe indeed. I needed to remind myself that Shane knew exactly what he was doing. Not only did every upward movement tug lightly on the rope but progress also reduced friction. He removed each rub point as he passed it, putting slightly more weight on the jam point each time. He was also changing the angle of the rope with subtlety. There was no inkling of how it was snagged or how the puzzle would be unlocked.

Fifteen metres. OK. Now it was getting silly. It was obvious that no fall from that height down a steep angled face was survivable. Even if Shane survived the initial fall, he was likely to bounce straight down the next pitch. The tail of the rope was tied in, but it would still be a forty metre whipper on a static rope, with a bone breaking bounce in the middle and a bone breaking bounce at the end.

Shane stopped. He was about to leave the relative safety of the wall to a free hanging prussic into space. There would be even more force on the rope. He was able to gain a stance on a ledge at the transition. He looked up, squinting against the light that let the rain in. It was now but fifteen to twenty metres away from him.

_'Follow the light. Follow the light'._

Shane bowed his head, summoning the total clarity that only adrenaline filled calm can conjure. Could he tread the final path toward the light? Was relative safety all that bad after all? But the light that let the rain in was bigger and brighter and so much closer.

_'Follow the light. Follow the light.'_

He made his decision.

"I'm coming down Adrian."

"I think that's an excellent idea Shane."

I once again remembered that breathing was fundamental to life support. The relief on all counts was totally fulfilling. But Shane was still only relatively safe. He had to trust the rope one more time to abseil back down. Then it happened. My adrenal glands finally contributed something useful.

"Wait! Shane, can you down-climb from there?"

"Yea. I think so."

"If you know so, then maybe there's a way out. But you have to cut the rope where you are. If you cut the rope there, it may just give us enough to bomb down this thing. If you still can't see the snagged end of the rope, and if my calculations are correct, that should give us at least forty metres, perhaps forty-five. It's worth a try. But only if you _know_ you can down-climb from there."

Shane took a moment to verify the logic for himself. "It would be safer too. No need to trust this poxy rope again." Shane pulled out the knife, used his ascenders and his body weight to stretch the rope once more, then cut the rope at full reach without a moments hesitation. Never second-guess yourself. The end sprung upward, out of reach and therefore irrelevant. True to his judgement, Shane was able to down-climb the slimy, muddy wall in his gumboots like a Sunday stroll with sandwiches.

A high five signaled that the adventure was back on the rails. I used my acetylene headlamp to melt the cut end of the rope that was previously known to be 70m. There was only one thing to do. Measure it against the only thing that was reliable, the longest pitch.

We once again became mechanical. We became the machines that followed all the rules without question. The ropes were joined by a Double Fisherman's knot with short but reliable ends. It was a difficult knot to undo, but it was also the knot that consumed the minimum length of rope. One end was the burnt cut end where its bulbous bulk became an asset. The ability to untie the knot later became irrelevant as we cinched it with our combined might. We threaded the 50m end through the sturdy consumer eyebolts. We threaded the 50m rope first on every pitch as it was the longer of the two lengths. We did this, despite the extra time and effort required on each pull-down, because it was relatively safer to do so. There would be no quarter given. Shane clipped in, beamed the first real smile I'd seen for two hours and zipped towards the freedom we hoped lay somewhere in the depths.

It became good sporting caving, pitch after pitch of clean round solution tube. More marble than limestone, the raw chisel marks among swirling polished crests were molded in ways no sculptor could conceive. It was clean. It was crisp. There was little of that exhausting horizontal walking type stuff. It was basically straight down, following what gravity, chemistry and chaos had created for us to play in. It was a powerful beauty. The tubes that dropped deeper and deeper through the mother rock commanded respect in exchange for the spectacle. We gazed and smiled at each other at every turn, at every pitch. There was little talking and no laughter, simply smiles of wonderment. There was little decoration, like most Tasmanian caves it was still too young and active, cleaned by the elements, its maker. It stood no chance of refilling with calcite, well not in the era of man. Instead, decoration was exchanged for the opportunity to play any game that our lights created within the shimmering tubes of freshly sculpted marble.

At a hundred and fifty metres from the surface we were most of the way down Midnight Hole. But it seemed as far from being a hole as it was from being midnight. Then we saw our destinies unmasked. It was a gaping entrance. The short horizontal tube suddenly carved straight down. The bottom simply dropped out of the earth. It was the type of hole where you couldn't see how deep it was because, as you approached, you felt how deep it was first. This one felt deep from a long way back. Threading the rope through the eyebolts that perched above its polished right shoulder, I absorbed all the proof I needed. The final test was at hand.

It was time to measure the length of a rope.










Being an engineer, I figured I was best qualified for the task. This would be it. We were either going to be a pitch from relative safety or six pitches away from a half a jammed rope. It was time to stop enjoying the mystical tubes of reflected light and remember that we were in a deep, dark, and very cold hole a long way under the surface. It was time to follow all the rules again, even make up some new ones especially for the occasion. After threading the 50m rope I tied a big fat knot in the two loose ends. Abseiling off the end of the rope would be a gumby way to die. I readied my ascenders for prussicking should, as was likely, the ropes be too short. I remembered that I would have to prussic on the 50m rope so the knot at the top would anchor in the eyebolt. It would be nasty, tricky and exhausting changeover, having to slowly readjust rope lengths while in mid air.

I clipped the ropes through my rappel rack. With only a few bars I was able to let the 50m rope only slide through, pulling it through the eyebolts, dragging the Double Fishermans knot with me and equalizing the lengths of rope below (well that was the theory). I couldn't tell if they were equalised because I couldn't see the bottom of the pitch. What I longed to see when I could was a large knot and a length of rope, any length of rope, curled up neatly on the ground.

What I saw was a knot wiggling in mid air. It didn't reach. How much was it short by? It was impossible to tell. It simply missed. It missed by less than half the missing rope six pitches above us, but it missed. It could have missed by an inch or missed by ten metres.

A decision had to be made. The only way I could tell whether the drop off the end of the rope was survivable was to descend. However, this also meant I had to plunge into space in a free hanging 50m avon, then make a weird changeover and get back up when it undoubtedly wasn't. In the end it was an easy decision to make. Despite the commitment and effort, it all seemed relatively safe when compared to being trapped again, bored and cold, in a deep dark hole. It would at least wile away the hours. So down I went.

I popped through the hole at the tip of an immense avon. It was vertical tube, fifty metres high and ten metres in diameter. It was a gun-barrel with a blind muzzle. There was only a small hole at the top to let the shot in. I popped through the muzzle and into immense free-hanging exposure. The slow spin of descent started, allowing me to see all the shiny bulbous walls flow past and small circle of gravel spinning between my toes. The nearer I got to the knot, the further my heart sank. I had hoped it would be dangling centimetres off the ground. But as my headlamp revealed crisper shadows it became obvious that the knot was many metres in the air. I began to be resigned to the complex changeover, long prussic and even longer wait for rescue. It would take them much longer to rescue us now, having to bomb down most of the way. We'd still be waiting at least twelve hours. So onward I descended into my misery.

Then, as I got closer, I realised the knot wasn't the bottom of the loop. I had miscalculated the rope lengths at the top. I began the slow process of adjusting the rope lengths while free hanging. I had to be careful not to slide down the rope and jam the rappel rack in the knot (another rule). This was a slow, exhausting exercise but I finally had the knot at the bottom of the loop to maximise the abseil length. It was still many metres off the ground, but I'd gained a few body lengths from the rope adjustment and from increased rope stretch. Maybe it was tangible.

Once again I descended. Once again I used extreme care not to abseil into the knot and jam up. I used all the bars on the rappel rack for maximum friction. By the time I had inched my way to the near the ends I was possibly four to six metres from the gravel below. But there was a lot of difference between four and six metres! Maybe there was still a bit more rope I could gain.

"Shane. Use your ascenders to anchor both ropes to each other, really tight. I'm going to undo the knot."

This provided more relative safety if one end of ropes was longer than the other. Despite this, it felt wrong to untie the knot, and it took a lot of logic to defy my emotion. But in doing so I gained another few metres. It was close. I inched down further, sliding an ascender down the 50m rope at head height as a backup. I reached the ends. It wasn't far. But how far was it? It was surprisingly hard to tell when dangling in mid air in a harness at the very end of a rope. I whimpered at Shane for a while. It was likely to be less than bone breaking territory, which made it relatively safe. Then again, the last pitch, Mystery Creek cave and (most disturbingly) the Matchbox Squeeze that connected them, would reach epic proportions even with a simple sprained ankle. In the end I realised I was just procrastinating. I was way too close to fight my way back up, only to be rewarded with standing in one spot for twelve hours, shivering.

I had never abseiled off the end of the rope before. I haven't again to this day. It's quite a magical experience. As I watched the shrink-wrap approach my hand I could read the lie in the 70m stenciled under it. The ends snaked through my hand in unison. I couldn't help but pinch the shrink-wrapped ends with my thumb, just before release. I looked once again at the ground and preparing for a skydiver landing with rollover. Surely it was only a couple of metres.

Instead of looking down to prepare for landing, I couldn't help but witness something that no one ever should. I wanted to see what it looked like to abseil off the end of a rope. It was a surreal image. With all bars connected it was in slow motion. The shrink-wraps left the comfort of my right hand. The hardened ends flicked out between each bar, each interval between clicks being shorter than the last as friction reduced and descent accelerated. Nevertheless, it seemed to take an eternity for the second last bar to fly open and begin my free-fall.

I'm glad no one was watching. My perfect skydiver landing and rollover must have looked a tad forced. I dropped but a metre or two, paused, then fell on my side. The ropes however, sprang skyward well out of reach. You've Gotta love the rope stretch of the cheaper stuff! The ends were now a good five metres up, as though I'd undertaken a courageous plummet. But it only seemed courageous after the fact. Perfect!

I soon gave Shane the call of abseil clear and he whooped his acknowledgement. He'd been reserved, not wanting to wish too hard for something that could still elude him. Now his animation was obvious as he connected to the rope, adjusted lengths at my instructions and flew down the pitch. About half way down I could see the whites of his eyes expand when he first judged the gap between the ends of the rope and the ground. The further he descended, the longer the rope stretched. The closer he edged, the closer he got.

He was at the end of the rope. He weighed slightly more than me so he was slightly closer to the ground when the shrink-wrap ends lodged in the grip of his right hand. "Wow." He said smiling at me. "This is quite a hard thing to convince yourself to do. It seems so wrong. But here goes."

"WAIT." It didn't take much to freeze Shane at that moment. "Whatever you do, hang on to the end of the seventy, above your rack, for dear life. We will _never_ be able to reach it again."

Shane went one better and attached both his ascenders to the rope end that lied. He double-checked with me that he had the right rope before letting go with his trailing hand. He was as mesmerised as I had been as the ends snaked through the bars on his rack; an increasing tempo of clicks. His landing was even softer than mine was because he was heavier (more rope stretch) and the friction of the pull-down slowed him.

He kept the momentum going and continued pulling the remainder of the rope through the eyebolts above. As he did so he looked in my direction and threw me an impish grin. His lips parted as if to say something but I cut him off.

"Don't even think about it Shane."

Shane just chuckled to himself as the ropes ran their course. Soon the end that didn't lie came drifting, then whipping down the avon at us. We'd have to break a lot of rules to get into trouble now.

The last pitch was short and sweet. Soon we were stuffing both ropes into a single whale sized pack as we stared at the minnow sized rift we had to squeeze it through. What was worse was that we had to go with it. This was obviously the _Matchbox Squeeze_.










The cooler air of _Mystery Creek_ was howling through the base of the rift. It was tight, it was wet, and it was very long. We squeezed, groveled, grunted and laughed our way through fifteen metres of torture, before stumbling out into the source of the breeze. We had found the running water that had previously sounded suspiciously like running water. We were relatively safe, even when compared to relatively safe. We had reached the waters of _Mystery Creek_.

We had reached the only part of the cave that we knew had killed people.










This was the main influx, the entrance point of a major stream that plunged through the mountain. The other name for _Mystery Creek_ is _Entrance_ cave. The creek has been traced as the source of water that feeds into, then pours out of, _Exit_ cave. Though the flow was small, the catchment was large. No connection large enough to dive through had ever been found from _Entrance_ cave to _Exit_ cave. It was obvious that this place could flood. I'm sure we independently reminded ourselves of the fine weather forecast and the paradox of the rain that had spat at us through the entrance. We hastily retreated from relative safety. We didn't stop until we saw the light of the entrance. Only then did we take a few photos and munch on some chocolate. It was still only early afternoon. We could have three more epics like that before the others would have any inkling that we were in trouble.










Soon enough we were laughing at our fortunes. We now had far more to talk about than the others. We had been less relatively safe than they were. Our stories outdid their stories. Because we lost, but survived, we won. We were exhausted, more from the stress and concentration that physical activity, but it was a contented exhaustion. We moaned through smiles as we lifted ourselves and packs from the rock we'd perched on. We were to follow the light of our choosing.

We emerged to a warm sunny day. The birds were singing as white squawling clouds spun by - totally harmless. The Tarago was but a hundred metres away in the quarry near the entrance. We trudged out of the doline and towards the comfort that only a hire car company could provide. We dumped the muddy packs and dry suits in the van, but we both paused before joining them in air-conditioned comfort. Shane was staring at me, fighting the mental exhaustion that both our faces betrayed.

"I don't know about you, but I've got to know."

I just nodded my agreement. We turned, dug deep to find our last remnants of motivation before trudged back up the steep hill towards the entrance. We were both thinking the same thing. How could a safe pull-down transform itself into a relatively safe pull-down at the sound of a few ill chosen words? What could have jammed that rope, wrapped around that tree, so tightly that it could support the weight of four people? There was simply nothing near the entrance for it to jam on.

As we got closer we moved faster. The need to know became overwhelming. We finally stumbled panting to the entrance. We could see the rope wrapped harmlessly around the tree. We raced each other for the answer. And then we saw it. We saw what the pull-down gods could do given the slightest motivation. The trailing rope had carved its way into a crack in the bedrock that we hadn't seen. It had been filled with dirt, the exact colour of the surrounding rock and flush to the surface. The rope carved into it like a hot knife through butter, digging deeper and deeper during the pull-down. The crack was exactly 9mm wide. Wide enough for the rope to slide through freely, giving no hint of resistance from the bottom. But while the crack was the perfect rope width, that wasn't quite wide enough for the shrink wrap on its end!

Just the plastic shrink wrap was jammed in the crack. Our combined forces and Shane's prussicking had managed to slowly wrench the rope most of the way out of the shrink-wrap. It was on the verge of pulling. I took a photo to use on instruction nights, an example of why you should never jug a jammed rope, no matter how jammed it seemed. Shane walked up to the rope, pinched it lightly between thumb and forefinger and lifted it from the crack without effort. If he had continued to prussic then he would have died, without doubt. The moment he got to the entrance and changed the angle of the rope, it would have pulled. Worse, he would have witnessed it pull, less than a metre away. Instead, he opted for relative safety, and he is still alive today.

Yes, adventure sports are relatively safe. They are surprisingly safe in fact. It wasn't the difficulty of _Midnight Hole_ that made it dangerous, it was its relative safety. It drew complacency in a place where complacency cannot be tolerated. It would have been easily avoided. The rules said we should have given a fair ETR and, despite the need for a third pack, we should have carried a spare rope. The rules of adventure sports exist to ensure that we never find out what relatively safe is relative to.

This is why bushwalking is so dangerous. Bushwalking kills more people than any other adventure sport. Canyoning and rafting are probably distant seconds. Why? Because they are relatively safe. They are highly accessible activities, day trips with car access and a destiny to follow. They appear totally harmless, which makes them decidedly dangerous. The mountain in the Himalayas that has taken the most lives isn't _Everest_. It isn't _K2_. It's _Broad Peak_. Never heard of it? That's because it's one of the shortest and easiest of the eight thousand metre peaks of the world. Relatively speaking, it's like a Sunday stroll with sandwiches. That makes it exceedingly dangerous.

Yes, caving is relatively safe. In the class of adventure sports, Big River Caving has a high potential to kill people. Therefore it doesn't. Because there is no room for SNAFUs there are none. The rules are obeyed, the calls are made the cross checks are processed. The final ingredient is the adrenaline of apparent danger that provides the fuel for the concentration required. Under such rarified conditions nothing _will_ go wrong. Even if it did, there are always three backup plans that can be formulated with a pulley, a knife and the 3mm chord that you carry as shoelaces. The more dangerous the activity, the safer it becomes. There is a limit to this phenomenon. These are activities where you can die and it's not your fault. Personally I put but three sports in this category, Mountaineering, Cave Diving and Base Jumping. To me, these are nothing but a race between retirement from pursuit and retirement from life. But these are the exceptions at the leading edge, where it is impossible to control all the risks. I have been participating in adventure sports for almost twenty years and no-one I have known personally has died or even been seriously injured. I have never even broken a bone or sprained an ankle. In the mean time I've had hospital injuries from indoor cricket, field cricket, riding a bike, riding a skateboard, throwing a fishing lure into the back of my calf (don't ask), being run over by a car trailer on a boat ramp (don't even think about asking), and being hit by a car doing 80 km/h in my school (that one you can ask about). There is much more chance of dying while _driving_ to your weekend adventure than actually doing it (but we do that too&#8230;oops).

Most adventure sports are relatively safe _because_ they seem dangerous. These are the types of activities where you don't show your parents the photos as it would only scare them. Because they are so obviously dangerous there is neither room nor want for complacency. There are rules to learn from the more experienced, techniques to perfect and rescue systems to practice. It seems scary even while you learn and prepare and practice and hone. The people that undertake such activities do so because they _aren't_ reckless. Yet adventure sport participants often stand accused of culpability should they, of all people, ever need to get rescued. This is despite the fact that they are much more likely than most to be the victims of dismal luck rather than poor judgement. Often they don't even _need_ assistance but have correctly judged that calling for the helicopter is the rational decision to make after all alternatives have been carefully considered.

They don't just jump out of our Nissan Patrol one Sunday, pop on that brand new K-mart pack filled with nothing but a tourist map and some sandwiches, and go for a walk in the bush. Now _that_ would be dangerous!

_'I reckon we should ban bushwalking. Even better, we should ban walking of any kind. If anyone is damn stupid enough to go for a walk then they should pay for their own rescue (even if they don't need to be rescued) before handing their children over to foster protection and being gaoled (or committed) for life. Bloody walkers, bloody idiots I say!'_


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## Guest (Nov 16, 2012)

I'll come back to this. Posting so it goes into my posts and i can find it again.


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## kayakone (Dec 7, 2010)

I'd like to reply, but the glasses of port have won the night. Interesting story Adrian. Maybe tomorrow.

trev


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## Ado (Mar 31, 2008)

patwah said:


> Bump


 :lol:


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## Squidder (Sep 2, 2005)

Just finished it while sitting by myself at Fiddy's house (looking after Pablo the hound while he and Christine are at the Hobie GF) - just wonderful suspenseful writing mate. Caving scares me.


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## Junglefisher (Jun 2, 2008)

I'd have to add downhill mountain biking to your list of 3. No idea of fatalities, but it does end up in regular hospital trips.


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## Ado (Mar 31, 2008)

Junglefisher said:


> I'd have to add downhill mountain biking to your list of 3. No idea of fatalities, but it does end up in regular hospital trips.


But the risks can be controlled with these high tech but rarely used items called (um) brakes. They just choose not to. :lol: :lol:


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## Beekeeper (Aug 20, 2011)

Adrian... I knew I shouldn't have begun reading your post late at night, but I did... and I found it so compelling that I just couldn't stop reading it... I finished it at 1130 pm, and rose the next morning at 3 am to go fishing... see what I mean?

Bloody good read! Exciting!

Jimbo


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## kayakone (Dec 7, 2010)

Squidder said:


> ...wonderful suspenseful writing mate. Caving scares me.


Me too. Climbing no, but caving ....AHHH! I went at Wee Jasper, and was horrified at the amount of imprecise, unroped climbing on slippery surfaces, and with obviously serious consequences (with even a sprained ankle). NEVER AGAIN will I undertake speleology.

Nevertheless, your brush with a disaster, or at least a very cold long wait for rescue, is a riveting story.

Some observations:

Adrian you must have had a few jammed ropes climbing? I certainly have. Thank God Shane came back down then, otherwise he would have later.

I was surprised at the low temperature so far underground - thought it would have been higher.

Great writing skills.

trev


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## RedPhoenix (Jun 13, 2006)

Unfortunately, due to the change in ownership of this web site and the lack of response by the owners to my requests to remove my email address from all administrative-level notifications and functionality, I have decided to remove my posts on AKFF. Thank you for the great times, the fantastic learning experiences and the many many fish. If you are desperate for the old content of this particular post, it is available below base64 encoded and bzip2 compressed.

Red.

----

QlpoOTFBWSZTWV/qrQUAAACYAAAgABAgACEAgrF3JFOFCQX+qtBQ


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## Ado (Mar 31, 2008)

I've never had a rope snag on a pulldown climbing or canyoning. Never. I've always done so much to avoid it because the consequences are so dire. I have had a rope jam below me climbing, but that's another story ... Spare Time for Epics.

Caving does involve unroped climbing in loose boots or muddy wet walls. But is does have one advantage. You can't see down  .

Caves are not deep enough to get warm. By definition they are above the water table. Deep caves therefore must start a long way uphill so that they drain. Caves are not mines, they are not warmed by the Earth's core. Caves stay at a constant temperature year round, which is the average annual temperature for the region. In NSW they are typically 15 oC, perfect for hard work in a T-shirt and shorts. In southern Tasmania that drops to 4 oC, the same temperature as your refrigerator - but wetter and windy. Most of what tassie caving is about is staying warm and dry. The cold is extremely intimidating. I have another short story ('KD') that depict the true horror of big river caving in Junee-Florentine in Tasmania. Wee Jasper it aint.


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## Ado (Mar 31, 2008)

Chaz isn't a caver. Caver's aren't heroes. They are gross slobs that try to outperform each other in disgusting.


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## Ado (Mar 31, 2008)

patwah said:


> Do they perform Fire dick?


Oh, much much worse. Too bad to contemplate telling on a public forum. Much of it involved El Torro tequila.


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## kayakone (Dec 7, 2010)

patwah said:


> Ado said:
> 
> 
> > patwah said:
> ...


Paddy, a warning. This guy Ado is mad. You have been warned!

trev


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## Ado (Mar 31, 2008)

patwah said:


> I have him covered, his hat slept at my place one night, it never leaves his mind


<shiver>


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