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

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What sort of people become cavers rather than say, polar explorers or mountaineers? Is there a particular physical shape necessary? Why do they do it? The book would have dramatically benefited from the inclusion of sketches and diagrams of the caves. The descriptions were completely insufficient to provide a sense of their direction and scale. Leisure, Travel + (2015-10-15). "This Is What It Looks Like To Summit Mount Everest Alone". Huffington Post . Retrieved 2017-03-16.

I'm afraid of heights. Partly it's the crazy part of my brain that fears I will jump. Worse than my vertigo is my claustrophobia. Neither is debilitating. I've been on high ledges and in cave passages. When I think about heights, I think about beautiful views. When I think about depths underground, I think about dark and being buried. I can't understand why anyone would want to go caving. Well, let me rephrase that. I cannot understand why anyone would want to go somewhere where they cannot see any further than a few feet in front of them. The laundry list of dangers involved with going that deep into caves is just terrifying.

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Blind Descent is about The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth, although I suppose you probably already knew that from the subtitle. Well, here’s something the cover doesn’t tell you … it’s specifically about discovering the deepest place IN A CAVE on Earth. It’s an important distinction since there are spots at the bottom of the ocean that are much, MUCH deeper than those discussed in this book. Nevada Barr's sixth novel featuring park ranger Anna Pigeon is set in New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns. The location is known to the National Park Service as CACA. The area contains two of the most famous caves in the world, one of which, Lechuguilla, now harbors an injured caver who is also a close friend of Anna's.

it's also randomly juuuuuuust a lil sexist for absolutely no reason. just in case you were wondering, it is good to be a "type a alpha male" and being so excuses all sorts of rude, controlling, and general bad behavior. Also there are very few female cave explorers but all of them are young and beautiful :)Anna is now INSIDE Planet Earth and not liking it much. But ... the show must go on and she signed up for it. I suppose I did too, I'm about as happy about it as she is and I'm only READING about it. My uneasiness is a tribute to the skills of the author. And deeper we go ... But the murders don’t stop once the body is above ground. Anna, while investigating, dodges high-power rifle shots and finds the body of Brent Roxbury on the desert floor. A member of Frieda’s rescue party, he is dead beyond doubt. Drowning, poisonous gas inhalation and electrocution are perils of journeying through a supercave. Tabor says there are more than 50 ways for a person to die during these explorations. Tabor chronicles the exploration of these two caves with precision and insight. He also looks at the disrepair this passion wreaks on personal relationships. We admire the resourcefulness, skill and dedication of these explorers. Yet, in the end, it is a passion only a select few can understand. Most of us will understand the complaint of a novice caver: But is it fun? It is difficult to accept the answer that fun is besides the point. There will never be a cave that is "the world's deepest cave", only "the world's deepest cave so far". How can we know if we can't see?

Riveting tale and very likeable character. Brian seems a good-natured, likeable person and his experience is a harrowing tale of living through being snow-blind while descending the Everest summit. That said, the book could've been better edited, better-constructed, with emphasis on the highlight of the story: how he made his descent by largely feeling his way through the most dangerous parts of his Everest climb. I think the part about his descent was crazy. I cannot imagine what that had to be like, descending the tallest mountain in the world after having lost one's vision. It was probably "the best part" of the book, but it was also funny because I did not get a sense of "danger" or "impending doom" from him. I realize he survived and there is probably that aspect interfering with any sense of danger, but I have read other books where I know the person survived and yet there were still suspenseful moments in the book. I don't know how to describe it; it is just that the tone did not completely match the dangers the author actually faced. No surprise, books like Blind Descent are all time favorites for me. Adventurous, outdoorsy, and oh-so-delightfully-morbid, this trip down the world’s deepest supercave was everything an (admittedly weird) girl could ask for. Enormous underground cliffs were rappelled, sumps were navigated, a few casualties were endured… all in a noble, twisted effort to get closer to Hell than any other human being has ever been before. You and a few team members began descending into a 10-mile deep Martian cave. During the descent, the elevator crashes, and only a few of you survive.Book six in the mystery series starring U.S. Park Ranger Anna Pigeon takes Anna to New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns, where one of her friends, and an avid caver, has been seriously injured while exploring a new (and not open to the public) cave system. Frieda has a serious head injury and is mostly unconscious, but she has asked for Anna. So, Anna swallows her claustrophobia to come to her friend’s aid. In a brief moment of lucidity, Frieda tells Anna that it was not an accident. There are many wonderful books about explorers and adventurers. Among them are Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, which looks at those who climb (or try) Everest and Richard Preston’s The Wild Trees, which looks at a group of climbers who seek to scale the world’s tallest trees. Blind Descent joins their ranks as an info-rich report on the world of deep-earth explorers who risk all to descend deeper into the earth’s crust than anyone has gone before, to find that deepest place.

Climbing Everest blind. Snoqualmie man lives to tell the story". King5.com . Retrieved 16 February 2015. [ permanent dead link] As you can imagine, the people who choose to do this are not ordinary people. Blind Descent gives us vivid portraits of some of these characters. These are not efforts where a few guys go cave exploring for the day. These are huge teams and logistics operations with camps established along the way like for Everest climbs, only upside down with the hardest part at the end. Harvest resources and craft new tools, climb anywhere dynamically, row the underground seas with your boat and build structures that help you overcome obstacles along your way. Progress on the storyProgress through the story, improve your crafting, weapons and more. Find an energy source and send it to your printer and signal booster. Establish a connection with the surface so you can let them know that you are still alive. Key features I like Anna; she’s mentally and physically strong, intelligent, independent, and fiercely determined. Barr includes issues of corporate greed and environmental concerns, while extolling the majestic beauty of pristine caves, and praising the dedication of scientists and volunteers who try to map newly discovered underground treasures.I've grown to really love adventure and survival books and thought this would definitely be an interesting read in the genre. I wasn't disappointed. Blind Descent tells of cave exploration adventures in 2 of the world's deepest caves. I was initially concerned that the author wouldn't be able to make me see the cave in my mind as he told the story and that the author couldn't possibly hold my interest throughout the entire book, but I was absolutely enthralled and found myself daydreaming of cave diving between reads. Park ranger Anna Pigeon is assigned to go down into Lechugilla Caverns in Carlsbad National Park, New Mexico, to rescue a fellow ranger who has gotten trapped. But when events turn tragic, Anna begins to suspect that a simple accident may not have been so simple after all. And solving a crime becomes much more complex trapped underground with someone who may be willing to kill again. This one had lots of angles… troubled marriages and former lovers… shady business practices… park politics. There were so many possible suspects, I was left guessing up until the end. Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong are two explorers who have become household names -- but what about Bill Stone and Alexander Klimchouk? In 2004, both men attempted to find the deepest cave on Earth -- Stone explored southern Mexico's Cheve cave, and Klimchouk delved inside the freezing Krubera, a supercave in the Republic of Georgia. Author James Tabor has documented their intrepid search in his new book, Blind Descent, which he discusses with NPR's Guy Raz. A subterranean world right beneath Mars, full of alien life and surrounded by dense jungles and bizarre weather. The pictures in the book were helpful and interesting and gave a very good sense of what segments of the caves were like. Many more pictures would have been useful. One strange thing about some of the pictures (which were all located in the middle of the book) and related captions is that they revealed the location of the deepest cave which helped kill some of the drama. Although the tiring and repetitive writing is mostly responsible for killing the drama.