Quest for Adventure

by Chris Bonington

  And, weekend by weekend, they pushed the route out; to 450 metres, then 600 metres, then 690. It was a slow, painstaking process. It took a week just to prepare for a dive, to check over all the equipment, clean it, grease it with a silicone spray, get all the bottles filled, and then check each valve again.

  At this stage Oliver and Geoff began working from opposite ends of the system. Oliver had hurt his back, so concentrated on the Keld Head end which did not involve any caving prior to the dive, while Geoff started trying to find the way down from the Kingsdale cave back towards Keld Head. There was a low sloping passage to the first sump, and he worked on this through the summer of 1976, always on his own, relying on casual help from cavers on their way down to help carry his gear to the first sump. This was in a chamber like a gigantic shower, with the water pattering out of the dark above on to the pool into which he was going to dive. The pool led into a maze of winding, water-filled tunnels and blind alleys.

  ‘I got to a five-way junction. It was completely bewildering. I just belayed the line to a rock and sat down (still submerged, of course) and looked at my compass and thought, “Which one’s Keld Head?” I picked what I thought was the right way and it dropped down a shaft which led into a big river tunnel. The flow increased and the place became enormously wide, but I wasn’t quite sure where it was going. I just kept on a bearing, heading in roughly the right direction, until I ran out of line. The next trip it burst out into this incredible blackness with the floor dropping away downward and the roof shooting away up. The water was so clear I thought I might have wandered into another ox-bow but then it narrowed down so much that I would have had to take my cylinders off to squeeze through so I decided that this could not possibly be the way to Keld Head.’

  He had made, altogether, six dives from the Kingsdale Master Cave but still seemed nowhere nearer finding the connection with Keld Head. It had been lonely and, at times, frightening work and on one occasion he could very easily have lost his life. He was on his way back, finning quickly through the murky waters, and had just exhaled. When he inhaled, he received a mouthful of water instead of air. He could not see what was wrong because of the murk; it all had to be done by touch, with gloved fingers. He felt his mask and found that all he was left with was the disconnected rubber mouthpiece, the other bits having dropped off. He had to find the other valve, but this also had to be done by touch. The tubes were exactly the same thickness and on his first attempt he followed the wrong tube. His lungs were now bursting – it was like trying to hold your breath for thirty seconds after completing a hundred-metre sprint. He was consciously slowing himself down, even though his body was beginning to take over in its desperate need for air, with muscular spasms in his lungs and involuntary twitching in his fingers that made it even harder to follow the tube down to the spare valve. At last he found it, brought it up to the mouthpiece, stuffed it in and pressed the button that would blow out the water flooding the system. He could breathe again. He lay on the bottom of the passage for some minutes to get his panting back under control before finning slowly back to the cave where he had started his dive. That was another lesson learnt. Never go that fast again. You’ve got to move slowly the whole time to keep your breathing rate down so that if anything does go wrong you can hold your breath for a long time.’ Because of the difficult access to the start of the dive, Geoff could only wear a wetsuit while diving from the Kingsdale Master Cave and carry a limited quantity of bottles. Eventually he felt he could go no further from that end. In February 1977 he made one more attempt from Keld Head, extending the line to 920 metres, which established yet another record for British diving and equalled the European record. They were also getting near to the link-up point from the Kingsdale Cave but, unfortunately, the limits reached by the two explorations were on different levels. The Keld Head passage seemed to be about eighteen metres below the last point that Geoff had reached from the Kingsdale end, and it could be difficult finding the connection between the two levels. In addition, they were now at the limit of the capacity of their bottles.

  Meanwhile, Oliver had been writing to cave divers around the world to find out what they were doing. It was such a young activity that communication between different groups was still very poor. One of his correspondents was Jochen Hasenmayer, a very experienced German cave diver. He was intrigued by what he heard about Keld Head and offered to come over to help. Geoff was immediately impressed by Jochen, saying: ‘We found that what we thought we’d been pioneering, he’d been doing nineteen years before.’

  They were now ready for the big effort to join up with the Kingsdale Master Cave system. They decided to set out at three-quarter-hour intervals with Jochen Hasenmayer, who had larger capacity cylinders, going first, followed by Oliver Statham and then Geoff Yeadon. There had been a lot of rain and, consequently, the visibility was appalling. They could see little more than an arm’s length ahead of them.

  Jochen swam strongly to the end of the line and then set out, feeling his way along the bed of the cave. Geoff had gone into a cul-de-sac on his previous attempt, but Jochen sensed that there should be a route out to the left. He came upon a narrow fissure only forty-five centimetres wide. Jochen had his big cylinders mounted on his back and this made it particularly difficult and dangerous wriggling through narrow sections, since he was unable to see or even feel anything that might foul the back of the cylinders. Even so, he managed to worm his way through the gap to find that it widened out beyond, but the roof had dropped to a much lower level. He squeezed through, however, and continued running out the reel in a broader channel until it came to an end. Anchoring it in position, he started back, following the line. He had made the same mistake that Geoff Yeadon made on his first long exploratory dive in the Boreham Cave, for he had not anchored the line in places where the route went round corners. So, on his return, he found it had shifted into the side where it was much too shallow for him to squeeze through. Very quickly you lose all sense of direction. He was over 914 metres from the entrance in almost nil visibility. The more he searched and pushed and struggled, the more silt swirled up until he could barely see anything more than a few centimetres from his face.

  Oliver Statham had set out three-quarters of an hour behind Jochen and followed the line to the constriction. He had one bottle mounted on his back and one on either side. This meant that his side dimensions were wider than Jochen’s, so it was even more difficult, if not impossible, for the big man to wriggle through the narrow gap. He was already very close to using up a third of his air supply and so, desperately worried, he started back down the line, to meet Geoff, who had set out another three-quarters of an hour behind Oliver.

  Geoff Yeadon told me:

  ‘I met Bear at about 2,750 feet, coming back. I immediately felt apprehensive because, of course, it should have been Jochen who came back first, and then Bear wrote this ghastly note on my slate: “3,000, small with back and sides” – which meant the bottles mounted back and side – “No Jochen. Trouble???!!!”

  ‘I replied on the slate: “I will go and look and then turn back.”’

  Geoff swam on along the line until he reached the constriction. Peering into the gloom he was unable to see any sign of Jochen. He had the same problem as Oliver, for he also had one back-mounted and two side-mounted bottles. He decided to wait until a third of his air had been exhausted before returning. And so he waited in the cold, cloudy water, increasingly worried because Jochen had now been in the cave for more than an hour longer than he and so, even allowing for the greater capacity of his bottles, must be nearing the end of his reserves. There was also the terrible conflict of wanting to do something to help but being helpless to do it and having to face the prospect of abandoning a diving partner to his fate. He had very nearly exhausted his ration of air, and was steeling himself to return, when he felt the rope in his hand twitch. Jochen must be somewhere near. He tugged the rope, just to show Jochen that someone was close by and then somehow wriggled and jammed
himself through the narrow gap so that he could at last see the dull, suffused glow of Jochen’s head lights only one and half metres away. But between them a sandbank on the base of the passage pushed up to within a few centimetres of the roof. Jochen had not seen Geoff’s light and was trying to get through at another point. There was no communication between them. Jochen was not even able to interpret the twitches on the line which he had felt. It could easily have meant that one of the others was stuck as well. And then Jochen’s light vanished. He had obviously backed out and then pushed into another passage in his struggle to escape the trap.

  There was nothing that Geoff could do, no way that he could catch Jochen’s attention. He did not dare go any further through the squeeze, since it would have been almost impossible to retreat with his back and side-mounted cylinders and the guide line now hopelessly out of position. It was hard enough wriggling backwards to get out. Each time he jammed, it could have been for good. Keep calm, slow down the breathing, edge forward a little, wriggle again, very gently, and at last he was out of the squeeze. He looked at his gauges and saw that he was well into his second third of air, but the situation was now very different. Jochen was close at hand and desperately needed his help. The line twitched again. Geoff wriggled once more part way through the squeeze, could see Jochen’s light, but Jochen was obviously not looking in his direction. Geoff retreated. His air was being consumed all too quickly, both because of the tension of the situation and because he was eighteen metres below the water surface level, which meant he was using air at three times the rate he would have consumed it just beneath the surface. And then Jochen’s light appeared once more, but this time through a hole much too small for anyone to have squeezed through. He had at last seen Geoff’s light and swum towards it until they were within touching distance. Geoff reached through and Jochen grasped his hand. Geoff told me:

  ‘I could feel his fingers and his whole arm trembling as he squeezed my hand. I couldn’t help wondering what the hell I’d do if he wouldn’t let go, but I just tried to keep my hand absolutely still, to show him that I was perfectly all right and in the right place. I was willing him in my mind to go back and have another go at finding the right way out, but there was no way I could communicate that. He just squeezed and squeezed and I’d give a reassuring squeeze back and then, eventually, he let go, patted me on the hand and backed away. I interpreted this either that he was being a Captain Oates, going away and telling me to get out while I could, or that he was going to have another go. I was convinced at the time I was shaking a dead man’s hand.’

  Geoff was now well into the second third of his air, but he waited by the squeeze, shining his light through it, hoping desperately that Jochen would now find the right way through, and this time he managed it, skirting the sandbank and, still clinging to the line, he manoeuvred himself through the awkward dog-leg leading back to safety. As he came through, Geoff cautiously held back in the roof of the passage. There were tales of divers in both Australia and Florida who had run out of air underwater and had attacked their companions in a desperate effort to take away their air bottles in a fight for survival.

  ‘I didn’t know Jochen that well, so decided to keep my distance. I was holding the line so he’d be able to find me but I was in a position to see how nasty he was looking when he came out of the hole.’

  In fact Jochen’s air just lasted out. One bottle was nearly empty, and there was a little more left in the second. He would not show anyone just how little there was, perhaps to avoid alarming his wife who was waiting at the entrance. Jochen did not want to talk about what had gone through his mind when he was trapped on the other side of what has become known as Dead Man’s Handshake. He could only say that it was a nightmare. The fact that he survived at all was due to an extraordinary level of control and, within hours of getting out, they were already planning their return, discussing how they could make the passage safer by anchoring out the guide line, using bigger bottles and changing the way they carried them. Geoff Yeadon set to work on his gear, making a set of harnesses that had four demand valves and four separate air supplies, all side-mounted. It was so heavy it made his back ache, even underwater. He had also evolved a new strategy to cope with the logistics of such a prolonged dive, planning to drop the two smaller bottles at 213 metres and 427 metres respectively, each of them with two-thirds of their capacity unused. This meant that he would have his reserves in place for the return and would only have to contend with the two large, side-mounted cylinders at the constriction by the Dead Man’s Handshake. He went in on 16 April 1977, dropped his bottles as planned, and reached the constriction, which he was now able to negotiate more easily. Mooring the line with lead weights ensured that it would stay in place, guiding them all through the dogleg at its widest and only feasible point. He went on to the end of Jochen’s line and reeled out another thirty metres, but he was now creeping over the third safety factor and he prudently returned. At 1,036 metres it was another European record. They were getting very close to his furthest point of exploration in the Kingsdale Master Cave, but they were still some eighteen metres below, and so the junction was as elusive as it had ever been. In addition, their cylinders were still not big enough to carry sufficient air to give them the reserves of safety they needed.

  Another summer, autumn and winter went by. Geoff turned his attention once again to the Kingsdale Master Cave, doing another series of dives to try to find the vital link. On 11 June 1978, he organised himself a support team which enabled him to take in a dry suit, packed in a container, and big bottles for a long dive. This time he found the key, 732 metres into the labyrinth. He stumbled on to a passage he had not been down before and came across a hole in the floor. It was black and frightening, an abyss a long way from home.

  On a practical level, a vertical shaft is potentially dangerous, for if it goes too deep and the pressures become too great, there are problems with buoyancy and the danger of getting the bends on coming back up to the surface. There is also the psychological barrier that a hole presents. It is so easy to imagine it going down forever into the depths of the earth. It’s a plunge, perhaps, into our own black sub-conscious. For Geoff, having a dry suit made all the difference, for he could regulate the pressure inside it and, through this, control his rate of descent. He sank steadily, counting off his descent with the depth gauge strapped to his wrist. It bottomed out at nearly nineteen metres. He was almost level with the Keld Head Cave. The passage swept away in the right direction, wide and inviting. He swam down it for sixty-one metres and, although he could see no sign of their exploration from the lower end, nor of the reel he had left the previous year, he sensed that he must be very nearly there. But he had now reached the vital third capacity and was forced to return.

  Their effort had now reached expedition proportions in terms of commitment, time and expense. They therefore began to look for sponsorship, gaining a Royal Geographical Society grant to help buy the big-capacity bottles they so desperately needed. In July that same year, Jochen Hasenmayer came over again, bringing the bottles with him. They were ready to try once more from Keld Head on 6 July. They changed their system yet again, taking in two massive 160-cubic-foot bottles at either side and having a single ninety-cubic-foot bottle mounted on their backs in such a way that they could easily remove it. This was the one they were going to dump on the way in. They also decided to do the dives one at a time, with Oliver going in first then, after his return, Geoff, followed by Jochen.

  For Oliver it was the chance to make the vital link, but he didn’t find the reel Geoff had left at his far point from the Kingsdale end. He had run out about sixty-one metres, so he should have met up with it; indeed, by their calculation, he should be well beyond it.

  Puzzled, Geoff went in, following the route that had now become familiar, sliding carefully through the constriction and reaching the end of the line that Oliver had left. The moment is recorded by Geoff in Martyn Farr’s cave diving history, The Darkness Beckon
s:

  ‘Nevertheless, as I came to the end of the line and started to press on into the unknown, I became tensely alert, head jerking from side to side like a night owl. Somehow I found that environment distinctly more alien than, say, that of the Moon. The loneliness gnawed at my nerves as I strained to see the Kingsdale line which I knew must be close at hand. Suddenly an orange line came into view. At first I didn’t fully accept its existence but then I realised that I must have been swimming alongside it for some distance ... The connection had been made, yet somehow the triumph was tinged with a certain sadness that we hadn’t been able to do it together.’

  Oliver Statham had been so close, for Geoff’s line from Kingsdale had been on the other side of the passage, a few feet away, obscured by the bad visibility. The joining of Kingsdale and Keld Head was, undoubtedly, the climax to an exploration into the real unknown that is no longer possible on the surface of the earth. But it wasn’t over, for a complete traverse still had to be made. Oliver Statham and Geoff Yeadon completed this on 16 January 1979. They had always worked as equals and never was this spirit more obvious than the moment when one of them had to take the lead on this record-breaking attempt. Unable to communicate, they both hung around just inside the entrance, neither wanting to go first. They made the through dive of 1,830 metres in two and a half hours and came out together. It was a world record for a continuous through trip between two caves with no available air spaces to use as staging posts. It meant total commitment. There have been longer dives since abroad, but none in anything approaching such appalling conditions of cold, poor visibility and constricted passageways.