The Encounter

by Donal Myrick

  With that, Jim loosened up a bit on the rope, and the rate of descent increased considerably. Jim said, “Peggy, keep pouring water on the drum. I don’t think it is getting too hot, but let’s not take any chances.”

  Peggy poured another bucket of water on the winch drum and said, “I think we are doing okay. We aren’t even generating any steam yet.”

  “Good, generating steam is exactly what we don’t want to do.” Scott said, “Max, are you still okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. We are really zipping along now. How far down am I now?”

  Ted looked back at the coils of rope that were being fed through the brake bar rack and estimated, “It looks like you are eighteen hundred to nineteen hundred feet down. You should be able to see the bottom soon. There are several Cyalume lights on top of the equipment package we lowered earlier.”

  Max peered into the darkness below and said, “I think I can see them faintly now. I can also see the walls fairly good now. They are pretty close. I can tell how fast I am actually going. You know, when you can’t see anything but the water rushing past, you get the sensation that you are going up rather than down. It is a very strange feeling.”

  Scott cautioned, “You have to keep your mind in the game because your eyes and ears are playing tricks on you. You can easily get vertigo under these circumstances.”

  “Yes, I know, and I have been thinking exactly that,” Max replied. “Now that I can see the walls, that sensation has mostly disappeared. It is still easy to imagine that you are traveling up instead of down, though.” Max was getting close to the bottom now, so Jim slowed the rate of descent. Max shouted, “Slow me down, I’m nearly there. About twenty more feet to go.” Jim put more tension on the rope and eased Max on down slowly, then Max said, “I’m down. Give me a little slack so I can get unclipped. It looks just like the pictures we took. And yes, tell Sergei it looks like the pictures he took as well.”

  The first thing Max did was to take out the sample bag he brought down with him, and he filled it with a variety of small rock fragments that were plentiful all around. He attached the bag to the rope close up under the shield, and said, “The sample bag is ready for hoisting. I am signing off for now. I am going to go look for some shelter from falling objects while you are pulling the rope back up.” Jim flipped on the winch and began reeling the rope with the sample bag back up. As the rope was being retrieved, Scott and Peggy were busy coiling the rope in large hanks so it wouldn’t become tangled.

  Meanwhile, Max moved down the massive boulder pile towards a high narrow canyon where the rain had recoalesced again into a noisy river and flowed off to the east. As he moved down the boulder pile, he noted with some mirth the piles of now destroyed equipment that they had tossed down the pit on their previous trip. He paused and grabbed one of the rope bags thinking it might come in handy soon. Once in the canyon, there was little room to maneuver, but at least he would be safe here from falling debris from above. The river took up most of the space, but at least it was flowing much slower and much less menacing now. Max was searching for some place where they could establish their camp. It was agreed that he wouldn’t stray too far downstream until the other members of the descent crew were safely down. There was just too much risk in going off alone down here, and besides, he needed to remain close in case the next person down needed aid of some sort.

  The next person to start down was Bufford. Once he was clipped in, Jim began to lower him into the torrent. The initial onslaught of the water was brutal, and Bufford, just out of instinct, snugged up tight under the shield. He, too, was amazed to see the tunnel formed by the shield form just below him as the water streamed rapidly past him. Bufford closed his eyes, and he could sense the fact that he was going down, but just as Max had described, when he opened his eyes, he had the immediate sensation that he was flying up like a rocket.

  He said, “God, this is a weird and awesome experience. This could easily make one sick in a hurry. I think it is better to keep my eyes closed.”

  Scott consoled him and said, “Go ahead and keep your eyes closed if it makes you feel better. We’ll tell you when you are six hundred feet down, and you need to start looking around.”

  Bufford replied, “Ok, that’s a deal.”

  The rest of Bufford’s descent went as planned, and he was met at the bottom by Max. This time as they scurried down the boulder pile to the safety of the canyon, they pulled the rope with them. There, in safety, they filled a second bag with rock samples collected from inside the canyon and then signed off communications with the top as the rope was being winched back up.

  Max said, “We need to start unpacking and moving our provisions down to here. There is not much room as you can see, so I think we will need to nail most of it to the wall somewhere.”

  Bufford said, “Let’s do it.”

  With that, they moved back up the boulder pile and started to unpack the provisions bundle. Bufford said, “This isn’t that heavy, I think the two of us can muscle the whole thing down to the canyon without having to unpack it.”

  Max agreed. They untied it from the rope and began lugging it down. After a bit of struggling, Bufford said, “This is tougher than I thought it would be. What does this damn thing weigh two hundred pounds?”

  Max said, grunting with effort, “Almost, I think. Remember, this was your idea.”

  “I hope there is nothing breakable in here,” said Bufford as they drug the oversized duffle bag down the boulder slope and into the mouth of the narrow canyon.

  Back on top, Spider was readying herself for the descent. When the shield broke through the cascading torrent, Ted quickly unclipped the sample bag, and Spider moved into position to clip in. When all was ready, Spider took hold of the shield and swung out over the torrent, and Jim began to lower her. As the torrent swallowed her, she screamed a stream of un-ladylike expletives, which included statements like “this is scarier than … you know what”. Spider continued to babble expletives as Jim lowered her down.

  As Spider began to calm down, she rambled to no one in particular, “I don’t like this at all. When I climb or rappel, I like to be in control, and I don’t feel in control. And when I am not in control, it is usually because I am hanging on the end of a rope. Kind of like now. However, when I am hanging out in space on the end of a rope, I like for Bufford to be on the other end of the rope. No offense to you, Jim, but that is just the way I feel. Bufford and I have been climbing together for a long time, and I just feel safe when he is on the other end of the rope.”

  Jim said, “No offense taken Spider, but don’t worry, I am going to take good care of you.”

  “Yeah, I know you will, but never-the-less, get me down as quickly as you can. I should have been second down.” With that, Jim loosened his grip on the rope, and Spider began to whiz rapidly down the pit.

  Bufford moved up the boulder pile to meet Spider when she touched down. It was as though he knew Spider would be very uncomfortable with someone else belaying her. When Spider touched down, she immediately grabbed Bufford, and they hugged for several minutes.

  Spider said, “I should have come down second.”

  Bufford replied, “That is what I thought when I was about halfway down. I don’t know what I was thinking when I went second. I know you aren’t comfortable with someone else is belaying you. I’m sorry. Are you okay now?”

  “Yeah, I’m good,” she said.

  Max looked up at Spider and Bufford and thought to himself, “They are an odd couple but a sweet couple.” It was obvious that Spider and Bufford did not like being really far from each other.

  With Spider safely on the bottom, it was Jim’s turn to prepare to make his descent. After hauling the rope and shield back to the top, Jim turned descent control over to Ted and said, “Ted, are you ready for this?”

  Ted replied, “I was born ready. Get clipped in.” By now, Jim knew what to expect, so his descent was a little less dramatic than his teammates. Ted managed the descent
control just as expertly as Jim, and without incident, Jim joined Max, Bufford, and Spider on the bottom.

  This time, the rope and shield were not retrieved to the top, but instead were tied off near the mouth of the canyon. Now the top and bottom could have continuous communication. Ted, with the help of several Russians, moved the provision rope over to the winch and hauled it up in preparation to lower additional provisions to the bottom. Several of Sergei’s men were kind enough to handle the task of muscling the second provisions pack from the surface back to the pit. The first provisions pack contained mostly camping gear and some food; basically, survival stuff. The second pack contained more food, two hammer drills, miscellaneous climbing hardware, spare batteries, two small water turbines for charging the batteries, a change of clothes for everyone, and some first aid supplies. This completed the basic supplies necessary to support the initial exploratory efforts on the bottom. More supplies would be needed, but they would be lowered later the next day.

  The canyon that led off from the bottom of the pit was about forty feet high and twenty-five feet wide. The river occupied most of the bottom. There were few ledges and many boulders along the edge of the river leading back into the canyon. Further back, the roof of the canyon rapidly became higher and higher. Six hundred feet or so down the canyon from the pit, the canyon terminated. Actually, the canyon continued, but it was jam-packed full of boulders from the floor to as high as one could see. And at this point, the top of the canyon was at least four hundred feet up, and the river siphoned into the boulder jam. One might have thought that this was the end of the road except for the fact that there was air movement. In fact, there was considerable air movement, and that could mean only one thing. Beyond this boulder jam, there had to be lots more cave, and that cave would have to be massive.

  With everyone now on the bottom and the supplies moved into the canyon, the first task was to find places to stow all the stuff and to find somewhere to set up their camp. When Bufford was descending, Max took the opportunity to set a half dozen hangers about forty feet inside the canyon. He knew that due to the paucity of flat places, most of the equipment and supply bags would have to be hung from anchors placed in the walls. This was true for their sleeping hammocks as well. So the next several hours were spent drilling holes, setting anchors, and hanging stuff up.

  Max said, “I don’t know about all of you, but I am a sweaty mess. This high tech wet suit is nice, but I think I prefer my trusty coveralls.”

  “Amen to that,” said Spider. “You all know that there is no way I can climb in this outfit. I’m changing, so close your eyes.”

  “No way,” said Max, “get used to it. We are all going to be watching.”

  “Suit yourself, nothing to see here.”

  With that, everyone dove into the now sorted supply stashes, and dug out and donned their personal caving garments. Feeling much more comfortable now, Max, Bufford, and Spider set off down the passage to do a little bit of exploring. Jim stayed behind to finish a couple of tasks. One was to haul the descent rope and shield closer to where they had set up their camp.

  He said, “I haven’t heard much from the top, are you guys listening?”

  Peggy said, “We have been trying to listen, but you all have been too far from the shield for us to hear well. We could only get occasional snatches of what you all have been talking about.”

  “We have just been sorting things out and setting up camp, so you haven’t missed anything. When I say camp, I am using that term rather loosely. We are scattered up and down one side of the river for about fifty feet or so. There no flat places, so we have stuff hung up just about everywhere. You should be able to hear us all now when we are in our camp.”

  Peggy said, “Keep talking, there are curious people up here who want to know everything that’s going on down there.”

  Jim said, “I’ll do it. Right now, I am setting up the two water turbines so we can keep stuff charged up, then I am going to break out something to eat. No one down here has eaten anything since we left the top. I’m here by myself right now. Everyone else has gone on down the canyon to get a look-see. They should be coming back soon.” About then, Jim could see down the passage some headlamps moving up and down as the others were slowly making their way back to camp. Jim remarked, “Looks like they are almost back now, I can see their headlamps.”

  As they made their way back into camp, Jim asked, “What did you find?”

  Scott announced, “We can all hear each other now. Give us the details, we are all dying to know.”

  Max explained, “Well, the canyon is quite narrow and filled with boulders. The river is running through them, so it is quite dangerous scrambling over boulder after boulder to make you way down the passage. We managed to go four or five hundred feet on back before it all ended.”

  Bufford remarked, “It didn’t really end; it just got a lot different.”

  Spider laughed, “Yeah, it didn’t really didn’t end, it just went straight up.”

  Max clarified, “The canyon gets wider and higher as you go until you get to this giant breakdown pile where the river disappears. The boulder pile slopes up steeply until it completely fills the canyon wall to wall. I couldn’t tell how high the canyon is back there, but it is at least four hundred feet. We will know how high when we map this segment of the cave with the laser mapper. One thing, though, there is passage beyond the breakdown block.”

  Spider said, “Another thing, we need to set our base camp up back there. It is a lot wider, and we won’t have to be right next to the water.”

  Jim said with some disgust in his voice, “Geeze guys, we just spent several hours setting camp up here.”

  Max said, “Yeah, I know, but Spider is right. We will be a lot better off back there rather than here. Let’s spend the night here, get some rest, and move on tomorrow. Also, we can survey the passage as we move back.”

  Jim asked to no one in particular, “Does anyone know how long the NMI rope is?”

  Scott, who was listening, said, “Yes, the rope is right at three thousand feet long.”

  Jim said, “That means that we should have about four hundred extra feet that we can pull back here in the canyon. That will determine where we should set up camp and still have communication with the top.”

  Bufford said, “I’ll bet we can stretch that rope another hundred feet if we need to.”

  Jim agreed, “I’ll bet you are right. Ted, are you listening?”

  Ted replied, “I hear you loud and clear. We will tie off as short as we can and give you as much slack as possible.”

  Max said, “That sounds like a plan. Let’s get a bite to eat and sack out so we can get an early start in the morning.”

  Spider said with a chuckle, “You know Max, morning is a relative term down here. It’s always dark down here.”

  Before hitting the sack, Max dug out the laser mapper to make sure it would be ready for use in the morning. The laser mapper was probably the highest tech gizmo that they had with them. Simply point it at a spot, and it would give you the distance to the spot accurate to within a fraction of a centimeter, the altitude angle relative to the horizontal, which it sensed automatically, and the azimuth angle relative to magnetic north. It had a voice logger, a holographic keyboard for data entry, and a holographic display. It automatically logged all survey data onto a high capacity memory chip. Whenever a shot was made, it also made a three hundred and sixty-degree cross-section scan and a digital picture centered on the laser beam. This device made cave surveys easy and accurate. With the holographic keyboard, the user could also type in any notes that he thought relevant, or he could just voice record his remarks.

  Max made two shots, one back towards the pit, and the other down the canyon passage. He spoke into the voice logger and said, “This is where we spent the first night at the bottom of the pit.”

  Early the next morning, as someone in the group remarked “at O’dark thirty,” pun intended, they were up and about
and preparing to move forward with the exploration. The first order of business was to move the base of operations back to the breakdown pile, and then pull the NMI rope back as far as possible and tie it off. Once camp was reestablished, Bufford and Spider set off climbing to the top of the sloping breakdown pile.

  Spider remarked, “These boulders don’t look all that old.”

  Bufford said, “To me, they look like they are the result of some kind of shattering. Notice how sharp the edges are.”

  Spider said, pointing to the near canyon wall, “Look at all of the cracks in the wall. Up top, you couldn’t buy a crack when you needed it. Down here, they are everywhere.”

  Bufford noted, “That’s good actually. It’ll make climbing easier and safer.”

  Spider added, “All those cracks also support your notion that all these boulders are a result of the canyon walls being shattered somehow. It’s sort of like they were slammed together and bounced back, letting all these boulders fall down. I hope they are stable.”

  “I’m not really sure that they are,” commented Bufford. As they arrived at the top of the slope where the stack of boulders went strictly vertical, the movement of the air increased noticeably.

  Looking up at the boulder jam, Spider remarked, “I don’t think I have ever seen anything like this before.”

  “It is unique for sure,” Bufford said as he poked his head into an opening between two boulders. “This whole pile of rocks seems really porous. The river is obviously running right through it without slowing down, and there is lots of air movement. I wonder if this hole goes anywhere?”

  With that, Bufford squeezed through the crack and into a small void that led to another crack between more boulders. He could see that there was more space beyond this second narrowing. Continuing, crawling on his belly, Bufford moved further into the boulder jam. He yelled back at Spider, “You know that this is my least favorite type of passage to explore. I hate squeezing my body through these tight contorted passages where I could get stuck, and then what? You think you could pull me out?”