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

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A subterranean world right beneath Mars, full of alien life and surrounded by dense jungles and bizarre weather. In this book, my favorite passages (pun intended!) included Barr's descriptions of fear and the human touch, which I recognized as absolutely authentic: Having completed the demo, we've reached a significant milestone. It's been a long journey, but now we're prepared to move on to the next phase: pitching our game to publishers. Over the coming months, this will be our primary focus. As a result, we may not be able to provide monthly updates every month, since we won't be working on the base game for some time. However, we'll make sure to keep you informed whenever there's important news to share. 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. While working in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Barr created the Anna Pigeon series. Pigeon is a law enforcement officer with the United States National Park Service. Each book in the series takes place in a different National Park, where Pigeon solves a murder mystery, often related to natural resource issues. She is a satirical, witty woman whose icy exterior is broken down in each book by a hunky male to whom she is attracted (such as Rogelio).

The parts that shined for me were his examples of how his Navy training helped him at certain times. Those are the types of details that make the reader care and want to read more. 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.

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? We talked about what it would mean for me and for our family, and we spent a lot of time praying about it and making sure it was the wisest choice for us at this point in our lives." The year 2071. You are tasked with finding the pioneer team who went missing while exploring the newly opened mine on Mars. 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.

The cavers who explore supercaves have to be ready for just about anything -- including flooded tunnels called "sumps." When they encounter a sump, cavers can either stop or put on scuba gear and charge ahead. Humanity is very concerned with great height. Flying, scaling Everest and walking on the moon are obvious examples. But can you name the deepest cave on earth? I didn’t think so. Neither can most people. But there are explorers who live for the challenge of finding the deepest part of our planet. The deepest cave on earth was a prize that had remained unclaimed for centuries, long after every other ultimate discovery had been made: both poles by 1912, Everest in 1958, the Challenger Deep in 1961. In 1969 we even walked on the moon. And yet as late as 2000, the earth’s deepest cave—the supercave—remained undiscovered. This is the story of the men and women who risked everything to find it, earning their place in history beside the likes of Peary, Amundsen, Hillary, and Armstrong. 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. A book about a race to discover the deepest cave on earth has the potential for Krakauer-like suspense, but Tabor destroys whatever tension might be present--and there should be a lot, since spelunking is at least as difficult and dangerous as mountain climbing, if not more so--by constantly and oppressively hyping the excitement and pushing the thrill in our face. It's as though he doesn't trust the subject enough to leave it alone. One can imagine him amping up the prose describing a trip with a stroller down to the park: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. Anybody who knows even the slightest bit about me can probably tell you that I have a pretty strange obsession with extreme, outdoor, one-tiny-mistake-and-you-die sports. Not that I regularly participate, mind you. I just like to read about them and live vicariously through people insane enough (or passionate enough?) to willingly hang their bodies out over thousand foot drops in the middle of nowhere; or sail blindly into unknown waters for months-long journeys in tiny sailboats; or venture miles below the surface of the earth with only a ziploc bag to shit in and crappy freeze-dried food to eat. 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. This particular caving book chronicles (as much as possible) deep cave discoveries in the Cheve Cave of Mexico and the Krubera cave in The Republic of Georgia. The caves are very different and so are the leaders of the expeditions. The Mexican cave is climatically normal and fairly open while the Georgian one is very cold and filled with very tight, slippery spaces. The leader of the Cheve Cave expeditions (an American) is hot-headed and lusty while the leader of the Krubera expeditions (a Ukranian) is level-headed and systematic.

But cave explorers like Vesley and Farr could not see the route and so could not anticipate the dangers, a partial list of which includes drowning, fatal falls, premature burial, asphyxiation, hypothermia, hurricane-force winds, electrocution, earthquake-induced collapses, poison gases and walls dripping with sulfuric or hydrochloric acid. There are also rabid bats, snakes, troglodytic scorpions and spiders, radon and microbes that cause horrific diseases like histoplasmosis and leishmaniasis. Kitum Cave in Uganda is believed to be the birthplace of that ultragerm the Ebola virus.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.

Thus, it was with some trepidation that I started Blind Descent. Blind Descent is a fair survey of the history of cave exploration but it is mainly the story of two caves and the men and women who explored them. It is also the tale of a sporting/scientific contest - the quest to find the deepest cave on earth. In the previous monthly update, we mentioned about our demo plans. This is exactly what we've been working on this month, and we've done a lot of bugfixes, quality of life improvements and so on. We were also trying to get the new environment assets to work with the weather conditions, such as making leaves wet when it's rainy, or applying wind effects when there is a thunderstorm. To enlighten these difficult and complex gameplay mechanics, we would like to show one of them for the first time: Inventory Management.The book does a good job in explaining the technique of caving for the layperson, without getting too technical. Tabor is also very good with detailing the many (many) things that can go wrong in a caving expedition, and the consequences of illness, injury or bad planning. When he is on a role, the author does a commendable job with creating tension and suspense. Finished this a while ago but forgot to review. If I reviewed at the the time, this probably would've gotten 3.5 stars, rounding up to 4. But with time and reflection, I'm rounding down to 3. Are there any animals or even bacteria that live in the depths of the world? If so what? Does it become hotter as you go down further or colder, no matter how the cave started off? What about diving - is the water affected by the air temperature or not? What about crystalline structures as in some South American caves? How were the caves formed, exactly, not just briefly about limestone, water and sulphuric acid. Where does the sulphuric acid come from, how do they protect themselves from it? I think what made me the most annoyed is the author never portrayed the satisfaction of caving and help the reader understand why these people do it. My very limited caving experience showed me the wonders, challenges, and the joy of caving.