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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
These people are insane, all of them. Fascinating read. Awesome cover photo. I wish the writer was a teensy bit more skilled and less sexist, but I love Shackleton-ish explorer books.
adventurous
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Update: I just reread this book before seeing a talk by National Geographic cave photographer Robbie Shone. The book holds up, and I hold the same opinion upon rereading my review. It feels a little crooked, with far more time and detail given to Bill Stone, but the notes help me understand that the author had more access to Stone and his circle. It's still a good book and worth reading if you're interested.
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I recently read "Into the Planet," Jill Heinerth's memoir about cave diving. On several occasions, she mentions working with Bill Stone, the engineer, caver, explorer, and Stone's CEO. Aerospace (where he uses the underwater breathing technology developed for caving in his pursuit to help explore space). A short while later, I stumbled across Blind Descent by James Tabor.
Tabor's book documents Stone's determination to map one of the deepest caves in the world, Cheve Cave, located in southern Mexico. Using the death of team member Christopher Yeager as a way to start the book and explain the challenges and dangers of extreme caving, Tabor documents Stone's unwavering determination to explore Cheve at almost any cost, both personal and professional. Stone's adventures take up about two-thirds of the book, and it's evident that extreme caving is only a pastime for some. Describing frightening, gruelling, cold, wet, arduous, cramped exploration in hazardous situations is fascinating. However, it's hard to understand why this is so appealing (though the descriptions of cave interiors are highly evocative).
Ukranian explorer Alexander Klimchouk's exploration of Krubera in the Republic of Georgia is used almost as a counterpoint. Klimchouk seems nearly the antithesis of Stone. A team player who always puts colleagues before himself, he is methodical and careful. Both leaders and their teams undertake almost unbelievable hardships for weeks to explore two of the deepest caves in the world.
Tabor provides a narrative path that explores how and why these leaders and their teams would want to explore caves. Afterward, Tabor talks about his own experiences caving and clarifies that his descriptions of the difficulties are as much from first-hand experience as having been recounted by people who participated in the explorations. Blind Descent almost feels like two books, with the first half recounting Stone's exploits and the second half Klimchouk's discoveries. I'll take Klimchouk as a leader any day, though admittedly, Stone's adventures make for a highly compelling read.
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I recently read "Into the Planet," Jill Heinerth's memoir about cave diving. On several occasions, she mentions working with Bill Stone, the engineer, caver, explorer, and Stone's CEO. Aerospace (where he uses the underwater breathing technology developed for caving in his pursuit to help explore space). A short while later, I stumbled across Blind Descent by James Tabor.
Tabor's book documents Stone's determination to map one of the deepest caves in the world, Cheve Cave, located in southern Mexico. Using the death of team member Christopher Yeager as a way to start the book and explain the challenges and dangers of extreme caving, Tabor documents Stone's unwavering determination to explore Cheve at almost any cost, both personal and professional. Stone's adventures take up about two-thirds of the book, and it's evident that extreme caving is only a pastime for some. Describing frightening, gruelling, cold, wet, arduous, cramped exploration in hazardous situations is fascinating. However, it's hard to understand why this is so appealing (though the descriptions of cave interiors are highly evocative).
Ukranian explorer Alexander Klimchouk's exploration of Krubera in the Republic of Georgia is used almost as a counterpoint. Klimchouk seems nearly the antithesis of Stone. A team player who always puts colleagues before himself, he is methodical and careful. Both leaders and their teams undertake almost unbelievable hardships for weeks to explore two of the deepest caves in the world.
Tabor provides a narrative path that explores how and why these leaders and their teams would want to explore caves. Afterward, Tabor talks about his own experiences caving and clarifies that his descriptions of the difficulties are as much from first-hand experience as having been recounted by people who participated in the explorations. Blind Descent almost feels like two books, with the first half recounting Stone's exploits and the second half Klimchouk's discoveries. I'll take Klimchouk as a leader any day, though admittedly, Stone's adventures make for a highly compelling read.
Caves are great! Caving is interesting! The hero-worship here decidedly is neither, and the tone (presaged by the early unironic use of "alpha male") irritates. DNF at 15%.
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.
I’m the quintessential lazy-boy supercaver, what can I say?
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.
If that’s not worth the read, I don’t really know what is.
I’m the quintessential lazy-boy supercaver, what can I say?
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.
If that’s not worth the read, I don’t really know what is.
Very interesting read. The third party viewpoint has its ups and downs but more of the latter. It covers more ground but lacks visceral detail. Good as a gateway to further reading on the subject.
Half-listened to, half-read this book. The first part of the book deals with Bill Stone, an ambitious-to-the-point-of-annoying caver dead set on finding the deepest cave on earth. The second part deals with Alexander Klimchouk, another caver with the same ambition. Stone is the more interesting man, and the author spends more time with him and his many adventures in Mexico. A good, but not great, read.
cool nonfiction book on supercaves and caving! I did a teensy bit of caving, but this is amazing! great pictures.
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
I wasn't able to finish. I got about 50 pages in and had absolutely no interest in Stone or his excursions. Reading other reviews on Goodreads, I saw similar sentiments, so I moved on. A shame, because this had been on my list for a while.