Endless Thread - Tight Squeeze

Episode Date: September 3, 2020

You might not think about caves in the same breath as you do the deep ocean or outer space, but you probably should. There are approximately 70,000 caves in the United States alone, but the vast majority are inaccessible to the public. That means rare, delicate ecosystems have developed for tens of thousands of years in complete isolation from human contact. That is, until cavers travel deep underground through impossibly small spaces to find them. Join the Endless Thread team as we dive into the claustrophobia-inducing world of caving.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Subredic community, sweaty palms. Post title, why did I watch this? Post content, a video, choppy editing and adventure cam footage of two people climbing into a tiny opening in a rock face.

Spray painted above the opening, the words, hell hole. That's kind of dope. And then down here. Oh, fuck. This is crazy. The video is claustrophobia inducing.

It is a vertical maze of tight squeezes through holes in rock that goes on forever. And the people in the video can barely get through. This hole is literally the size of my foot.

Like my foot touches the top and the bottom of it. Yeah. That's f***ed. You think? This video post on Reddit got a ton of comments. Things like, thanks for tonight's nightmare, and I got stressed out just watching this,

and you couldn't pay me any amount to get me to do this. But to actual cavers, as they're called, hellhole is known as I-XL cave, and it's not scary. If anything, it's a reminder of how a beautiful thing can be ruined by too much information in the hands of too many people. So yeah, I excel is a cave in Santa Cruz. And in some areas, we have what are called sacrificial caves.

And they're caves that the location is very well publicized. And you have a lot of people going there. Unfortunately, sometimes damaging the cave, littering, spray painting, things like that. It's fun to crawl around in. It's got some very interesting squeezes in it. So it's fun for learning technique. The sad thing is that even before all of the formations were destroyed and the walls were spray painted with arrows and pentagrams and other idiotic symbols, that it was also a beautiful cave. And there's no reason it couldn't have been both.

They're an estimated 70,000 caves across the United States. They come in all shapes and sizes. And people of all shapes and sizes explore them in all sorts of ways. Scuba diving, base jumping into the cave mount. using rope like mountain climbers, scrambling through tight passages. But very few caves are known to the wider public, and that's on purpose. If you ever talk to cavers in person or especially on the internet and say, oh, can you tell me where is this cave? How can I find this cave?

You'll find that they're very reluctant to give you that information. It's almost impossible to get people to tell you the location of a cave if you're a stranger. There is very much a gatekeeperish insular word of mouth approach to it. Cave locations are considered secret. They tend to hide the location. So it's never that easy to find them. So that's kind of a thrill and a challenge in itself. We found one.

We did in Purgatory Casim State Reservation in Massachusetts. Purgatory Casim is maybe the perfect name for the times we are living in and the hobby at hand. So we wanted to climb into the world of caving and climb into an actual cave. But we needed to hear from true cavers and figure out where the heck the caves were in purgatory chasm. Also, the guys who worked there seemed to know the caver's oath, which is, I can't tell you where it is. Honestly, if you're looking up online, I'd be shocked if you can't find, you kind of where each different one is because there's a number of different. Yeah.

Yeah, I think we'll... Yeah, we figured it out. Not that we were necessarily happy about it. I cannot believe I'm doing this. I said I was not going into a cave. I'm Amory Sievertson. I'm Ben Brat Johnson, and you're listening to Endless Thread. The show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit.

We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Today's episode, Tight Squeeze. It did. didn't take long for us to find one of the small quote-unquote caves in purgatory chasm. And yes, I'm a little muffled here because I am wearing a mask because hashtag wear a mask. All right, there's paint on the rock. There's a smiley face, which means only happy times ahead. Except right next to the smiley face is the number 666.

Oh, that's what that is? I'm like, what is G, G, G, G. Oh, no, no, no. Oh, no. Oh, you can see down below. This hole in purgatory chasm is dark enough and deep enough to give you pause before sliding in. I mean, there's two spiders hanging out right at the beginning of the cave, so that's a good sign. Great sign. And that is like you can clearly see that you could get your body through there, but you really wouldn't want to.

And it looks dank. and tight and wet and not fun. You would need what Ben brought and I forgot to bring, which is a headlamp. Do you think we could fit out the bottom? There's a tiny light at the end of this cave tunnel, which is just enough to goad you into climbing into the cave, but not enough to give you clarity on whether or not your body is going to come out the other side.

It looks like a cave. It feels like a cave. Is it a cave, though? What is a cave? Oh, gosh. There probably is a strict geological definition. But I would say that at the end of the day, basically, from my point of view, if it's something that you can enter and get essentially completely away from natural light, then I would consider that a cave. Hi, my name is Stephen Johnson.

On Reddit, I am Bortem Festival. I am a senior engineer at Google by Trade. but my passion as a hobby is caving. I mean, Spelunking is such a better word than caving. Is Spelunking out of, is it out of favor? Yes and no. Spelunking is completely accurate as a synonym for caving. It is not a wrong term.

But for reasons that are hard to explain, sometime in the past few decades, in the English-speaking world, at least, people who like to go explore caves started referring to themselves as cavers and not spelunkers. And instead, they started to use the term spelunker to mean person who enters a cave without the proper training or equipment. Well, shoot.

And so if you go to a convention, you will see bumper stickers that read Cavers rescue spolunkers. A splunker would show up to a cave without a headlamp. Oh, no. You're calling me a splunker? Is that what's happening? That's okay. So my name is Sonia Meyer.

I've been caving for about four years. When I first started caving, it was purely recreationally. And then I learned about caving expeditions in Mexico. And I kind of immediately set my eyes on that as a goal for something that I wanted to do. And I started training pretty hardcore. So I would put weights in my bag and take the metro and take the stairs to work, which was eight flights of stairs, you know, stuff like that. And I would climb 600 feet of rope every other day or so to, one, just be fit, but two, to specifically strengthen the muscles

that you need for climbing rope. And do you do a particular type of caving? Yeah, I personally really enjoy what we call project caving. And usually it's for mapping. So we'll have teams go in that will map the cave. There's also digging, which is where you're trying to find new caves. Well, how about this? I'll go first and you come after. And then that way we'll be sure that at least one person can get into the cave. And like, if I can fit, you can fit.

It's not whether I can fit or not. It's like, it's like, will I start to hyperventilate down there? I mean, you hear those kids? Those kids would go in the cave. No, they would not. I think they'd go. No, those kids have a sensible adult with them, which we do not appear to be. But look, if you want to go in, I'm certainly not going to stop.

I mean, I don't want to go in. No? But I feel like we have to go in. I feel like you really wanted to. We're clearly just stalling. Neither one of us wants to go in. I think we should go in. Let's go.

People cave for a lot of different reasons. For some people, they enjoy the peace and the beauty of being in a cave alone. If you're in a cave, it can be an amazing, almost meditation-like experience. For some people, they enjoy going to see caves that have really a lot of natural beauty, either decorations, you know, in the terms of stalactites and stalagmites and what you think of as decorations, or just the natural formation of the passages. marble, beautiful, pure white walls and that sort of thing. Personally, I think my main driver is the exploration of going into a new environment and

climbing around and exploring every nook and cranny. And the only exploration that you can find like that nowadays is in the deep ocean or in outer space. It feels that it is connecting to a natural process that's on a timescale that is very disconnected from the human timescale. And it sort of reminds you of this is your place in the natural scheme of things. I was in a cave last week in Wyoming, actually, where there's an area called the cephalopod malt shop. And so a bunch of sea animals were washed in there, and then, you know, tens of thousands of years later became fossils. So now this room, like the floor is just covered in these giant cephalopod fossils and other things that I don't know the name of.

What? Yeah. And there's this one that was like five feet long. That was the first time I've ever seen anything like that. So that was definitely like a wow moment for me. What does it like smell like? It smells like you're underground because you are. But I would say that if I had to use one term,

I would say typically musty is the operative word. Yeah, there is a smell to dirt and mud, which gets obviously on the rope and your gear and everything. And I'll be honest, I don't think I like the smell all that much, but the emotional attachment to the smell is very strong. And so when I smell that, I feel extremely nostalgic, especially now during COVID since I haven't been keeping very much in the past five months. The thing is, it's a space in which your intuition for movement and direction can be tricked. because most people, you know, you tend to think of when you're walking around, it's a 2D surface,

and when you get into a cave, it's a 3D environment. Like when you're in the normal world, quote-unquote, you're walking on the ground. Sometimes there's stairs, there's a hill, right? But more or less, it's, you know, you're walking on a plane. It's pretty easy. One of the things that people have to learn to do when they start caving is to much more aggressively look around them

as they go through the cave, including backwards, because, you know, There might be complete different passages that you pass that when you return that way, you might say, huh, I came this way, and now there's actually, I see three passages going this way as I return. I don't know which one of those I came through because I didn't notice them on the way in. Now I have no idea where I am, and literally no map exists because no one has been here before. You always have three points of attachment when you're in a cave. So whether that's your two feet, your butt, your arms, your hands, you know, whatever,

It's very much like a puzzle actually For like a tight space like How do I fit through here? What piece of my body do I put through here? You know like a jigsaw puzzle Oh it's actually quite spacious down here Don't know it's not Yeah

No it opens up You're playing games It opens up to the point where I can't put my Oh God That's cool There's just like a bird feather down here Probably nothing eating eating small animals down here.

Okay. What do you see? This is doable. Come on down. I'm going in after the break. Oh yeah, no, no, no. Let me just get situated. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

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Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Can you just describe how you move when you go into a cave? Yeah. So after walking, which is you're standing upright, you have stoop walking, which is where you're bent over at the waist, but you're still walking. and then you have crawling, hands and knees crawling,

and then you have belly crawling. Hopefully my butt doesn't get stuck again. On top of that, you have some very tight squeezes or long passages even that are extremely tight, and I would say that's even a level past belly crawling. Oh, come on. God, it is not all about that base. Megan Traynor.

And I think the worst type of, of squeeze is called an S-bend. So you can imagine it's shaped like it sounds. So when you're doing a squeeze that has a bend, that's like an extra challenge. But you can imagine that like a 90-degree angle is probably easier than two 90-degree angles following each other that are in opposite directions. And the S-bends are particularly challenging for tall people, and they're often limited by the length of their shins.

so whether they can get around those corners or not. So I'm about a 6'1, 180-ish-pound male, which puts me a little bit on, typically slightly on the large side for cavers. I can go through about a 9-inch squeeze without too much trouble due to my rib cage. But that's not really considered a tight squeeze by most cavers. The typical ideal caver physique really is sort of to have a, person, a very wiry person of moderate stature. I like to joke that one thing I like about caving is it's probably one of the very few

physical activities on the planet that I know I will always be better at than LeBron James. So there are things that I have no problem with, but there's plenty more, probably much more things that I will see my friends and fellow cavers do that I looked at once and just said, I should never even attempt that. Can you describe an example of something like that? Oh, there's a cave in Northern California that has sort of a long, you know, it's a several body length squeeze, but it's sort of a shallow U shape. So you go downward a bit and then you squeeze for maybe a couple body lengths, two or three body lengths, I'd say, and then come back up in another room. But the thing is that it's basically, at least for me, it's almost body tight.

So you have very little room to move. You're basically you have to inchworm through it. And when you get partway in, you realize, well, I can keep moving here the whole time. But there's that little lizard part in the back of your brain that really wants to panic and freak out. It's much worse than usual if you panic in that situation because one of the typical body reactions that you have is fight or flight, adrenaline pumps up, and your body gets physically bigger. And now you're more stuck. And now you get more panicky. and now you're even more stuck.

You know, if you're in a tight crawlway and you're like, it's hard for me to move, having some fear about that, that's a good thing. That's going to keep you safe. That's going to make you make the right decision. When it transitions to panic, that's when some primitive part of your brain takes over. And maybe you'll make a good decision,

but you probably won't. I don't think we're going to make it out the other end. Is that, I mean, is that the goal? You've got to go back the way we came. Does it look like anyone could make it out the other end? Well, you know, I could make it maybe. But it would be extremely uncomfortable. Oh, fuck, that spider.

It would be extremely uncomfortable. This is good because we both have our limits in this scenario. And mine are related to space and yours are related to spiders. The spider. We have something that we call the rapture. And I don't know how to fully explain it. But I think it's when you feel kind of overwhelmed by how deep underground you are and how remote you are from the surface. Some people do experience this psychological effect where they completely shut down.

I'm almost afraid to ask this, but have you ever been stuck? I was in a cave in California that's called Lilburn in Sequoia National Park. So I went there with a friend who had done a little climb and discovered a small section of new cave. So it was walking in that you could stand up, but it was getting physically tighter and more narrow as you proceeded. And then it got to an S bend. And I stuck my head through and it was so tight that you had to cross your legs. So crossing your legs is one of the ways that you get around these like sharp angles. And in order to do this, the person behind me, because it was so tight, he physically had to

position my feet in a cross-legged position so that I could stick my head through. So I got even, I got pretty far through enough that I could see that it turned another corner. but I was afraid that if I went through without them, I wouldn't be able to get back because I wouldn't be able to cross my legs again. See the pointy rock right there? I think you want to put your belly towards that. To the pointy rock.

You know what I'm saying? I agree. You can do it. It'll be amazing. I'm not sure. You can? I'm not sure I'll be able to get out once I go down there, truly. There was a very unfortunate accident.

years back in a cave in Utah called Nutty Puddy Cave that someone was in a very tight passage and crawled head first and got to a situation where they couldn't go forward and they also couldn't go back under their unpower because they didn't have adequate leverage. Jones was wedged upside down. After nearly 24 hours, rescue workers attached ropes and pulleys lifting him 10 feet up. He was given food, water and a walkie-talkie to tell his family he was okay. But a up, Pulley snapped and he slipped back into the narrow crevice. There's an incredible sense of this. Efforts to rescue them over several days fails.

And my understanding, I'm not a doctor, but my understanding is basically it comes down to if you were being held upside down for a few days, eventually your cardiac system would not respond well to that. The first time I felt claustrophobia was on my second cave trip ever. And what happened was we were with a group that was leading us. I think we probably had eight people, and the leaders at the beginning let us down a belly crawl that was on a slope. So actually, she should say they let us up a belly crawl. And we were crawling for like five minutes, and then the leaders at the front were like, oops, we're lost.

And the passage was probably three feet wide. So I felt like the cave was like closing in on me, especially since we were lost. And I definitely felt the beginnings of panic setting in. And I don't know if I verbalized this or not, or maybe just other people felt the same way. But someone in the group started singing. And we all just like broke out into song. And all of the panic just totally vanished. And by the time we finished singing, the leaders figured out, you know, which way to go.

Huh. Do you remember what you sang? Is it staying alive? Maybe. That would be appropriate. There's some series of caves in southern Mexico, the Hwotla system and the Cheve Cave system that basically there have been efforts going on for quite a while to connect various known cave systems down there because they would, basically it would most likely become

the deepest known cave in the Western Hemisphere. I've spent, let me think, a total of two and a half months exploring the, the eighth and ninth deepest caves in the world in Mexico. I think they're both about 1,500 meters deep. I mean, just to get down to the base camp level is, I think, you're descending 1,000 feet of rope. You're bringing probably about like a 50 to 60 pound pack with you. And when you return up the rope, you're going to do that as well.

A lot of the expeditions at this point are deep enough that they will go down for, I believe it's about a week at a time or so. I think I did a series of like five week-long trips underground. So I spent a lot of time underground. And, you know, you kind of just get used to the environment. You see nothing but grays and browns. It's very dark, very dim light. You're constantly having to be aware of your surroundings, which can get exhausting. The problem is right now that, well, there are many problems. One of the problems is that my right leg, is bent.

Uh-huh. And I'm trying to figure out, like, how to get it straight. Yeah, you got it. But I think you want to cheat your butt over towards the... Towards this way? Yeah, towards your left hip. Yeah. I think you want to cheat that way.

You got this, honey. You got it. Why am I doing this? I don't know. To be honest, but you're doing good. Hello! We're in a cave. Yeah!

No, no, we're not stuck. We're safe. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. What's your name? Lucas. Hi, Lucas. Yep, you're good. Am I, though?

Yeah, you're good. Yep. Oh, no. Okay, I'm coming out. You know, like I could just go for it right now. Oh, Ben. I remember when I was exiting the cave, I was super excited to take a shower, have some food. and just walk on flat ground because I was just getting kind of tired of like constantly being aware with every step that I took.

But what I didn't expect was the sensory experience. So this was in Mexico. So imagine like vibrant jungles. And literally I emerged from the cave and like the colored green. I had not seen green in like seven days. And it was so vibrant. It was so bright. I felt like it was literally like vibrating and like pulsing at me.

And the sky was blue and the trees were rustling. Like all these sensory experiences that I had been deprived from for seven days to then have it suddenly hit you was super intense. I don't do drugs, but I imagine it's like being on LSD or something. Don't do drugs, kids. Or at least don't do drugs while caving. because apparently caving itself can be a hell of a drug. As for our Spelunking expedition, we got in pretty deep, but we also got out.

How deep do you think we went? 15 feet? 15.20? 15.20 feet down and kind of warmed our way down, which I did not see myself doing today at all. We couldn't make the final squeeze. We were both tempted by it, but you went further than I. I didn't know if I would, I could see light, but I didn't know if I would be able to fit through that light on the other end.

I also think... Know your limits. I didn't want to. Yeah, if you want to stop, you should stop. I didn't want to. I, if we had started from this side, things would be different. And I probably would have, would have tried to do it. But also, I'm not a, I'm not a caver.

I don't like tight spaces. Yeah. I tend to freak out. I didn't freak out. No, you did great. For a first caving and last, for a first and last caving exploration. You did great.

I think that went okay. I thought it went great. Yeah. And now we get to eat lunch, so I feel like... Victory. Victory. Yeah. Okay.

And this place is beautiful. Beautiful. Another example of the awesome. power of nature. Caves are extremely delicate environments and there's a lot of life in there, even though you might not see it,

including microbial life and bats and things like that. What you have is you have Titanic forces applied over eons and the ability of someone just one knucklehead to go in and destroy something that took tens or hundreds of thousands of years to grow is just too easy.

So if you're really interested in caving, you can definitely do it. I'm just saying be educated about it and be good to the environment. Do it in a way that ensures that you're preserving the cave for future generations to enjoy in the same state that you're seeing it now. Now, we can't end an episode about caving without sharing some of what we learned from Stephen and Sonia about how to do all of this safely. Number one, get a helmet, will you? You don't have to bump your head on much to be knocked silly or get dizzy or get disoriented. Clining helmets are cheap. You know, the other thing is lights.

Don't show up like Amory showed up with zero light sources. But also don't show up like I showed up with only one light source. Three sources of light, actually. At least one of them on your helmet. And we even tell people to put your second source of light on your neck because your light could go out and then you would have to dig through your bag with potentially no light. How shall I put this? If you lose your lights in a cave, it's going to ruin your day really fast. You know what else will ruin your day? Not having enough food or water, especially if you end up

needing to get rescued, which is going to take a while. So you triple the time. So if you're two hours in a cave, that could be six hours of rescue. If you're 10 hours in, that's 30 hours to get rescued. But also, just be smart so you don't have to get rescued. Bottom line, caver is going to cave. Just try not to be such a spalunker. You can find more at caves.org. That's the official website for the National Speleological Society, aka the National Caving Society, caves.org. Also, check out your local grotto, which is an awesome name and caver lingo for caving club. And of course, we recommend the Caving subreddit, because, of course, there's a caving subreddit.

Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Josh Swartz is our producer, and he thinks Spelunkers who wreck sacrificial caves are just... Trashy. Mix in sound design by Paul Vycus, who is contemplating venturing into... The depths below. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, and he'd consider going caving, but only so he could mention it in... Casual Conversation. Editing from Catherine Brewer.

Also, special thanks to Adam Weaver for his help with fact-checking. For more info about Sonia Myers' epic caving expedition in Mexico, go to our website, wbUR.org slash endless thread. Also, shout out to the site Strange New England, which is where we found out about purgatory chasm. On Reddit, we are endless underscore thread, if you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today.

Hit us up there. You can also go to our efforts. official subreddit, endlessthread.reddit.com. My co-host and producer is Amory Seabretson. My co-host and senior producer is Ben Brock Johnson. We'll let ourselves out.