Real Survival Stories - Caving Calamity: Scramble to the Surface

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

John Lane is leading a group of friends on an adventure which is not for the faint-hearted. They’re headed hundreds of feet underground - to explore a network of caves. In this claustrophobic maze of tiny gaps and subterranean streams, many things could go wrong. If John gets in trouble, he’ll have to use every skill in his caving arsenal if he’s to breathe fresh air again… A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's August the 19th, 2006. The dead of night in the Klamath Mountains, Northern California. It's the height of summer. But up here, 6,000 feet above sea level, a perpetual layer of snow blankets the upper slopes. Amid the crags and ice-filled gullies, jagged clefts appear between the rocks, hidden entrances to an intricate alpine cave system. Inside, there are 16 miles worth of tunnels, a labyrinthine network of interweaving

passageways, plummeting boreholes, and cavernous chambers. At the heart of this maze, lying on his back at the bottom of a deep, dank shaft, is 42-year-old John Lane. He blinks up into the darkness. He's stunned. The last few seconds are a blur. How did he end up here? I landed on my back. I don't know if my light went off. I can hardly even remember that moment.

It's like a moment that disappeared from my life. John can't move. Something has him pinned, crushing him between the cave wall and the floor. In the pitch black, he can't see the object on his chest, but he can feel it.

An immense weight. And beyond it, the sheer mass of the mountain itself. Several hundred feet of calcified limestone that separates him from the world above. Fresh air was so far away. Sunlight was so far away, not to mention the camp and the car and my house, my wife, my kids. They all seemed so far away, but I couldn't focus on that. I had to focus on just right here, right now, and what comes next.

And what came next was, all right, let's make a decision on what we're going to do. John takes a breath, filling his lungs with the cave's damp, fungal air. Bit by bit, he's gathering his wits. A good thing too. He'll need every one of them if he's going to make it back up to the surface. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations.

People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet John Lane. When the academic and father of two isn't lecturing on geology, then he's doing what he loves best, exploring deep cave systems all over the world, from Southeast Asia to Central America. In August 2006, John and a group of friends decide to check out a cave a little closer to home. It's supposed to be a low-stakes adventure, an excuse for a bit of harmless excitement. But when things go south, hundreds of feet beneath the surface, those stakes are abruptly raised. I should be dead. I could have died. I definitely thought I could die. I'd say at the time, maybe 80, 20, I'm not going to make it out. With hypothermia closing in and endless opportunities for wrong turns,

John will have to call upon every skill in his caving arsenal in order to reach daylight. I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is Real Survival Stories. It's 8 a.m. on Saturday, August the 19th, 2006. The Klamath Mountains of Northern California. In the sunlit forest clearing, seven men eat breakfast around a crackling campfire. The Klamath Mountains of Northern California. In a sunlit forest clearing, seven men eat breakfast around a crackling campfire. The smell of brewing coffee mingles with the sweet, earthy scent of pine needles and wildflowers. Bags of equipment sit around, climbing gear, headlamps, helmets, bodysuits. As he chews his granola bar, 42-year-old John Lane

lifts his gaze beyond the treeline. There, looming above these swaying evergreens, lies a jagged cordillera of snow-capped mountain peaks. The views from the top must be astonishing, sweeping panoramic vistas across the surrounding wilderness. But that's not why John and his companions have hiked all the way up here. The ragtag group of scientists and hobbyists are less enticed by those lofty pinnacles than by the mysterious, hidden world inside the mountain itself. For John, one of the country's most experienced cavers,

that's where true adventure lies. I think I've always had a lust for exploration, adventure. And when I first went into a cave, just the otherworldliness of it really struck me.

Things that you can't even imagine occur there in the cave formations. It lets the mind wander and run amok, and I embrace that. John's love of caving goes back to his college days. At 21, he got a summer job as a guide at Moaning Caverns, a tourist destination in central California. There, he grew fascinated by the cave's otherworldly mineral deposits, the crusts and crystals that line the walls, floors, and ceilings,

and by the geological forces that put them there. Even little things like these formations, these rock formations, calcium carbonate, calcite, that seem to defy gravity. They grow up instead of down. Like, how does that happen? And it's on such a different timescale. We're on a geologic timescale where things are being created like inches in a hundred years. And it's also kind of fantasy-like where, you know, you look at a cloud and you say that looks like a poodle.

Well, there's very similar occurrences in caves with the formations where they look like familiar things, but it's rock. You know, it gets the mind wandering. And that's, I think that's healthy and maybe a bit addictive. Now a professional geologist, John has turned his addiction into his living. As an adjunct professor at California State University, he's led research expeditions all over the world, from mapping cave systems in Borneo to ecological surveys in Papua New Guinea.

This particular weekend trip to the Klamath Range is more pleasure than business. It was organized by Matt Covington, an American geologist whom John met on a recent expedition to Sumatra. Matt suggested getting a group of guys together to explore an alpine cave system in the Marble Mountains, a sub-range of the Klamath. Their plan is to investigate a few unexplored climbing routes, subterranean vertical shafts that might lead them to new, undiscovered parts of the caves. For this group of seasoned spelunkers, it should be a fun day out, an opportunity to do what they love, unencumbered by the demands of scientific fieldwork. John glances around at his fellow cavers. Some of them he knows from previous expeditions.

Some he's only just met. Mutual friends of Matt who were invited along for the ride. So we had this group of mostly experienced cavers. only just met, mutual friends of Matt who were invited along for the ride. So we had this group of mostly experienced cavers. I would say that I was the leader, but it was Matt's project and we were all there to assist with it. And it was an opportunity for us to do something exciting and to see each other again. We hadn't seen each other in a while. Among the less experienced members of the group is John's own younger brother, Michael. John's thrilled to see Michael develop an interest in caving. He's been more than happy to teach his brother the basics

and to show him around some of his favorite caves. Growing up in the Lane household, it was often hard to make your voice heard. But in the quiet world below ground, the brothers have found a place to connect. There's six boys in the family. The family's just very competitive. And I don't consider myself very competitive. But at the same time, I don't want to get walked over by my brothers. And so it's always competition. It's always wondering if there's going to be, if a fight is going to break out or are we going to have to play basketball? What competition are we going to have to do to decide who has to do the dishes for Thanksgiving. And they don't let up.

My brothers do not let up. No such competitiveness exists underground. The tightness of those tunnels doesn't leave much room for oversized egos. Every team member has a responsibility to the caver next to them. And no one gets left behind. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts, offering host endorsements,

or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. It's almost 11 a.m. John, Michael, and their five companions pick their way up the mountain slope. Their travelling light, their small 20-pound packs, contain just the bare essentials, ropes, harnesses, food

and a single gas stove to brew tea underground. The watchword in alpine caving is efficiency. If everything goes to plan, they'll be underground for up to 18 hours, climbing leads, navigating obstacles, and crawling through tunnels barely wider than a human ribcage. So they must meticulously manage their energy reserves.

Every breath, every calorie, must be put to good use. The less you have to carry, the better. But just carrying anything is really a pain and sucks up time. And when you're trying to get something done, it seems that time just goes so fast. And then when you finally, after all these hours, get to where your project is actually beginning, you're like,

God, how did it take so long to get here? As the group gains altitude, the conifers thin out. A light sprinkling of snow covers the rocky trail. At 6,000 feet elevation, they reach a shallow depression

in the rock. At the bottom, partly concealed among the rubble and vegetation, is a small, dark crevice, the entrance to the cave system. John and the others make their way down towards it. The initial descent will require abseiling down a narrow, chimney-like shaft, a vertical 300-foot drop into the Earth's crust. As the cavers zip into their PVC oversuits,

the light-hearted atmosphere switches to one of absolute focus. They'll have to keep that up for the next 18 hours. As an experienced caver, danger is something Johnny is well acquainted with. I've been in squeezes that have taken two hours to go afoot. And you can hear your heart beating on the walls and it just echoes throughout the chamber. Earthquakes are a factor in caves. I've been in caves during earthquakes. Generally, you assume these things have been there for a long time and that they're generally safe,

and you deal with the situation as it comes up. Should disaster strike, the odds of rescue are vanishingly slim. Retrieving an injured caver from a deep system requires lugging medical equipment down miles of tight, twisting corridors, through flooded sumps, and down precipitous drops. All of this can take days, even weeks. For the trapped caver, if starvation or their

injuries don't kill them, then the freezing subterranean temperatures almost certainly will. When things go bad in a cave, if you lose your light, that's almost a certain death sentence. In that cave that I worked at in Moaning Caverns, there's over 100 human remains at the bottom of this 180-foot shaft. And then there's passages that go off of that. And in those passages, you find bones, human bones, of people that actually survived the 180-foot fall and then crawled off until they died. And that's the thing about caves is when things do go wrong, it's usually really wrong and really, really bad. Cavers must be analytical, level-headed, and highly risk-tolerant.

For John, this last requirement has become harder over the past few years. He and his wife are still relatively new parents. Their daughter is five, and their son is just three. When you have kids, geez, you think you're going to slow down. Or you feel like you do because, boy, it's a whirlwind of being a parent. I did definitely slow down a little bit, mostly because I had the responsibilities of being a parent. But you have a different perspective on life for sure, more than just on yourself. If something happens to me, then there's other people that are affected. And I guess, you know, that's true for any situation, but more so as a

parent. As the unofficial expedition leader, John is the first to descend into the cave. Those are the rules. First one in, last one out. Before lowering himself down the shaft, he takes one final breath of fresh mountain air. It's a beautiful summer's day. Dazzling sunshine gleams off the slopes. John drinks it all in and he steps backwards and instantly day turns to night. John lets the ropes slide through his gloved fingers as he descends, watching the glistening marble streak past his headlamp beam. As he goes deeper, the air becomes dank and musty, like the inside of a crypt. Whatever conditions are like above ground,

the temperature in the cave remains the same, a constant shiver-inducing four degrees. The chill presses itself into him. Eventually, John's rubber boots reach solid ground. He signals for the next caver to come down. Then he positions himself away from the shaft, out of the path of any falling rocks. John has visited this particular cave before, three years ago. He's got a pretty good idea of the layout in

his mind. It's a very complex cave, like a sponge, where the passages are going all over the place. But the first ones are going straight down. There's rivers on top of rivers or creeks on top of creeks. And hydraulically and geologically, it's a very complex system. It's got over 16 miles of passage and there are multiple entrances. And it's absolute, total, complete darkness. The plan is to reach a particular room in the middle of the cave system, where a distinctive mineral formation has come to resemble none other than Cthulhu, a tentacled monster from science fiction. From there, they will split into smaller groups to do some more exploring, before beginning

the long journey back up. Once the whole team has descended the entrance shaft, they set off for the Cthulhu Room. For the next six hours, John and the others inch their way into the bowels of the mountain. Sometimes the passages are tall enough for them to walk. Most of the time, they're crawling on their bellies, spidering across the cold, damp marble, headlamps weaving like laser beams. Occasionally, the labyrinthine tunnels widen into cavernous grottos, where stalagmites rise from the ground like pipe organs. Other times, the passage narrows to a tube-like squeeze. The cavers must exhale, forcing the air from their lungs in order to compress their chests enough to fit through the gap.

Like most alpine cave systems, this one has flooded sections, underwater streams fed by melting snow, or static pools that glow with algae. As they slog on, John keeps a close eye on the tide. They're making good progress, but you can never be too careful. Conserving energy and body heat is essential for their safe ascent back to the surface. In a cold cave, you're fighting time. And the longer you're in there, the more energy is sucked from you.

And it's just amazing how fast it takes before you start to shiver. And then you've got to get moving again. And then once you do start moving, then you sweat, and you get moving again. And then once you do start moving, then you sweat and you get even colder. And then when you go in the sections with the water, then you're sopping wet. And then you really got to think about just basically, you got to get out of there. What have you planned for? And how prepared are you for that plan? And when you have a new plan, are you prepared for that?

And in an extreme environment, oftentimes you're only prepared for one plan. And if that goes awry, you need to abort or you're in big trouble. At around 4.30 p.m., the team reaches the Cthulhu Room. It's a large, echoey grotto, draped in yellow flowstone. Calcite deposits that resemble molten wax. After firing up their portable stove, they restore their depleted energy reserves with some hot food. Animated voices reverberate around the chamber as the team discuss next steps. They decide that one group will attempt a lead climb up an unexplored rock face,

while the other group heads off to investigate some uncharted sections of the cave network. John and Michael are in the second group, along with two other guys, Greg and Andy. We went off and explored other rooms outside of the Klootloo room. We work our way through this boulder jumble and find some more walking passage and go off for a couple hours and then decide, well, let's go check on their progress and find some more walking passage and go off for a couple hours. And then decide, well, let's go check on their progress.

And we go back to where they're doing the climb. And I was bringing up the rear and Greg was in front of me. And there's this scramble through these car-sized boulders where you had to climb up about 10, 15 feet. John hangs back as Greg forges on. They're climbing up a tall, narrow constriction, a crack zigzagging through a jumble of boulders. John waits his turn. Basically, my head is at Greg's butt

and waiting for him to get out of the way so I can climb through. And he says, John, are you clear? Clear? Clear what? And then that's when it just all fell apart. John has experienced avalanches while caving before.

He recognizes the cacophony of rock smashing against rock, the air filling with what smells like gunpowder as the shifting boulders scrape and grind. Then he feels a sudden, gut-wrenching lurch as the rock he's standing on gives way. It all happens too fast for coherent thought. His body hurtles backwards through the pitch-black void, and then… I landed on my back. I don't know if my light went off or I can hardly even remember that moment. It's like a moment that disappeared from my life, falling that 10 or 15 feet.

And then waking up and having this 400-pound rock on my chest. Dust swirls in the flickering beam of his headlamp. But as it clears, John realizes that the boulder on his chest is the least of his worries. I see this other rock the size of a car is tilted on its end and it's still moving and it comes right down to me and it hits the walls and just before pinching off my lower body it hit the wall less than an inch from touching me John has found himself trapped at the bottom of a rock fall, and it's about to finish him off. I couldn't move at all. I was on my back, on the floor,

with about a 400-pound rock on my chest. I was like, this is it. This is it. This is how I go. And I feel sorry for the people that got to drag my body out of here. I used to always tell my wife that if I do die in a cave, just leave my body there. But I'm sure that wouldn't happen. John lies there, still pinned at the bottom of the rockfall. Somewhere above him, through the smoke of powdered rock, he can hear Michael and Greg making their way down to him, their voices bouncing off the cave walls, reassuring him they're coming.

Moments later, they reach the bottom of the shaft. John can hear them grunting and groaning as they attempt to heave the boulder off his chest. He presses upwards too, quivering with the effort until eventually... They were able to pull the 400-pound rock off of my chest. And they're like, stay there, stay there. And I was not going to stay there. I wanted to get away from that car-sized rock as fast as possible.

John scrambles backwards. Once he's clear of the suspended boulder, he collapses onto his back, sucking air through clenched teeth. Soon, numbing shock gives way to searing waves of pain. And so I'm still on the ground and I'm in pain. I hurt everywhere. They're trying to do an assessment and I'm just really kind of out of it. I don't know if shock is setting in. My leg really hurts. My chest really hurts.

But I'm alive. That was amazing. And then I realized, like, wow, but I'm really compromised. Slowly, John collects himself. It's not yet clear what his injuries are, but the intense pain in his chest and knee suggests a broken leg, maybe a couple of snapped ribs. As far as medical supplies go,

all they've got is a couple of painkillers, which John swallows down with a grimace. Gingerly, he tries to flex his left leg, but the excruciating pain prohibits any movement. If this were a straightforward alpine rescue, they'd call a helicopter to airlift John to hospital. But of course, no such option is available for them down here. Matt, by now, he's come over and he's panicked. He wants to go out, out of the cave on his own, and go back to the car and then drive to Fort Jones

and go get help or a helicopter or something. That's going to take a long time. I don't want to take the chance of being stuck here and dying of hypothermia. Not just myself, but whoever would have to stay with me. Plus, I don't know the extent of my injuries. I don't know if I have internal damage. I don't know if I'm bleeding. The clock started ticking the moment he fell. Hypothermia is the most pressing threat. Encased within hundreds of feet of thick, chilled marble, this cave system is like a refrigerator.

Lying on the bedrock, John can already feel the residual warmth leaving his body. I've led cave rescue, search and rescue, and I know how difficult it is. Oftentimes the victim gets hurt way more on the rescue. I knew I didn't want to be rescued. The other option is self-extraction. John pictures the miles of tight, mazy tunnels, the ceilings serrated with sharp stalactites,

the hairpin turns and suffocating squeezes. Navigating all that with a suspected broken leg would be near enough impossible. But he knows the grim odds associated with cave rescue. He knows that at least one other person will have to stay back and wait with him. Probably Michael, putting his life on the line too. There's only one path to choose here. John's going to have to get out of this cave himself.

I just said, we're all going out together. You guys got to help me. Nobody's going out for help. Because I didn't think I guys got to help me. Nobody's going out for help. Because I didn't think I was going to live through it if they went out for help. If I was going to have to wait for it, I didn't think I was going to survive. It's about half seven, 30 minutes since the rockfall. All seven cavers are gathered around John, their faces grave in the torchlight.

Discussions have started over which route back to the surface they should attempt. The majority favors going back the way they came, but John disagrees. I wasn't going to make this a democracy. I was going to decide what's happening. I'm not going to just sit by and have a decision made that affects me. And I knew I didn't want to go out the way we came in. It was just too crawly and tight and I couldn't bend my leg. Just that sounded terrifying. But there is one other option. A route back to the base of the entry shaft that John recalls from his previous visit to this cave. I'd been in this cave three years before, and there was another section that, although it wasn't very appealing, it was more straightforward.

And this was what's called the lurking fear and it's a stream passage that is about a quarter mile long it's a belly crawl and it's about I don't know maybe half a meter high foot and a half high and the water goes up to maybe your chin. Submerging themselves in ice-cold water will accelerate hypothermia, but at least they'll be moving forward in a roughly straight line. It's the lesser of two evils. John waves away the last few protestations.

The decision has been made. The lurking fear it is. Now to test his leg. I tried to stand for the first time and I used Michael's shoulder. I couldn't stand. It just collapsed and almost threw up from the pain. I'm thinking I've broken a bunch of ribs and maybe have some internal damage. I don't know about my back, but I know my left leg is really messed up. I can only just drag it and even still wincing with pain. When problems arise, cavers must devise a swift solution, whatever the drawbacks. They can always rethink further down the line. In a game where every second counts, it is indecision above all that can be fatal. It's not always a question about making the

right decision as much as it is about making a decision. And once you've made a decision to move on, kind of the baby steps principle where, you know, you just take a step and you take another one and you just keep going. And after a while, you've made progress. With his damaged left leg trailing behind him, John drags himself forward. Pain pulsates through his body. The sweat stings his eyes. After a while, the passage widens and flattens. The cavers feel water rising around them. It's funneling into a narrow passage off to one side. This must be the entrance to the lurking fear.

Gingerly, John bellies his way forward into the frigid stream. There's only about six inches of airspace. The cavers' helmets scrape along the ceiling as they crawl across the slippery stream bed. Caving involves every part of your body and there's lots of stemming where you put your arms out and your back against the wall sometimes you use your head you use your entire body and arms and legs and having one less limb to negotiate that, the pain was the biggest thing, just negotiating the pain. And I think I have a pretty high threshold for pain.

But sometimes it was so extreme that I had to just hyperventilate and wait till the pain had gone away and then try to tackle or negotiate the next problem. The team wriggles on through the lurking fear. Holding himself up on the points of his elbows, John aims his headlamp straight ahead. A quarter mile, in caving terms, is a marathon, but every minute they spend in the water will be extracted tenfold in body heat. Michael is by his side, shouting encouragement. John tries to plaster on a brave face.

I wanted him to be proud of me, for sure. And I also didn't want to be a liability. But then again, I almost wish that he wasn't there because then he's being overly helpful and overly concerned. And I still felt like a responsibility to him. Like, hey, sorry, guys, for ruining your trip. I didn't do it on purpose, but at the same time, it did happen to me. I guess I'm glad it happened to me rather than anybody else. The hours trickle away.

John has now settled on a kind of faltering rhythm, allowing himself a moment to pause and breathe after every inch gained. They're making progress, but there's still a long way to go. I was more task-oriented getting out of the cave. And it was, like I said, baby steps, one step at a time. And I knew in the back of my mind the reality, but I wasn't addressing that. I had a full plate, so to speak. It wasn't going to help me at all to think about my wife and children while I'm still in the cave.

That's just a liability, and it's only going to work against me. So I just kept those thoughts in the back of my head. It's now past 9pm. Under normal circumstances, they'd hope to be back at the surface soon. But they still haven't reached the end of the lurking fear. John scans the tunnel. It isn't just a single, straight passage. There are forks and offshoots, oxbows and runoffs. What seems like the main passage can lead into sudden cul-de-sacs, passage, there are forks and offshoots, oxbows and runoffs.

What seems like the main passage can lead into sudden cul-de-sacs, forcing them to retrace their steps. In the interests of time, Matt, Greg, and another caver, Jason, have gone ahead to scout out the route. John's beginning to question his choices. Is it too late to turn back? There was the doubt in the back of my head, like, was this a bad decision?

Like, did I make the wrong decision? Because it was all time-oriented. It's all about efficiency and timing. And any missteps are going to cost time. And time was the killer. John can hear Michael's teeth chattering. His own shivers have become a kind of white noise, a constant background vibration.

He scours the darkness up ahead, searching for the bobbing red helmets of the root finders. He registers a twinge of panic. There's only so many dead ends they can afford to take. Jason and Greg and Matt are in the front and they're route finding. And we kept going down the wrong path and really frustrating.

So after a while, hours actually, we can't find our way out. The clock is being run down minute by precious minute. The team regroups and reassesses. It's time for a different plan. The margin for error is shrinking rapidly. It's around 10 p.m. still inside the lurking fear. John squints down the pitch-dark passage. The light from his headlamp shimmers on the surface of the water. His heart thuds inside his chest. As the most experienced caver here, and someone who's been to this cave before,

he has now taken it upon himself to find the correct route back to the entry shaft. He pushes ahead of the six other men and looks around. Decades of problem-solving underground have furnished John with a clear head under pressure. He's never needed it more than now. He studies the walls of the passage. The ancient limestone, metamorphosed to smooth marble, eroded by water and time. To the untrained eye, this stretch of the cave is indistinguishable from any other.

But there is a glint of recognition in John's dilated bloodshot eyes. He dimly recalls the subtle variations in texture, the distinctive calcite deposits that run up the length of the wall, stretching up, up, to a small window in the rock. I remember when we were here before, like we had a problem. There's just this one window that links this section of the cave to another larger section of the cave.

I remember we had to crawl up to it. And so I was able to find the passage, that window. John shouts back to the others panting and quivering with the exertion he holds himself up out of the lurking fear through the small window and into a large dry section of the cave a short crawl from here will take them to the base of the entry shaft. Soon the others have joined him. They're soaked and shivering violently, but galvanized too, because now they are nearly out.

The 300-foot vertical shaft is the last leg to daylight. John slogs his way up the first 20 feet. He is aid climbing. He's ascending using ropes and metal pegs screwed into the marble. Thankfully, when they descended this shaft earlier today, they left the anchors and ropes in place, ready to climb out. John reaches for them now with trembling fingers, pulling himself higher and higher. It's brutal.

He looks up, but there is no sign of the night sky. It was easiest when I was crawling, actually, through the lurking fear. But then when I had to do the climbing, that's when it was extreme. And being 20 feet off the floor and then hitting your leg and having to just suck up all the pain. So otherwise, I'm going to fall 20 feet. And then I'm going to be in worse shape because I'll probably break something else. Within a few minutes of ascending, I was sweating again. It was extremely painful, but I was able to have my left leg dangling and my right foot was in the leg loop, and I was able to ascend with difficulty. John proceeds with painstaking caution.

There's no way of knowing how long this is taking. It could be an hour. It could be three. Time behaves differently underground. When we don't have sunlight and the influence of the sun moving across the sky when that's not in our perception time does stand still and kind of like geologic time where the difference between a minute an hour a day 100 years in that cave is infinitesimal. And oftentimes in that cave environment,

you know, you find something that catches your interest or you're busy doing something. And if you were outside on the street doing the exact same thing, you would realize how much time went by. But in the cave, you know, I spent an hour tying my shoes john reaches the halfway point he anchors himself to the rock and threads the second rope through his harness his pulse quickens not long to go now

once i got onto the second rope i knew i was going to get out, but I was still in the cave. I was still in harm's way. And so I felt so much better when I was there. And then a huge sigh of relief came when I breathed the fresh air. it was pitch black at night but i could see stars and i knew i was out of the cave and i was gonna make it he can feel the night breeze he can smell the scent of pine resin john pushes himself up the final few feet and emerges gasping from the cave. He's out. I didn't wait for anybody else to come up.

I started limping back to camp. I found a stick that I could use as a crutch and I limped two miles back to camp, built the fire, and Michael had brought in this box of wine. And so I opened that up and i hit that pretty hard and it was several hours before anybody made it back to camp and i don't remember them coming back to camp john wakes the following morning with a throbbing headache. His left leg is severely swollen, but the pain feels manageable now.

The immediate danger has passed. The team packs up and heads back down to the trailhead, with John limping along behind. That's when I was really reflecting on the whole experience like okay I'm gonna live I'm probably gonna be all right and that's when the whole impact of it just hit me and I just broke down and I'm like I shouldn't be alive I really shouldn't be alive they make it back down to the cars still fueled with adrenaline and buzzing with relief, incredibly, Johnny's able to drive himself home. Sitting behind the wheel, keeping his busted leg away from the pedals as much as he can,

he wends his way down the mountain roads and onto the sun-drenched highway. The California sky stretches out above him, a vast blue expanse. Traffic flows past in the opposite lane. Rest stops and gas stations bustle with Sunday business. Life above ground, going on as normal. When John arrives home, staggering up the driveway, his wife, Anna, gives him short shrift. Now that he's out of danger, she isn't going to hide her feelings about his reckless hobby.

So she didn't have very much sympathy by then because I was alive and I was going to be alive, but it was just discomfort. And she had to work the next day, and so she said, you've got to take yourself to the hospital, which I did. At the hospital, x-rays confirmed that John has broken his leg. The ball on his tibia has been sheared off. Add to that a bunch of cuts and bruises,

and all things considered, he got off extremely lightly. He's given a cast for six weeks and begins the process of physical therapy. After recovering, John goes on to lead more caving expeditions, albeit with a somewhat heightened sense of caution. Above all, the experience renewed his appreciation for life and all the things that make it worth sticking around for. I think about it from time to time, and it's never going away. But I'll tell you one thing, it sure makes me value the experiences I've had since and seeing my kids flourish. And that makes me realize that life is a gift and it's really an amazing experience. And sometimes you have to break a tibia to make you realize how precious things are.

He and Michael still get out caving together. And in the wake of what happened up there in the Marble Mountains, John is sure to tell his brother exactly what family means to him. You know, I don't know if I look at a rainbow or sunset any differently, but I think I do.

I think the sunsets are a lot brighter and so are the rainbows. And, you know, it's kind of nice to put the masculinity aside and to just be real and be like, yeah, you're my brother, and I do love you. Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Jeff Hunter. In 1970, he sets out on an epic maritime adventure, attempting to circumnavigate Britain in a tiny, homemade kayak.

Fierce weather, rough seas, and even run-ins with the military all add hurdles to the journey. But it's off the south coast of Scotland that things go from dangerous to life-threatening. Jeff will find himself desperate and alone, clinging on to a scrap of floating metal in the middle of the sea. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen to Jeff's story today without waiting a week by subscribing to Noisa Plus.