This past Saturday, January 28, 2023, another chapter in my own personal blacklisting saga took place. On that day the Arizona Regional Association (ARA), a division of the National Speleological Society, the country’s national organization for cavers, held its annual winter technical meeting at Kartchner Caverns in Arizona.

It is this same organization had blacklisted me and two other individuals in November 2021 because they did not like our opinions about COVID. Its leadership therefore assumed that it also the right to eject us from the public event on Saturday. It was our intention to show them they were wrong.

The goal of the winter technical, which has been occurring annually for about a half century, is to allow southwest cavers to present papers highlighting their research and projects during the past year. While intended mostly for Arizona cavers, it has not been unusual for others from other parts of the country to present, especially if their work has some connection with Arizona. Consider it a very informal kind of scientific conference.

Thus, this event has always been open to the public, and in fact has always been designed as a form of outreach.

The Wuhan panic had unfortunately caused the winter technical to be canceled in 2021 and 2022. Thus, the January 2023 event was to be the first in-person winter technical since 2020.

It was also going to be the first in-person winter technical since this organization had blacklisted myself and two others. The history of that blacklisting all relates to the Wuhan panic. In the fall of 2021 the ARA leadership had finally decided to come out of their basements and hold a caving campout where cavers could socialize and go caving, but in doing so insisted that everyone who attended reveal whether they had gotten the jab, and if not, demanded they get tested for COVID 72 hours before.

I and about eight other people refused. We saw these rules as discriminatory. It also was was none of their business to demand we get the jab, or to demand we get tested. Nor was the jab going to protect anyone from COVID, since by the summer of 2021 there was already ample research showing its relative ineffectiveness.

Furthermore, this was an outdoor camping event. If anyone was scared of getting COVID, they could either easily stay away from others, or not come at all. Such people had no right to dictate what others had to do to ease their irrational fears.

When they realized that (1) they could not enforce their mandates, and (2) those mandates made no sense, the organizers cancelled the campout, and then decided to make three of us — the most outspoken — the scapegoats for that cancellation. In blacklisting us, however, the leaders of the ARA violated of their own constitution and bylaws. They held a show trial without obtaining the proper approval from the membership, and then outlawed us from the ARA for two years, even though those same rules gave them no power or right to do any such thing. Similarly, the leadership of one of the local southern Arizona clubs, Southern Arizona Grotto (SAG), banned me as well, and also did so in violation of its own constitution and bylaws.

Southern Arizona Grotto: Also
run by bullies

Because their actions were fundamentally illegal by their organizations’ own rules, I and Henry Schneiker (one of the others blacklisted) have made it a point to ignore their blacklist orders. In November 2022 we attended a public meeting of SAG, where the club’s president, David Vidonic, and another member, Sarah Truebe, tried to order us to leave. Since it was a public event in a public place open to the public, we told them to go jump in a lake (I describe what happened that evening in detail here). Since then these bullies have moved all SAG meetings to private homes, hiding from us. What cowards.

The ARA winter technical this past weekend however was being held in a public place, open to the public. Henry and I once again decided to go, even though we had been told through friendly sources that the ARA officers were going to call security to get us ejected if we showed up.

Though attendees of the event did not have to pay the state’s park entrance fee, when we arrived I insisted on paying the $7. I wanted that receipt to prove I was a legitimate paying member of the general public. When we entered the Kartchner Caverns visitor center, we immediately saw at the information desk a big poster outlining the program of the ARA winter technical event, being held in the auditorium. I asked the person behind the information desk if we could go in, and she said yes, of course, it is open to the public.

We went in and sat down, sitting next to another caver who immediately reached out to shake my hand in greeting. The second talk had just ended (we had purposely arrived fashionably late), and the third talk then proceeded. At the end of this talk a security guard came over with one of the event organizers, David Vidonic, and asked us to step outside. We did so.

The guard explained that, according to Vidonic, he and the ARA officers (Steve Smith, Ray Keeler, and Scott King) had requested the park remove us. I immediately showed my entrance receipt, explained that both I and Henry were members of the general public, the event was open to all, and that we had been quietly listening and causing no disturbance. “Can I please go back inside? I came to listen to the talks and am now missing them.”

This wasn’t good enough for Vidonic, who by the way had also been the SAG president who tried and failed to throw me out of that club’s November meeting. After making more fruitless demands that we be thrown out, the guard noted bluntly but politely that I was legally correct, and that unless Vidonic and the ARA had a court order documenting the ban, we could not be ejected.

Since the ban had been instituted illegally, we all knew the ARA could never get any judge to issue such a thing. Henry quipped, “I love to see them try to get such an order.”

I reiterated my request to go back inside. The guard then asked, “You promise to cause no disturbance?”

I said, “Of course. I came to hear the talks. However, if we go back inside I can’t help worrying about some others there, some of which have been — how can I put this — somewhat aggressive. I am worried they might approach and threaten us, thus causing a disturbance.”

The guard then offered to remain in the event for the entire day, to which Henry and I heartily agreed.

We then went back inside. Before we did so Vidonic demanded (that word again) I answer yes or no to this question: “Do you ever want to one day rejoin the caving community and be embraced by it?”

Though the proper answer was to tell him I was not there to be interrogated, this was not the time to say this. My focus was to demonstrate to the security guard my good will. I simply answered, “I can’t answer that question now.”

He then puffed himself up. “Well, if you do want to rejoin this community, you are going about it in the wrong way. Your behavior is getting people angry with you.”

The hubris by this person was mind-blowing. Despite these people treating me like scum for the past fourteen months, he somehow had the insane expectation that I would of course want to be their pals again.

What he didn’t realize was that his question could be reversed. If he and the other officers of the ARA wanted me to rejoin their little community, they were going about it in the wrong way. Their thuggish behavior, repeatedly harassing Henry and myself, was certainly not a way to win friends.

In fact, what sane person would ever want to associate with such power-hungry goons? Not me. I have now closed the door forever on some individuals. As I wrote in November, I had once considered some of these individuals as close friends, people with whom I would have laid down my life for. I have now discovered they don’t know the meaning of friendship, and cannot be trusted.

Henry and I then sat through the rest of the event, chatting during breaks with a number of other cavers who held no ill will to us and actually wanted this whole drama to end. After the presentations, the ARA then held its annual business meeting, as it traditionally did at the end of the winter technical. By then, just about everyone had left except the ARA officers, a few local club officers, and Henry and I. Interest in the ARA among ordinary cavers was clearly nil. People might not want to be part of this battle, but they also don’t want to be part of an organization that initiates it.

When shortly thereafter Henry and I left, the security guard followed us out and immediately thanked us for doing what we promised, causing no disturbance. Though he was obviously relieved he hadn’t faced a more serious crisis, it also appeared he had realized we were not the true cause of this conflict.

The small victory against our blackballing hardly changes anything. We are still being subjected to a steady effort to harass us whenever we attempt to participate in any public caving event in Arizona. So far they tried twice (and failed) to throw us out of public meetings. Several clubs have switched their meetings from public venues to private ones in what appears to be an obvious effort to keep us out. I have also been told that one ARA officer is going to try to get me expelled from the one Arizona grotto that I have rejoined since last year’s blacklisting, even though that club has no rules allowing such an action. I also expect that if we show up at any major ARA campout this year, they will try again to have us removed.

Outsiders must be asking: Why are these people so obsessed with making Henry and I non-persons? Did we really do something so terrible that requires this never-ending blacklisting campaign?

The instruction manual followed by the leaders
of these caving organizations

Well, this is what we did: For three years we boldly refused to bow to their COVID demands. They demanded all caving trips be canceled during the lockdown. We told them that was foolish, that getting together to go caving was perfectly safe, that the Wuhan flu was nothing more than a variation of the flu that did not merit such madness, and that getting together for social events was perfectly reasonable, even during the height of the panic. Therefore, as they huddled in their homes in terror, we continued to go caving and have a good time. We even enthusiastically and repeatedly invited them to join us!

They demanded we wear masks on cave trips. We told them that was absurd and refused to do it.

They insisted that all club meetings be held only by zoom. We told them that made no sense, and continued to get together in social groups without them.

They demanded anyone who was not jabbed was a leper who should be banned from every event. We told them that was discriminatory and irrational.

Did we die because we defied their demands? No, of course not. As I said, COVID was really nothing more than a variation of the flu, and such draconian measures were never appropriate or necessary. More important, it is now in retrospect common knowledge that the endless overbearing demands by these people were utterly wrong. They were wrong about lockdowns. They were wrong about masks. They were wrong about social distancing. They were wrong about the COVID shots.

Fundamentally, this is why these people keep trying to ban Henry and I. Our very presence infuriates them, because it makes it plain to their face how wrong they were. Rather than admit error — something any rational civilized adult should always be willing to do — they have decided that any evidence of their errors must be banned from existence.

We however will not be banned. The only way these control freaks can really control anyone is if we consent to their bullying. Well, neither Henry nor I will ever consent to bullying, and we will continue to tell them so, whenever we can.

Sadly, it appears that the two of us are mostly alone in this particular battle. I could get almost no one else to come to the ARA winter technical to support us. Nor was anyone who did attend willing, as a member in good-standing, to speak up on our behalf. Instead, as I mentioned, they all walked away.

This unwillingness of most Americans to resist bullies bodes very badly for the future. Bullies win when people run in fear from them. It appears most Americans are afraid and are eager to run.

Last night I discovered personally that every blacklisted person in America has a great deal of power. You need only exert that power to make the bullies who are trying to destroy you helpless and confounded.

First some background. In December 2021 I was blackballed by most of the Arizona caving community because I had disagreed with their decisions to discriminate against anyone who had not gotten a COVID shot. I and a number of other people had objected to the demands of these clubs that we be jabbed in order to come to a caving event. We considered such a rule discriminatory, even as it illegally demanded private medical information. We also tried to explain to the organizers that this policy made no sense because the evidence last year had already showed that the shots provided no protection against the virus.

Their answer: I along with two others were blacklisted from all further organized caving activities for the next two years.

Since then I have been mulling how I should react. I never accepted this vindictive action. Not only had it been done in violation of the actual bylaws of these organizations, it was especially vicious because it was done by people whom I had thought were close friends. I had now discovered they were not my friends, but responding in hate goes against my nature. The true oppose of hate is utter disinterest, and it has my goal over the last ten months to put aside my baser emotions and reach this more civilized state of mind.

Anyway, last night one of the Tucson cave clubs that had blacklisted us was having its monthly public meeting, in a pizza place. Since the president of that club had sent out a public invitation saying that all were welcome, I decided it was time to show up. Essentially, I had decided to follow the advice of journalist Matt Walsh, who when attacked for criticizing the purveyors of the queer agenda for their campaign to mutilate and castrate little kids, told them this:

I apologize for nothing. I concede nothing. … The secret they never say out loud is that nobody is truly cancelled unless they consent to it and they willingly play their assigned roles. Well I do not consent, and I’m not going to play the game. I’m not going anywhere. [emphasis mine]

The politicos in the organized caving community had tried to ban me from such public meetings. Well, I agree with Walsh. I do not consent, and I’m not going to play their game.

I called up Henry Schnieker, who had also been blacklisted, and we both attended the meeting. For the first hour everything was civilized. We had resolved to be polite and courteous, and we were. I had also resolved to limit my interactions only to those whom I wanted to talk to. I would avoid conversations with those former friends whom had blacklisted me, simple to avoid any unpleasantness.

To show how well things were going, during the meeting, when it was time for everyone to talk about their recent cave trips, I raised my hand, and one of my blacklisters, now the club president, even recognized me so that I could describe a fun trip I did about a month ago.

After the meeting adjourned however and people were just milling about chatting, another one of those blacklisters came up to me and Henry and demanded that we leave, that we had been banned and were not welcome.

I calmly responded, “I don’t consent to your blacklist. The president had publicly announced this meeting and invited the entire caving community to attend, both members and nonmembers. Thus, I am here. I came to see people I wanted to see (and who it appears are very clearly glad to see me as well) and not bother those who don’t want anything to do with me. If you don’t want to talk to me, all you had to do is not talk to me. Instead, you came up to me to start this fight.”

This wasn’t good enough for her. She once again ordered us to leave, citing the actual language of the club’s ban. I repeated, “I do not consent to your attempt to blacklist me. You can order till the cows come home, but I refuse to obey such orders. This is a public meeting, and I am staying.”

I walked away, going to have a nice friendly chat with another person I had missed seeing for the past year. Meanwhile the blacklister went to the club president (whom you remember had recognized me without problem during the meeting), and demanded he kick me out. Then they both came over to us, with the president interrupting my conversation to now demand I obey their ban and leave.

I repeated my statement. “I do not consent to your blacklisting, and am not going anywhere. Call the police if you want.”

After some more orders and demands to leave, all answered by me in the same way, both abruptly went silent. We looked each other eye-to-eye, and at that moment I saw a look on their faces that I wish I could have framed forever.

Both had suddenly realized that they had absolutely no power over me, and they did not like it.

I turned to the person with whom I had been chatting and apologized for this ugliness. I then moved off again to start a different conversation, though by now the get-together was beginning to thin out.

Henry and I stuck around for about another 20 minutes to talk to some others, and then we left. We now have plans to attend a few more similar meetings of the other cave organizations that had banned us, just to make it clear to them as well that their blacklist has no power over us, and that we refuse to consent to it.

Walsh of course is correct. I admit it isn’t easy to face down these bullies in a calm and civilized manner, but it is necessary. I also admit that my situation is nothing like those who have lost their jobs because of this blacklist culture. I was banned from open public clubs and can easily defy their blacklist. Someone who was fired cannot so easily regain that job.

Nonetheless, this refusal to consent to evil is exactly what every freedom-loving human being must do. The bullies have to be put on notice that we will not bow to them. It is the only way we will stop them.

The tragedy of this whole personal affair unfortunately remains. I have lost a number of friendships that I had valued greatly. I would have laid down my life for some of these people, including the two who berated me last night. Had I done so, however, I would have done it in vain, because it is very clear to me now that they would never have reciprocated. While I was their friend, they looked at me as merely an acquaintance, easily discarded.

This is mostly their loss, but the loss still hurts me as well. No matter. We move on. The world is still filled with many good people. The goal now is to find and treasure them, for the rest of my life.

——————-
An aside: Beginning today I am doing my yearly one week November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black, with added bonus feature! Depending on how much you donate you can get one of my books for free. See the campaign page for details.

I hope my readers have a great Labor Day weekend. Get out, see friends, go sightseeing, have a great time to celebrate the end of summer. And above all, don’t do what the CDC is demanding, to stay home if you are not vaccinated and even if you are, to wear a mask, maybe two or three, all the time, even when outdoors by yourself. Ignore such idiocy.

Use your common sense instead. Be brave. Be free. And above all, pursue your happiness fully, with joy.

Until then, the advantage of a carbide light was the quality of the light it produced, a soft bright glow rather than the harsh reflective rings produced by older electric lights.

The disadvantage however was the endless fiddling required to keep them working. For example, near the end of this video when he finally gets the light to work, he turns up the water flow to brighten the light. I guarantee that very soon the light would go out, as he was flooding the carbide. The water drip had to be precisely right. Too slow and not enough gas. Too fast and too much water.

I personally hated carbide lights because of that fiddling, especially because lamps made after 1970 were junk and didn’t work well. Most cavers who used carbide would scour yard sales to find old lights like this one, as older carbide lamps were made well and would work reliably.

Hat tip Jeff Poplin.

Several readers have asked in the comments for a report on what I did this past weekend.

I went caving. The photo to the right, taken on a previous trip several years ago, will give you an idea. The cave is amazingly beautiful. The trip was to designed to give a bunch of people a chance to see it.

I won’t say much more than this, mostly because it is unwise to reveal too much about the caves one visits because this then attracts people to them who are often either inexperienced (and thus a risk to themselves) or untrustworthy in terms of protecting the cave’s beauty. I am totally willing and open to bring anyone who wants to go to the caves I visit, but a newbie should go the first time with someone experienced, for the reasons already outlined.

This past weekend I was completely out of touch with the rest of the world as I led a group of eight cavers hunting for new caves within the Grand Canyon. This was the fourth trip we’ve done to this part of the canyon, and on previous trips we were either mapping known caves, or scouting with binoculars the cliffs on the mesa’s walls, looking for potential openings. This trip we focused on rappelling down to the most likely candidate openings.

Overall we checked about a dozen potential caves, all of which turned out to be dead ends, mere alcoves. Oh well. Though this might sound disappointing, when you have to rappel off a cliff in the Grand Canyon, dropping out into nothing at heights ranging from 100 to 200 feet, who can complain? The image on the right, taken by Jeff Watkins, shows me (in the orange shirt) in the midst of one of these journeys. I am rappelling about 160 feet down to the top of the alluvial fill that you can see on the left that slopes down another few hundred feet to the canyon floor. In this image I am about a third of the way down, and am about to reach the spot where I will be hanging completely free of the wall.

Yowza! Though you can’t see it in this picture, behind me and opposite the cliff face the canyon extends out several miles to its opposite rim, with the Inner Gorge of the Colorado River cutting across in between. Once I reached the bottom I then rearranged my gear, using it to climb the rope back up 160 feet.

Nor was I the only one to do this. During the weekend we each got to do at least one rappel, each of which was as stunning and as breath-taking in its own right.

To say the experience was exhilarating is for sure a significant understatement. I used to do rappels this deep routinely when I was caving back east, but then the drop was underground, in the dark, with cave walls relatively nearby. Though that had a majesty of its own, doing this in the outdoors, in the Grand Canyon, is a far different thing.

All 12 members of a Thai youth football team and their coach have been brought safely out of the cave in northern Thailand. The final five members rescued join eight team members taken to hospital on Sunday and Monday and said to be doing well. Each person was pulled through the cave by expert divers. The last Navy Seals – three divers and a doctor – are out of the cave, the rescue chief says.

As I said, this is a miracle. The press is likely going to focus on the kids and their coach, but the real heroes are the cave divers who risked their lives, with one man dying, to save these children.

Keep your fingers crossed. What I did not mention yesterday in describing the dangers of cave diving was the truly courageous work of the divers to find these boys. Caving diving is mostly done blind. The first person in can sometimes see, but very quickly the silt reduces visibility to zero. To make sure divers can find their way back, they lay a lifeline as they go.

There had not been a lifeline to the passages where the boys were found, prior to this rescue effort. To have laid out a lifeline in passages almost two-thirds of a mile long, so quickly, speaks volumes for the courage and skills of the cave divers here. It is also why I am not surprised one diver died in the effort.

The first boy rescued exited the cave 5:40 p.m. local time, followed by three of his team members shortly after, Chiang Rai provincial acting Gov. Narongsak Osatanakorn said in a Sunday night news conference. The boys traveled 0.62 miles underwater before they reached safety.

They were taken to the hospital — three by helicopter and one by ambulance — once they were out of the cave.

This is truly a heroic and miraculous rescue effort. The upper levels of the cave the boys are trapped within are likely to eventually fill with water before the rainy season ends in October. None have ever dived before, and this isn’t diving but cave diving, possibly the most dangerous sport anywhere on Earth. In fact, an Apollo astronaut on the Moon is doing something less dangerous.

That they have gotten four boys out so far is good news. We mustn’t count our chickens yet. Traveling two-thirds of a mile underwater in a cave, with likely zero visibility, is not trivial, even with two divers to guide the boy every step of the way. One rescue diver has already died in this effort. The remaining eight boys and soccer coach face a daunting challenge.

One more note: Elon Musk yesterday announced that he is sending some of his engineers to Thailand to help. Some reports indicated he was building a submersible, but I do not think those are right. This article describes how they are helping, and it mostly has to do with helping with the pumping and other ground issues related to Musk’s tunnel boring company.

More important, it is their cave. They really are the ones that should do it.

I will be posting throughout the day, catching up.

The cave surveying has been going well, but we have been trying to finish the survey of the cave’s largest room, and have found it daunting. Basically we have four survey teams spread out across the room’s width, marching forward to cover the entire passage. Since the room is never less than 150 feet wide, this takes time. After three full days of work, we finally reached the far wall yesterday, though we still have significant clean-up in many places.

Nor is this the cave’s only passage. We have several other areas that need survey, many of which I hope the local cavers will do after we Americans go home on Saturday.

As I did on the previous two trips, first in May 2016 and second in February 2017, I will continue to post on Behind the Black, though my posting will generally occur in the evening when we get back from the caves. I will also do at least one Batchelor appearance from Mayan Mountain Lodge in San Ignacio, where we will be staying. The lodge has been gracious enough with each visit to let me use their office and phone.

I very much want to finish the map this trip. The local cave guides, who depend on keeping the caves in pristine condition so that they can show off their beauty to tourists, need the map to help protect the cave. They will be helping with the survey, as they have previously. As I noted after my first trip in 2016,

Because Belize’s law puts the ownership of all caves under the jurisdiction of the Institute of Archaeology, which generally lacks the resources to protect them all, this work by the tour guides is essential. For example, Barton Creek Cave is a major tourist river cave that requires a canoe to see. Though the property surrounding the entrance is privately owned, the landowner, Mike Bogart, cannot prevent access to the cave to others. He offers tours, using the canoes he provides, but others can do the same and access the cave by canoeing up the river past his property. They need only get a government permit.

Thus, under this socialized system, with no single owner responsible for each cave, the only way the caves can be protected is for the tour guides and operators to band together to protect the caves themselves. In fact, their effort to flag the trails these past few weeks was begun expressly because they all saw the damage that uncontrolled visitation was causing, and wanted to stop it

Hopefully, their effort will bear fruit, and the caves and their guides’ livelihoods will prosper for years to come. And if the cave maps we Americans produce can help contribute to that success, then my short trip to Belize will have accomplished a lot more than provide me a few days of vacation pleasure.

On to Belize! The image below, of one of the many caves there, will give you a taste of their beauty.

]]> https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/heading-to-belize-again/feed/ 4 https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/how-i-spent-my-saturday-removing-graffiti-in-a-cave/ https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/how-i-spent-my-saturday-removing-graffiti-in-a-cave/#comments Sun, 15 Apr 2018 18:40:34 +0000 http://behindtheblack.com/?p=51197 Yesterday was another of my many cave adventures, but different than most. Instead of exploring and mapping newly discovered or out-of-the-way remote cave passages, I participated in a project of the Central Arizona Grotto (a chapter of the National Speleological Society and located in Phoenix) to remove years of graffiti from Peppersauce Cave. You can see pictures of yesterday’s effort here, published by the Arizona Star.

You won’t see any pictures of me. The younger cavers were far more photogenic.

Peppersauce has become what cavers call a “sacrificial cave.” It is open and ungated, relatively easy to traverse, and very well known throughout the state. Thus, many inexperienced people go there to see it, most of whom know little about caving, the ethics of protecting them, or the proper techniques for caving safely. Yesterday, while we were working to either sand-blast, chemically remove, or grind away old spray-paint (some of which was sadly obscene), I must have seen between 150 to 200 people go by. At least two thirds of them were not wearing helmets. Many clearly had never been in a cave before. Some were not wearing headlamps, carrying flashlights instead (which makes climbing harder because you don’t have use of both hands and can easily lose your light). A few even came in with no lights, depending instead on the lights their companions carried.

Because of this heavy traffic, Peppersauce has been badly trashed. On visits by experienced cavers we routinely carry out bags of trash, only to find that trash reappearing, sometime in mere hours. The walls of the cave had been covered with graffiti, some many layers deep.

Ray Keeler of Central Arizona Grotto (CAG) has organized several projects in the past to remove this graffitti over the past two decades. The effort he is leading this year is the third, and has the help of cavers from grottos throughout the state. This was the fourth clean-up weekend, and the first that I was able to attend (having missed the first three due to scheduling conflicts).

I’ve done similar things before, but never on this scale. It was quite educational using the solvent to remove some graffiti, but unfortunately many types of paint are completely resistant to removal by either sand-blasting or solvent. After awhile I got discouraged doing solvent work. Too often nothing got removed. In the afternoon I switched to our last technique, grinding, and was far more gratified with the results. The grinder, which we do not use on formations, removes only the slightest layer of material, and thus does little damage. It however is very effective in removing all paint, no matter how resistant.

The cave is now about two thirds cleaned. We are racing to finish the rest before the summer, because a typically insane reason forced upon us by the government. You see, according to a law passed by Congress, graffiti that is more than fifty years old is considered historical, and cannot be removed without a great deal of paperwork and complex bureaucracy. Spray paint was invented in the late 1960s (about fifty years ago), and so some of this ugly graffiti, no matter how obscene, is going to be protected by our government beginning later this year. Our goal is to get it removed beforehand, so that the cave can be returned to a more natural state, for future visitors to experience.

I intend to post while in Belize, though it will likely have to wait until each evening when we get back from the caves. I also intend to do my Batchelor appearances, but this time live from Mayan Mountain Lodge in San Ignacio, where we will be staying. The lodge was gracious enough in May to let me use their office and phone, and I expect they will be agreeable again this time.

Anyway, off for more adventure. The world is much too fascinating a place to see it just from my desk by way of the internet. You have to get out and see it for real whenever you can!

I intend to post several essays about my trip, one describing the caving and why it is happening, one describing the ruins and my impressions (with photos), and maybe a third with my overall thoughts about the experience. Since I have a lot of other work that needs to be done, some with deadlines, it might take a few days to pump all this out. Stay tuned.

I have never been to Belize before. If I can’t post there I will definitely post my impressions of my travels upon my return.

Posted from El Paso, Texas.

The picture on the right will explain why I have been silent posting since Friday. I have just returned with five friends from three days of caving in New Mexico, doing some wild caving plus my first visit to Carlsbad Caverns since 1992, guided by a local caver who has been helping me with my cave survey project in Arizona.

New Mexico probably has the largest concentration of truly large and spectacularly decorated caves in the entire world. I’ve caved there previously, but this was my first trip driving from Arizona. We went to two wild caves, one of which I had never visited before and a second that I had seen during my 1992 trip. The picture shows me in the latter, standing above a large clear pool near the back of the cave with some giant flowstone speleothems all around me.

The new cave contained a room dubbed Speleogasm, because every formation there, of which there are too many to count, is completely festooned with helectites and sodastraws in a mad protrusion that no geologist can as yet explain. Nor is there any way to describe it adequately or photograph it successfully. To witness it you need to go, requiring the specialized caving skills that include the techniques and equipment required to rappel and climb a 40 foot rope.

As always, the advantages of learning how to do this successfully is the reward of seeing things that few ever see. It is why engineers and scientists strive so hard to get planetary probes to distant planets. And why humans want to travel to the planets. For me, getting inside a remote and beautifully decorated cave will just have to do.

In the end, the work of more than 60 researchers yielded a picture of “a relatively tall, skinny hominid with long legs, humanlike feet, with a core and shoulder that is primitive,” Berger says. Some body parts have come into sharper focus than others. In an analysis of the remarkably complete hands, paleoanthropologist Tracy Kivell of the University of Kent in the United Kingdom found that bones in the wrist were shaped like those in modern humans, suggesting that the palm at the base of the thumb was quite stiff. That would allow forces to dissipate over a larger area of the hand than in more primitive humans—a trait associated with tool use. At the same time, H. naledi had a weird thumb and long, curving fingers, as if it still spent a lot of time climbing.

The story of the discovery is interesting in that the fossils were found in a cave in a room that is very difficult to access, so difficult that the scientists themselves have never seen the site. Instead, they have sent very small cavers inside to do the fossil gathering.

There are many caveats to this story. The 15 skeletons appear different than humans, but to then create a whole human species from this single location is a bit risky.

I think the biggest mystery about this find involves its location. How the heck did these 15 individuals get trapped in this room at the back of a cave that requires you to squeeze down a vertical 100-foot chute only about 8 inches wide to enter?

Posting to resume shortly. Stay tuned.

A team is trying to rescue a 52-year-old man injured in a rock fall in a 1,000m-deep (3,280ft) cave in Germany, in an operation that could take days. The Riesending cave is Germany’s deepest and it took one of the man’s companions up to 12 hours to return to the surface to raise the alarm. Some 200 people are involved in the operation, near Berchtesgaden in southern Germany. The first rescuers reached the man in the vertical cave on Monday.

On Sunday we will be doing a mock rescue, whereby we will arrive at a cave entrance where we will have to locate the patient in the cave and get that person out of the cave safely. Should be most interesting.

Note that this cave is definitely not the largest in the world, as is often claimed. It appears to have the largest single room of any known cave, but the cave itself is relatively small at about four miles, compared for example to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, which is the world’s longest cave at 400 miles.

This official announcement is a bit old, as the survey work that brought Mammoth over 400 miles was probably done during the October or December 2012 expeditions.

Update: I contacted some of my caving friends who survey in Mammoth regularly, and they have confirmed that the survey reached 400 miles during the October 2012 expedition.

An international crew of six astronauts will start training for a caving adventure designed to prepare them for spaceflight. CAVES, an abbreviation of Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising human behaviour and performance Skills, prepares astronauts to work safely and effectively and solve problems as a multicultural team while exploring uncharted areas using space procedures.

Or to put it more bluntly, overly complicated, bureaucratically organized, and not very efficient. For example:

A dedicated mission control will monitor the crew from a base station at the entrance of the cave. Briefings are held twice a day as they are on the International Space Station. The crew is allowed only one shipment of supplies during their stay underground. They will have to choose the equipment carefully and give mission control at least 24 hours’ notice to prepare the cargo.

I have been on numerous multi-day base camp trips in a cave, and the last thing we would have wanted or needed was to waste our time twice a day with briefings. Interestingly, Russian cosmonauts who flew long missions on Mir told me the exact same thing. When Russia’s economy collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union and their space program could no longer afford to maintain enough ground radio stations necessary for continuous communications with the station, the cosmonauts on board celebrated. Rather than waste time answering foolish questions from mission control they could now devote their time getting their work done.

What you want on this kind of expedition is the ability to contact the surface (or mission control in the case of space exploration) in the event an emergency. Otherwise, it is better to leave the crew alone and let them get on with the expedition. Debriefing is better left to after the mission.

Moreover, resupplying a six-day mission makes absolutely no sense, underground or in space. Cavers long ago found it was inefficient to resupply underground teams on these short expeditions, as a caver can easily bring all the supplies he or she needs. We also found that the work of creating an infrastructure to resupply such a crew was wasteful, time-consuming, and ended up distracting from the fundamental goal, to search for, find, and map virgin cave passage.

Space history has taught the same lesson. NASA didn’t plan on resupplying the Apollo astronauts on their way to and from the Moon. It made no sense. Instead, they spent their time figuring out how to do the mission efficiently and simply.

On the next trips to both the Moon and Mars, it is going to be that way as well. We will not be resupplying these astronauts. It wouldn’t be practical and would cost too much. Instead, these astronauts will go with what they need.

Finally, the focus on “solv[ing] problems as a multicultural team” is absurd. International cave expeditions routinely include people from many different nations. Though the cultural differences are fun and invigorating and provide for a lot of dinner conversation, they very very very rarely lead to any problems. Everyone is there for the same reasons, to find and explore virgin passage, a human goal that easily transcends cultural differences. You shake hands, ask some questions so everyone understands the different techniques and equipment, and you start caving.

And it has been that way in space as well. Astronauts haven’t needed to sit before a campfire singing camp-fire songs in order to learn how to work together. They just do it.

So, what is this silly exercise really about? It is a public relations boondoggle, pure and simple, designed to find a way to publicize the European manned space program so that the funding stream to ESA will continue. The astronauts on this mission will have a lot of fun, and they will certainly map some virgin cave — though not as effectively as a lean and mean cave expedition would — but they will not develop any very useful skills to help them on their next space flight.

Unless of course they see how ineffective this operation is — as the cavers did in the 1950s — and decide to simplify it for future space flights.