TWENTY-THREE
THE NEXT MORNING, MAY 2, after a seven o’clock oatmeal breakfast, they loaded up with ropes and climbing hardware and headed deeper into the cave. Before long, their path was blocked by yet another huge, impassable sump filled with dark water. Diving it was not an option. Looking for some other way to get past the sump, Stone searched the surrounding walls with one of his electric lights. Down at the sump’s far end, about 25 feet above the water, was a door-sized opening. Like someone tiptoeing along a second-story windowsill, Stone inched along a long, narrow ledge that ran around the cave wall until he was beneath the opening. Then he free-climbed straight up the wall, hoisted himself into the opening, and rested for a moment. Sitting there, he saw a Snickers candy bar wrapper wedged into a crack even higher on the wall than he was. It could only have been washed there by the earlier, mid-April flood. It was sobering to think that just three days of rain had raised the water level here more than 25 feet. Rainy season flooding would be much, much worse. But there was nothing he could do about that. Returning to the task at hand, he set a bolt to make following easier for am Ende, who was carrying the haul bag with their ropes, hardware, water, and trail food.
Continuing through a series of passages and tunnels, they found themselves above another giant lake. This time, though, almost directly beneath them, a pyramid-shaped rock rose 40 feet above the water. They climbed down onto the rock, which was surrounded on all sides by water of the largest sump they’d yet encountered. It was as if the deeper they went, the more the cave worked to frustrate them, like that moment in a novel or movie, the climax, when a hero is finally confronted with the Final Obstacle, something so big and dangerous that she cannot possibly surmount it (but somehow always manages to).
What enabled them to keep pushing on, fully aware that every additional moment spent down here, separated from all possibility of rescue, relegated them to the position of long-serving combat soldiers who know, beyond all doubt, that for them it is not a matter of whether, but only when, catastrophe will strike?
It was partly that they were used to being in the cage with the lions. They had been in caves before—other supercaves in Stone’s case and, if not those, at least other very big ones in am Ende’s. Also, they had gone into this with their eyes wide open, having considered the risks, weighed them against the benefits, and found the outcome acceptable. They had, in other words, made peace with the possibility of their own deaths. None of this is to suggest that they were not afraid. They were. Absence of fear would have been a sign of mental imbalance. But as so many others have observed, true courage is not the absence of fear; it is the ability to persevere despite it. And persevere they did. They had felt the breath of the lion so often that by then it was almost like a kiss.
There was only one way to find out what lay beyond, so Stone started swimming. He was wearing a fleece jumpsuit but no wet suit, and the water was cold—64 degrees, 34 degrees lower than his body temperature; water steals body heat seven times faster than air. He explored three corners of the sump, finding blank walls each time.
By the time he started his fourth and final probe, to the southwest, Stone was hypothermic. He could make out a sandbar about 100 feet across the water. But when he reached the midway point, he realized he was going to drown. His soaked clothing, the weight of his vertical gear, and his flooded rubber boots were all pulling him under. And he could not touch bottom.
He tried to find the bottom with his toes, but could not. He flailed with his arms, feeling the sharp edge of panic. Hyperventilating, he felt the water start to close over his mouth and nose. His head went under.
At that moment, his toes touched the bottom. Panting, spitting water, he clambered up the sloping shore. After a few minutes, he was able to yell to am Ende that he was okay. Carrying less weight, she followed. Stone climbed up onto the bank, at the end of which he found a passage 50 feet in diameter and with an even surface that he could take at a run. After the length of a football field, he stopped and stared. The already sizable tunnel flared out dramatically and kept on going. It felt to him as though he had just stepped onto the far side of Pluto, a place more remote, intimidating—and exhilarating—than any he had ever been.
This was almost surely the magic portal at last, the passage that would lead all the way down to that long-sought resurgence in the Santo Domingo River where Jim Smith’s dye had turned the water bright green. If it went, as he felt sure it would, Huautla would become the deepest cave on earth by a wide margin and he would finally have proof that the last eighteen years of his life had not been one great windmill tilt. He jumped and shouted like some ancient pagan worshipper, and the cave rang with his howls.
Beyond the portal they discovered one of those Jules Vernesian features supercaves offer up from time to time. Seven miles from the cave entrance, almost a vertical mile beneath the surface, they entered a vast, teardrop-shaped chamber 500 feet long, 450 feet wide at its broadest expanse, and 100 feet high at the top of its arched ceiling. Naked numbers can’t begin to suggest what such a place is really like. The floor alone of Perseverance Hall, as they named the chamber, could have contained more than fifty of those giant diesel locomotives Stone had imagined hearing back in Camp 5. If they were stacked in two levels, which the ceiling height allowed, it could have held twice that number.
Stone and am Ende were ecstatic. Only vast flows of water over eons could have carved out such a monstrous room, and that water must have kept on flowing beyond, presaging even more incredible finds. Boulders covered the floor of Perseverance Hall, which sloped down at about the angle of a home staircase. Here, finally, excitement got the better of them and they started to hurry. Am Ende went down first, with Stone following. Their rush was understandable, but in caves haste often makes death. Stone stepped on a sofa-sized boulder that looked stable but suddenly began sliding, then rolling downhill. They later estimated that it weighed ten thousand pounds. He struggled to stay on top, like a lumberjack running on a spinning log floating in the water. Am Ende heard the crashing, shouted, got no answer. Down there, disaster could strike within hailing distance but remain invisible.
Stone launched himself off the runaway boulder and slammed to a stop with his back against other rocks, facing uphill, watching the limestone giant roll toward him. It happened in microseconds, so he was like someone who steps out in front of an onrushing bus, sees it, understands that it’s going to hit, but doesn’t have enough time to get out of the way. And then, miraculously, the boulder just … stopped. It was caught and held by another rock formation, a giant marble dropping into a slot.
Am Ende found him like that, sitting against a rock, staring in stunned amazement at the massive hunk of stone that had come within milliseconds of crushing him to death. Then he got up and out of its way—fast.
They both understood that if Stone had been injured, am Ende would have had to leave him, retrieve her rebreather from its high cache, dive alone back through the two sumps, and hope that Noel Sloan was still there at Camp 5. With Noel or alone, she would have to spend two days climbing all the way out of the cave and then somehow summon help. But help from where? The Mexican government could not perform such a rescue. Other cavers, presuming they were willing and able to attempt a rescue (or recovery), could take weeks to reach Stone.
Meanwhile, Stone would be as alone as a man on the moon. Open wounds would quickly become infected in the cave’s dark, damp, microbe-rich environment. Fractures could kill in other ways, a fat embolism being one. Exposed by a break, bone marrow may leak microdrops of fat that, once in the bloodstream, can cause fatal damage to the lungs and brain.
They had had enough for that day. A good night’s sleep at Camp 6 calmed their rattled nerves, and the next morning, May 3, they were ready to attack again. They settled on a simple plan: go until, for whatever reason, they could go no more. This time they wore wet suits. They packed ten pounds of carbide, all their rope and climbing gear, and what remained of their supply of gorp, a high-energy mixture of raisins, candy, and nuts.
Moving quickly, in three hours they passed through Perseverance Hall and, at its far end, arrived at the edge of another big sump. This time it was am Ende’s turn to get wet first. With a rope tied to her harness, she swam to the sump’s far end and then disappeared into a crack. She had only about 12 inches of airspace between the water’s surface and the crack’s ceiling, which got lower the farther in she went.
If the water rose, she would have to push her nose or lips into that airspace and breathe that way. Cavers will do that, struggling to breathe in clear space the width of a pencil. But the weight of a helmet and carbide lamp can quickly tire the neck muscles, making it harder to keep the head in a position that allows breathing. If one is far from such a crack’s entrance or exit, the muscles can suddenly cramp or give way. Sucking in a lungful of water can precipitate panic. And panic usually has only one outcome down so deep.
Stone watched am Ende disappear into the crack, trailing rope. For a while he could hear her caving helmet scraping against the crack’s ceiling, but then that stopped, and the glow of her lamp disappeared. He was left alone in the dark, slowly paying out line. Recalling his own experience at the end of a rope, he wondered how long he should wait before trying to reel her back. Ten minutes passed, the rope still going out slowly, then fifteen minutes, and then all movement stopped. Was she in trouble? Or had she stopped to rest, or adjust some piece of gear, or look at something? He had no way of knowing, and now he understood how agonizing it must have been for the two men on the other end of his line during that earlier dive of his.
More minutes dragged by. Reel her in? But what if she was in an awkward position where a sudden yank could injure or drown her? No, he would have to wait for some kind of signal.
He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes. Because he did not want to pull on the rope without knowing her situation in the crack, his only alternative was to go after her himself. Struggling to contain the horrible thought that he could be dealing with yet another death—this time of the woman he loved—Stone slid into the water.