TWENTY
THE NEXT TWO DAYS BROUGHT a series of terrifying equipment failures that would have discouraged virtually anyone on earth—but not Bill Stone and Barbara am Ende. On the morning of April 30, he was preparing to dive when he heard a noise like a blown-up paper bag being popped. One of his rebreather’s regulator diaphragms had ruptured and was gushing air. It could not be repaired.
Stone shot up a thousand feet, retrieved a replacement regulator, and zipped back down to Camp 5 in a matter of hours. Sloan replaced the blown unit with the new one. Later that afternoon, am Ende was in the water checking her own rebreather, the one that Ian Rolland had been using on his fatal dive. As part of the postmortem investigation, Stone had removed that rebreather’s computer, which contained all the data from Rolland’s last dive, and had replaced it with another. But the new unit did not calibrate depth correctly, making it useless.
Am Ende clambered out of the water and Stone went to work. Unfortunately, he made a wrong connection to the computer, using a high-pressure rather than a low-pressure hose, which completely blew out the unit’s crucial depth sensor. This was too much for the increasingly unnerved Noel Sloan.
We need to end this thing now, he urged.
Stone and am Ende dismissed that idea out of hand. A search of Camp 5 turned up an extra sensor in, of all places, Ian Rolland’s stashed gear. Stone installed the spare, but when he was finished it was late and everyone was exhausted. They decided to spend another miserable night at Camp 5. It turned out to be much worse than miserable, more like a waking nightmare. Am Ende’s sleeping bag had gotten soaked during the day, and when she crawled in, it sucked away her body heat like a wet sweater in a strong, cold wind. Stone gave her his dry bag, then sat up a long time trying to dry hers over the tiny flame of their butane camp stove. Eventually he crawled into the still soggy bag, but without the distraction of any tasks, he became acutely aware of the waterfall roaring like a line of diesel locomotives at full throttle less than 50 feet away. The noise was beginning to erode even his superhuman resistance. Earplugs did nothing to help. In desperation, taking a tip from Kenny Broad, Stone rolled up his soft balaclava hat and pulled it down over his ears. Not much better. Wide-eyed and wide awake, he lay in his hammock and waited for sleep that would not come.
This place should be called Camp Fear, he thought.
THE NEXT MORNING, BOTH AM ENDE and Stone awoke groggy, cold, and exhausted. Running at full blast on its inexhaustible fuel supply, the waterfall was still roaring. Moisture collected everywhere, including on the soggy toilet paper they used during trips to the plastic-bag latrine. Those trips, and every other move on their slick platforms, required extreme care, lest they slip off, as Kenny Broad had done earlier. The pounding waterfall filled the air with perpetual mist that made their headlamp beams fuzzy, like car headlights shining into fog. It lent an eerie, nightmarish quality to the place, which their inescapable thoughts of Ian Rolland’s death did nothing to lessen.
Stone and am Ende sat next to each other, not saying much; Stone could sense that something was amiss.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“I’m not as enthusiastic as yesterday about doing the dive,” she admitted.
Stone had felt that all was not right, but her statement still stunned him, coming when and where it did. This was, after all, the kind of moment that might present itself, for those lucky few willing to take ultimate risks, once in a lifetime, and for the vast majority, toiling slavishly out of the limelight, never at all. It was impossible to calculate all the hours and days and months invested to produce this one single opportunity, but Stone could feel their weight like lead on his shoulders, all the endless meetings on bended knee in corporate suites, the myriad hassles and obstacles to launching every expedition, the cajoling and massaging of local authorities, the disputes and desertions by those less committed, the abandonment by a disillusioned wife and disconsolate children, and the deaths of close friends. All of those and more he had endured and surmounted for this one, this irreplaceable chance to do something that forever after would force people speaking of Bill Stone to precede that name with the encomium “the great explorer.”
There was something else, though, something even more immediate and troublesome: survival. He thought, I do not want to do this dive with someone who might take me down with her.
Stone knew well—better than any living practitioner, perhaps—what a lethal game of chance cave diving could be. Sure, you could train exhaustively and equip yourself with the best and highest technology available and follow established procedures religiously—and you could still die horribly. It had almost happened to Stone himself in 1979 in Huautla. It had happened to Rolf Adams, and Ian Rolland. Worst of all, just a month earlier, it had happened to the greatest cave diver of all time, Sheck Exley, who had been a mentor and hero to Stone and others. Still, Stone had complete confidence in his own diving skills and experience. And he was perhaps the only remaining expedition member, am Ende excepted, who still had complete confidence in his rebreather. So he knew that, by process of elimination, the one thing most likely to get him killed going forward with diving was an inexperienced, irresolute partner—am Ende, in other words.
It was very important not to let his emotions run away with him at this moment. Stone tried to sort things out rationally, factor by factor, but every scenario, every permutation, kept bringing him back to this: We have come so far, to give up and go home now … just unacceptable. His commitment was total. If he had not understood this before, he did now, with crystal clarity: for him, failing would be worse than dying.
He would go forward with or without am Ende. But for the safety of both, and for his own conscience, her own commitment had to be unshakable. There was only one way to clarify that. He had to give her a clearly stated chance to opt out.
“Look,” he said, “if you don’t feel good about this, let’s abort now.”
Instead of relieving am Ende, the question angered her. She felt that Stone was doubting her, after all she had done to support the expedition and him. Staying with him after all the other expedition members—every one a man, to boot—had deserted him. Supporting him physically and emotionally through his personal ordeal in the desert of despair. Enduring the same privations and taking all the same risks for months. How could he do that, now? How dare he do that!
Stone hadn’t meant to make am Ende mad. Quite the contrary, in fact; he’d only wanted to give her a clear, no-strings-attached opportunity, one last chance to say that no, this doesn’t feel right, and we are taught that if dives don’t feel right you shouldn’t do them, and so I just can’t do this one. His good intention had clearly misfired. But the jolt of anger actually helped, because it burned away am Ende’s vacillation.
“Don’t give me that crap,” she snapped. “Let’s do it. Let’s put smiles on our faces and let’s feel good about this.”
It was May 1, 1994. Later that morning, am Ende slipped from the lower staging platform into the sump’s cold, murky water and geared up with the help of Sloan, who had swallowed his objections when he’d seen that there would be no stopping the two. He was unhappy about the whole thing, no question, but he was too much of a friend, and too ethical an explorer, to abandon them down here.
She finned slowly around, making final checks of the rebreather and the backup regulators, settling her mind, waiting for Stone. He was soon in the water, laden not only with his 150-odd pounds of diving gear but also with the orange, 150-pound bag of food, carbide, and camping equipment that would sustain them on the other side if they found lots more cave to explore—“going cave.”
Stone completed his own checks while Sloan watched from the lower staging platform. Finally ready, Stone reached up for Sloan’s hand. “See you in a few days, brother,” he said.
“Come back alive,” Sloan said, gripping Stone’s hand long and hard, and even the stoic Bill Stone was deeply touched by the love and concern he saw in Sloan’s eyes. He turned to am Ende and took her hand. Then she held Sloan’s.
“We are coming back,” Stone promised.
She nodded, put the rebreather mouthpiece in place, and sank beneath the surface.
AM ENDE WENT FIRST, so that her more experienced partner could come behind, watch for problems, and help if they arose. She followed the white guideline that Broad and Rolland had strung during their dives. The visibility was less than 5 feet, and though Stone tried to keep her in sight through the water’s blue-white haze, am Ende swam in and out of his vision like a ghost. Whenever she materialized, he focused on the buddy lights on the back of her rebreather.
Stay green, baby, he prayed silently, and they did, indicating that her rebreather was functioning properly.
They followed a narrow, steeply downsloping tunnel for roughly 450 feet before coming to the breakdown maze that had stymied the first dives in here just five weeks earlier. Both were able to worm their way through the small opening in the breakdown; beyond it the underwater terrain changed into a spacious canyon with a gravel floor, making it easier to avoid silt-up. Because using the smaller muscles of their arms consumed less breathing gas than the larger ones in their legs and lower body, they kept their legs still and pulled themselves along using rock handholds. About forty minutes after leaving Camp 5, they surfaced in what had been named the Rolland Airbell.
Several days of rain in mid-April had raised the water levels throughout the cave. Here in the Rolland Airbell, they were a foot above what Stone had encountered before. The top of the sandbar remained exposed, however, and when Stone and am Ende clambered up onto the beach, their lights revealed an eerie scene. Ian Rolland’s footprints were still visible all the way to the sandbar’s end, where, deposited by the flood, his empty boots floated.
I feel his presence, Stone thought.
They lingered here only long enough for an equipment check, then entered the second flooded tunnel, Sump 2, where the terrain was decidedly less benign. It dropped steeply, at almost 45 degrees, and sharp rock daggers hung from the ceiling. Gradually, the ceiling smoothed and the sump got so large that their diving lights did not show the bottom. Swimming slowly away from the airbell, they soon found the reel Ian had dropped more than a month earlier. Stone considered retrieving the reel but decided to leave it as a small monument to Ian’s discoveries. They swam on.
All was silent except for the subtle hiss of gas moving through their rebreathers. Their wet suits held the chill at bay. In such an environment, the most active things were their minds and the biggest challenge was keeping them reined in. Some cave divers spend half an hour or more meditating before a serious dive, entering a quiet state of utter concentration they hope will be impervious to panic. Am Ende and Stone didn’t meditate before dives, but they knew that focus meant survival and distraction invited disaster. Ironically, it was not am Ende but Stone who first came to grief.