I’ve seen too many memes as of late. I really thought this would have been Saddam Hussein without reading this first.
Heres one to add to your collection. Its a bit old but still kinda amusing.
Exploring a cave is great, but I sure as fuck wouldn’t try crawling down a tiny hole going down at a 70 degree angle. Some spelunkers are straight nuts though, like they get to the end of a cave and say “wow, the wind is whistling through here!” and try expanding small openings with a hammer and chisel or even explosives. I went caving one time in a well known but very long cave, with experienced people, and that was really interesting. When i got back I read my friend’s cave incident journal, which details all the rescues and deaths that happened in the last year, and it was… interesting. Shit like “oh, jimmy got stuck, so we had to break his ribs to get him out”. Great.
Yeah…I’m OK with going my entire life without doing any of that.
We had some interesting times on the one expedition I did. It was fascinating and I would recommend trying it at least once… doesn’t have to be dangerous. Even going to Carlsbad Caverns, which is a National Park and while not the real spelunking experience, pretty cool. I went to Wolf River Cave in Tennessee. Most of it was just like mountain hiking, but with a ceiling. Questionable parts included crawling in light mud on our hands and knees for 600 feet through an area where the ceiling was about 3 feet high. Also one part, you go through a ‘door’ and have to drop down ~5 feet onto some rocks… people told me “be sure to go left when you land!!” and wtf was to the right? This giant dark pit of rocks at least 20 feet deep. Okay… then at the very bottom, there was this area with a bunch of trickling water and awesome stalagmites where you could sit on rocks by this weird little stream and ponds. We split up and sat in different rooms… the guy from Kentucky I sat with, who I’d never met before, told me “sometimes when I’m down here… i listen to the water… and it sounds like people talking…” Uh, okay.
But anyway it was an amazing experience and profoundly strange… the ‘rooms’ and ‘hallways’ are oddly reminiscent of human construction. And if you get stuck or hurt, if you’ve done things properly and signed in and people know you’re there, experienced cavers will come and rescue you.
“sometimes when I’m down here… i listen to the water… and it sounds like people talking…”
He probably has MES, Musical Ear Syndrome. I got it, it’s really not as scary or weird as it sounds. Basically our brains mistakenly interpret some white noises (running water is a big one) as faint music or voices. But it’s not really a hallucination, because at the same time our brain is aware it isn’t real and it’s just coming from said noise. It can actually be quite pleasant, beaches often sound like a quiet symphony. Only occasionally will I hear voices and mistake it for my girlfriend or something before realizing it.
My brain starts playing the theme to Super Mario Bros when I stay up really late.
According to Wikipedia:
Jones and three others had left their party in search of “The Birth Canal”, a tight but navigable passageway with a turnaround at the end. Jones entered an unmapped passageway which he wrongly believed to be the Canal and found himself at a dead end, with nowhere to go besides a narrow vertical fissure. Believing this to be the turnaround, he entered head-first and became wedged upside-down.
This hole was made for me
That’s what she said
In fairness, after I got bottom surgery I got a lot of laughs with that line.
I mean, the moment you see a passage that barely fits a child and you think to yourself “Hey, I should get in there!”, you’re just aiming to be the year’s winner of the Darwin Awards.
This photo gave me the heebee geebees… I’m left asking why and do I have claustrophobia now as a result?
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therapist?
Two ways to find out!
Spelunking is great fun when you prepare properly.
Squeezes are not advisable.
Hey spelunking is perfectly normal for anyone, spelunk all you want in the privacy of your own home. Just dont go into caves.
Always clear your browser history first
I’ll go in a cave no problem but anything where I can’t turn or move freely is a big old nope. And if it seems unstable or whatnot I’m out of there.
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homie I’d rather get launched raw towards the moon than suffer a long agonizing existence being trapped in a narrow passage I could barely move in until I finally die
God I hate the idea of that being your last days… Why do people just purposely wander deep into caves?
Who knows? Some people would crawl up their own colon if they could.
I know lots of people who crawl up their own ass
Honestly, they’re pretty neat. I’ve gone through tours of Mammoth Caves that require waivers, and they strongly recommend that you not take that tour if any part of you has a circumference of more than 42", because you won’t fit. There was a spot that was about 12" high, and 72-ish wide that you had to crawl through that took a sharp right; you had to take your helmet off to get through. But then you get out into this enormous cavern filled with rock formations that are seen by less 100 people/year.
But if I didn’t know that that crack was passable, that I’d be able to get through or get back out again? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck no.
Maybe it’s because I live in a place with a lot of earthquakes, but I think I’m good off putting my head between rocks that could slightly shift and obliterate me.
But I’m glad you enjoy it!
The Appalachian foothills in Kentucky are pretty geologically dead; there aren’t any fault lines anywhere close by. It’s about as safe as any cave network can be.
I do recommend going to that are and taking some tours, especially in the middle of summer where you can see the inversion layer where the air goes from being 95F to 60F. Even the fully-accessible tours that don’t go through any tight spaces are pretty cool.
I don’t mind going inside caves, I just won’t be squishing myself into any crevices that require me to take off my safety gear to get through.
Granted, if it shifts your safety gear likely won’t do shit but still. I’ll stay in the bit of the cave where I can stand, or at least crouch/crawl.
SADDAM HUSSEIN
What I don’t get is neither path is very deep, so shining a light would reveal both dead ends. Can’t think of a worse way to go tho. And the fear and panic realizing you’re doomed.
The closest I’ll be getting to exploring a cave is playing Microsoft Adventure. I’m not getting into a cave, no sir.
Don’t go in the hole
That’s what she said
nsfl
Now imaging crawling into a cave, and being blocked by somebody else’s shoes.
Imagine dying in a place called Nutty Putty Cave.
Yoinky Spelunky
Cummy Caverns
Going spelunking? Whatever floats your boat
Crawling into a small crack? Dangerous.
But why the fuck did he go into it head first?
