Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth

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Nevada Barr's sixth novel featuring park ranger Anna Pigeon is set in New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns. The location is known to the National Park Service as CACA. The area contains two of the most famous caves in the world, one of which, Lechuguilla, now harbors an injured caver who is also a close friend of Anna's. But that's the safe part. Only two or three feet to the left lay the open macadam of Main Street itself, a pulsating river of deadly metal. Consider that the top speed of a sprinter is somewhere around 20 to 23 miles per hour. Yet on Main Street, cars and buses weighing up to several tons flashed by at speeds close to twice that--any one of which could flatten a human being instantly, or crush it underneath its indifferent wheels. After the indescribable agony of a bus-on-carriage accident, death would be a pleasure. Drowning, poisonous gas inhalation and electrocution are perils of journeying through a supercave. Tabor says there are more than 50 ways for a person to die during these explorations. The writing itself is okay. There is no bad language, sexual content or violence. The author does talk about his bodily functions in detail at times which was a bit much. There is a lot of unnecessary detail about other events in the author's life that are not related to the main story. He always emerges as the hero in those stories as well.... So what exactly is a "supercave"? Think of Mount Everest, and now picture it in reverse ... and that's your basic supercave.

Are there any animals or even bacteria that live in the depths of the world? If so what? Does it become hotter as you go down further or colder, no matter how the cave started off? What about diving - is the water affected by the air temperature or not? What about crystalline structures as in some South American caves? How were the caves formed, exactly, not just briefly about limestone, water and sulphuric acid. Where does the sulphuric acid come from, how do they protect themselves from it? I have never once in my life had the desire to explore caves. I am not really claustrophobic but I don't like the idea of being underground. Anna, on the other hand, suffers badly from claustrophobia. If it hadn't been her dear friend Frieda lying 800 feet below the surface with a concussion and a broken leg, Anna would have begged off. Having completed the demo, we've reached a significant milestone. It's been a long journey, but now we're prepared to move on to the next phase: pitching our game to publishers. Over the coming months, this will be our primary focus. As a result, we may not be able to provide monthly updates every month, since we won't be working on the base game for some time. However, we'll make sure to keep you informed whenever there's important news to share. Overall, I enjoyed reading this account of a man's ascending Everest and subsequent descent after becoming snow blind. It held my interest throughout the entire book; it was a relatively fast read (I read it over my breaks at work). There were a couple of moments that were a little "hard" to read. He brings up his training and time in the military throughout the book to explain how he was able to handle some of the situations he faced on the mountainside (especially after he became "blind").

Thus, it was with some trepidation that I started Blind Descent. Blind Descent is a fair survey of the history of cave exploration but it is mainly the story of two caves and the men and women who explored them. It is also the tale of a sporting/scientific contest - the quest to find the deepest cave on earth. it's also randomly juuuuuuust a lil sexist for absolutely no reason. just in case you were wondering, it is good to be a "type a alpha male" and being so excuses all sorts of rude, controlling, and general bad behavior. Also there are very few female cave explorers but all of them are young and beautiful :) Unravel the secrets of the Martian underground world by exploring its vast and formidable environments. Experience full freedom of exploration with enjoyable new mechanics. Stone is a classic Type A personality, intensely focused, brilliant and unrelenting. He personally succeeded in designing a new underwater breathing apparatus, a re-breather, which the US military had spent tens of millions of dollars failing to develop. This SCUBA-on-steroids was a critical tool without which underground exploration, which entails having to traverse considerable distances underwater, was seriously limited. But the drive that defined Stone’s accomplishments did little for his relationships with people. His missions were subject to team mutinies more than once. It cost him his marriage and personal relationships beyond. Tabor, armed with full access to expedition materials, gives us a very detailed look at Stone’s efforts, in particular his attempts at the depths of the Cheve super-cave in Mexico. Everything is going well, but for now there is not so much new content that we can share here like we did before. We are mostly working on improving things and creating the gameplay rather than adding new mechanics, so that keeps the list short. This month will be crucial for us to see where we are, and hopefully we will reveal more details in the next monthly update about the upcoming demo.

One crazy "small world" experience happened in this book. It turns out that my former physical therapist, Pat Stone, is Bill Stone's ex-wife. Who knew? Mount Everest climber on Nepal quake, Everest avalanche". Fox Business. 2015-04-27 . Retrieved 2017-03-16. I would have liked more attention to the preparations & struggles of many more situations during this adventure. I am thrilled that he has so much faith and love for his family, however the book ends up being more of a tribute to his faith and love for his family rather than his accomplishments and the climb itself. We talked about what it would mean for me and for our family, and we spent a lot of time praying about it and making sure it was the wisest choice for us at this point in our lives." What Climbing a Mountain Taught Me About Setting Big Goals". SUCCESS. 2016-11-15 . Retrieved 2017-03-16.No surprise, books like Blind Descent are all time favorites for me. Adventurous, outdoorsy, and oh-so-delightfully-morbid, this trip down the world’s deepest supercave was everything an (admittedly weird) girl could ask for. Enormous underground cliffs were rappelled, sumps were navigated, a few casualties were endured… all in a noble, twisted effort to get closer to Hell than any other human being has ever been before. One GR reviewer points out that the caver who departed with news of Frieda's injury could have been the guilty party. No mentioned by Anna or the author, however. But ... would that person(if the guilty party) have left the job unfinished? This, despite the fact that a large portion of the land and sea has never been SEEN by humans? This, despite the fact that they only established the current world's record for the deepest cave, and more caves are being discovered and explored all the time? And I found this quote humorous as well: While working in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Barr created the Anna Pigeon series. Pigeon is a law enforcement officer with the United States National Park Service. Each book in the series takes place in a different National Park, where Pigeon solves a murder mystery, often related to natural resource issues. She is a satirical, witty woman whose icy exterior is broken down in each book by a hunky male to whom she is attracted (such as Rogelio). Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong are two explorers who have become household names -- but what about Bill Stone and Alexander Klimchouk? In 2004, both men attempted to find the deepest cave on Earth -- Stone explored southern Mexico's Cheve cave, and Klimchouk delved inside the freezing Krubera, a supercave in the Republic of Georgia. Author James Tabor has documented their intrepid search in his new book, Blind Descent, which he discusses with NPR's Guy Raz.