
The cave divers who went back for their friends - JacobAldridge
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36097300
======
jcoffland
I find the sentimentality towards dead bodies difficult to relate to. I would
be fine with my body being left and would not want someone else to die
attempting to retrieve it. I suppose my friends and family might not feel the
same.

~~~
blazespin
This wasn't sentimentality, it was just adrenaline junkies justifying
themselves.

I really do get why people cave dive and do dangerous things. It's a lot of
fun. But really, at the end of the day, they did this because it was a rush.
There's no other rational reason to do something to risk your life doing
someone your friends just died doing for no other reason than it was exciting.

lol, go ahead and downvote. I do a lot of adrenaline rush type activities, but
I've never tried to pretend it was anything other than just dumb, life risking
adrenaline pumping distraction from life.

~~~
ggus
so what is life, if not some boring stuff around adrenaline pumping
distractions? you do not hold the key to the proper way of living other
people's lives.

sorry for my bad english and for feeding a troll.

~~~
imakesnowflakes
I wish people think twice before calling troll. That word has so lost it's
original meaning, and is now a days used to shoot down any dissenting
opinions.

I say this as someone who 100% agree with the first part of your comment.

~~~
ggus
I think you are right. My troll detector was triggered by the request for
downvotes.

------
kfk
OK, before people start saying why the hell would you do such a sport. Not the
same but similar - I did caving for a big part of my childhood until I was 20.
I miss it. The connections you build with the people you do this are very
strong, your life depends on it. The places you see are mind blowing - try
running into a 60m dive after entering a small hole of maybe 30 cm of
diameter, or visiting a room bigger than a stadium at -500m. And there is a
certain romance around it - places with names from people that discovered them
long ago, places yet to be found, old guys telling gone stories of
exploration. Up in the mountains, maybe 1 hour from my old home back in Italy,
there is still a search for a special entrance to a big cave system (runs 1 km
deep) in order to do explorations also during the winter (a big lake inside
the cave closes the "classic" entrance after summer), this search has been
going on for 20+ years now, still searching.

~~~
callahad
> _visiting a room bigger than a stadium at -500m._

Surely you mean -50m, right? :) Which system was that? It sounds lovely.

~~~
kfk
-500m

Check here:
[http://www.scintilena.com/speleoit/atlas/molise/pdn.gif](http://www.scintilena.com/speleoit/atlas/molise/pdn.gif)

I got until the first P80. People camp close to this place few days to explore
the part after that - here (remember, at -500m):
[https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bancaca...](https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bancacapasso.it%2Fwp-
content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F10%2FPozzo-della-neve2.jpg&f=1).

Edit. Uhm, I think the guy in the middle is my father like 15/20 years ago, I
have to ask him.

~~~
callahad
Ah, I read that you did "cave diving" not "caving" \-- that explains it :)
That does indeed look like a really fun system, thanks for sharing.

------
mikkom
There is a documentary coming in 2016 about this dive, here is the english
website:

[http://divingintotheunknown.com/en](http://divingintotheunknown.com/en)

There was also an excellent article about the dive (with lots of pictures and
videos that they recorded during the dive and interactive map) at the biggest
newspaper in Finland, unfortunately only in finnish.

[http://dynamic.hs.fi/2014/syvalla/](http://dynamic.hs.fi/2014/syvalla/)

~~~
ins0
I think i found the article in english.

[http://dynamic.hs.fi/2014/deep/](http://dynamic.hs.fi/2014/deep/)

------
wazari972
It's surprising to see such an article #1 in HN ... right after a long weekend
of cave diving training!

It's a sport that requires a lot of preparation, planning, risk estimation and
counter-measures. My hobby cave dives are nothing like such explorations, but
the principles are the same.

In the end, when you go diving, the level of risk is close to 0: one regulator
may fail (risk around 1/100 if well checked), two won't fail during the same
dive (risk of two failures 1/100 x 1/100 = 1/10000 which is negligible--if I
got the figure right, I didn't double check! EDIT: it's rather 1/1000 x 1/1000
= 1/1.000.000). And we use two independent air tanks, and with air reserves
managed with one regulator fault in mind, as well as the 'little' panic induce
by the regulator fault. That's called the 1/4 rule, we use it in France in
FFESSM diving organisation.

~~~
elcapitan
I guess that depends on how you think about risk - if it's about some
probability of an unfortunate event, or maximum unavoidable damage in case of
that event. A 1/10000 chance of certain death doesn't sound like something I'd
like to take.

~~~
wazari972
> A 1/10000 chance of certain death doesn't sound like something I'd like to
> take.

(maybe I was a little bit off, it's more likely that the risk of failure is
1/1000, so sum is 1/1.000.000)

but the point is, it's more risky to drive back home after the weekend than to
recreational cave dive, especially with dive fatigue!

~~~
chimprich
You have more risks than just reg failure though. Losing your line, line
snapping, floods, rockfall, silt bank collapse, getting physically stuck, just
to name a few. Based on the number of cave divers and the number of cave diver
deaths over the past few years I would say your odds of dying on a cave dive
are far, far higher than driving home. I think if you believe that you are
more at risk driving then you haven't assessed the risks accurately. I speak
as an experienced caver with several cave diving friends.

------
kogepathic
I understand that people take pleasure in doing this sport because it's
physically challenging and they find the challenge exciting.

> more than 11 hours after setting off on a dive that was supposed to take
> five hours.

I mean this is just insane. I can't even imagine trying to do something in
which any mistake could instantly cause my death for 11 hours straight.

> "There are lots of questions - the original questions - about where the cave
> goes, and where the water comes from, and they are still there," he says.
> "And I am not afraid of the cave."

I appreciate this attitude, but I'm wondering if it would diminish the sport
at all to have autonomous vehicles explore the cave before a dive.

It doesn't remove the physical challenge of the sport itself, but it could
help divers prepare for tough portions of the dive.

e.g. at 110m depth, narrow passage. Single file proceeding with X minutes
budgeted for issues.

~~~
grecy
I'm an avid explorer, regularly setting off to do things that are not entirely
"safe". (though nothing on this scale).

The story of Chris McCandless[1] (Into The Wild) spoke to me so strongly, I
made the trek[2] into the wilderness where he passed away, an old bus on the
side of a trail in Alaska.

Chris' is a very controversial story, with many people believing he was an
idiot for wandering in there "unprepared" and many thinking he is
inspirational. I wound up spending 4 years living in the North, exploring the
far corners of Yukon and Alaska.

I feel strongly there are some personality types that just need to get "off
the map" and I love the part of Jon Krakauer's book Into The Wild where he
suggests having a piece of wilderness on the earth that literally has no map.
People can choose to go in there to explore. They'll (likely) find mountains,
rivers, lakes, caves, etc. but nothing will be mapped, everything is to be
discovered. When they return, they can't talk specifics, or show photos.

Some of us want to go places that have been unexplored, and we accept that
risk.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless)

[2] [http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus](http://theroadchoseme.com/the-
magic-bus)

~~~
monk_e_boy
Your story sounds amazing. I'm from the UK where every square cm of ground has
been mapped, examined and sold to someone.

Some questions.

    
    
        1) What did you eat and drink?
        2) Where did you sleep?
        3) What was an average day like?
        4) How did you deal with days like christmas day, new years eve, your birthday, the solstice and any other special day to you.
        5) Did you see or find anything curious? Something that made you pause and wonder?
        6) Is that sort of adventure a man thing? Did you ever hear of a woman doing something similar by choice?
    

Just some questions that I have, don't answer them if they are impertinent.
Just a curious :)

~~~
keenerd
Every square CM of the US is mapped as well, and has been for a hundred years.
The USGS is very thorough and all of their topo maps are freely available in
the public domain.

~~~
grecy
Which is why, interestingly, Chris chose to not take a map when he hiked into
the wilderness in Alaska.

~~~
exolymph
I'm part of the "Chris McCandless was an idiot" crowd, but I guess he was
intentionally not optimizing for survival. Into the Wild is still a very
engaging book, but it frustrates me so much that people idolize a guy who made
bad decision after bad decision.

The thing that pissed me off the most was when he burned his money instead of
donating it to charity.

~~~
grecy
I understand where you are coming from.

> _he was intentionally not optimizing for survival_

That's a good way to say it. In all honesty - when I optimize for survival I
actually find life too boring, easy and mundane. I want more excitement and
adventure than that, so I understand why Chris did what he did.

> _who made bad decision after bad decision._

It's very easy to armchair quaterback. Have you hiked into the middle of
nowhere in Alaska and tried to survive? Have you hunted your own food? Have
you struggled to cross glacier-melt rivers?

I have, and a lot more. I've seen friends go underwater at -35C 100km from
anywhere, had snowmobiles not start at -50C well over 200km from anywhere, had
severe hypothermia where I thought I was hot, lost feeling in my fingers for
hours, jumped up and down on the spot for hours in an attempt to warm up, etc.
etc.) Anyone that does as well as Chris did is not an idiot.

Most people wouldn't last a week, let alone 3 months.

~~~
keenerd
> Most people wouldn't last a week, let alone 3 months.

Not even the native people of the area could have done it. Hunting for
sustenance isn't a solo activity. Hunting large game is high reward with high
uncertainty. You probably need a group of at least five people. With multiple
hunters only one of them has to land a kill to feed the group. And it means
there is the manpower present to process or eat all of the meat before it
spoils. Which is what happened to McCandless. He was a skilled hunter to bring
down a moose with a .22 but he only got a few meals from the carcass before it
rotted, wasting hundreds of pounds of meat.

I can point you to a record from 1770-ish of a native american woman who
managed to survive for six months alone in far north Canada, after escaping
from her slavers. The party who discovered her was shocked she could even be
alive and none of them had ever heard of such a thing. (Samuel Hearne's
journals)

edit: Bagging a single moose during the season isn't "sustenance". It is
sport. If it ends up in a chest freezer, then it doesn't count for this
discussion. Sustenance means 100% of your calories come from hunted game. And
sustenance-hunters at that latitude, even with a group, can go a week without
seeing any animals.

Scaling up what I've seen people do with white tailed deer, 5 people could
probably process 800 pounds of moose in two days if they already had
stockpiled all the wood. Groups of 100 could eat it all. And groups that large
were common for moving across the land.

~~~
grecy
> _Hunting for sustenance isn 't a solo activity.... You probably need a group
> of at least five people_

That's not even close to the truth. I can tell you've never hunted your own
large game.

Quite a few of my friends go and get a bull moose solo every year... paddle
down a river for a week, shoot it, skin, quarter, load into canoe and keep
paddling.

One of them is 65, still doing it :)

I always just go with one friend, moose and bison each time.

> _eat all of the meat before it spoils_

You think 5 people will eat >800lbs of meat before it spoils? Not even close.

Sure, McCandless didn't do a good job smoking it, but he sure as hell tried,
and he learned a lot that would have worked better next time. I guarantee you
won't meet a single person living in Yukon/Alaska that didn't f-up some aspect
of large game hunting when they started out (me included).

McCandless did what all people moving North do - he threw himself in and tried
to learn as fast as possible. The main difference is he didn't give himself
any margin for error, because that would have made it less
interesting/exciting.

~~~
keenerd
Please read Hearne's journal. It is probably the best record of what living
off of the land in those conditions fully entails.

------
pi-rat
An article from a Norwegian newspaper about the original incident, with
visualisation of their diving profile, timelines, etc:
[http://www.vg.no/spesial/2014/dodsdykket/index_eng.php](http://www.vg.no/spesial/2014/dodsdykket/index_eng.php)

~~~
sccxy
Great visualisation.

At first I didn't understand what happened, but this article made everything
understandable.

------
gommm
I'm not a diver so what I'm about to say may sound incredibly naive but I'm
surprised they don't use more advanced communication tech when diving than
just relying on light signal.

They could use some kind of haptic feedback system working to communicate
between each other through RF waves. If one person presses a button, the other
members feel a vibration or some similar haptic feedback. This would allow
people to signal danger more easily. It would also make sense to have a
notification signaling when any member is outside of the RF range.

Having such a tech would have allowed Gronqvist to have directly been alerted
when Huotarinen became stuck either by Huotarinen alerting him or by the
notification that Huotarinen was outside of the RF range (which would probably
not carry very far in that situation). If other members had been alerted
faster, Huotarinen would have had less time to start panicking and would maybe
not have needed that cylinder of gaz.

So, maybe I'm incredibly naive and there's a good reason but it seems stupid
and dangerous to rely on a torch to signal distress (which is often not going
to be visible to members in front of the group).

~~~
anro
As a cave diver (norwegian as well) i can tell you that a good light with a
tight spot IS a incredible good way to communicate under water where there is
no natural light at all. Lack of seeing your teams light is the first thing
you notice. The only thing that could be better than a light is voice
communication, but to do that in any meaning full way you will need to have a
full face mask (like commercial divers) and that bring with them a lot of
other problems. (like gas sharing etc). And Patrik did in-fact notice that
Jari had a problem, and stayed 20minutes trying to help him before Jari died.
The problem was the "surprise restriction" after point of no return.

So the problem wasn't really a communication problem, but they didn't follow
good cave diving practice and thats most likely whats killed them. Normal cave
dives starts and ends in the same opening, so you will never be at a point
where you cant exit the same entrance as you started. When you do a more
complex dive like a traverse as the Finnish did you always make sure you have
dived ALL of the cave you want to traverse before! Normally you will do a
setup dive from the other side of the system, and place a "cookie" (non
directional marker) on the line where you turn. If you reach the cookie from
the other side you can, if you up for it, continue to the other entrance. By
doing so you ensure that everybody know of hazards like small and tight
restrictions and that they dont catch you by surprise when you have passed the
point of no return. (when you dont have gas/scrubber time to exit the entrance
you started from)

~~~
gommm
Thanks for taking the time to comment. That makes more sense. From the
article, it seemed that it took a while for Patrik to notice that Jari had a
problem and that this caused Jari to panic with the consequences of him dying.

That's also a good point regarding the point of no return and preparation, the
comments from the English divers did hint that preparation had been lacking
but the article didn't really explain what could have been done better.

I've always been fascinated by cave diving but I've got asthma and I doubt I
could ever do it due to that.

------
spraak
One of the pictures is captioned

> The Plurdalen Valley

Which is funny because the -en in Norwegian means 'the' and 'dal' means
valley. So in a way it says 'The the Plura valley valley'

~~~
pyre
> 'dal' means valley

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_(landform)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_\(landform\))

It's there in English too.

------
gadders
This is a good long form article about another cave dive body recovery effort:
[http://www.outsideonline.com/1922711/raising-
dead](http://www.outsideonline.com/1922711/raising-dead)

~~~
snori74
There's also the very good "Snap Judgement" podcast about that here:
[http://snapjudgment.org/where-no-one-should-
go](http://snapjudgment.org/where-no-one-should-go)

~~~
sleepychu
This story also aired on ThisAmericanLife
[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/551/g...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/551/good-guys-2015?act=3)

~~~
thomnottom
Thank you. I was sure I heard this story before and it was bugging the crap
out of me trying to figure out where.

------
barking
Very brave men undoubtedly. I can't think of a sport that I'd enjoy less
though.

~~~
Piskvorrr
I could relate to a part of it - it's like being on Mars: just you, your
mates, and the planet, equally unexplored and unforgiving.

------
f_allwein
vaguely related: the largest successful rescue mission of a scientist who was
injured in a cave in Germany [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
europe-27914426](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27914426)

------
SeanDav
An even more impressive, and tragic, story at over 270 meters depth, in one of
the worlds deepest sinkholes:

[http://www.outsideonline.com/1922711/raising-
dead](http://www.outsideonline.com/1922711/raising-dead)

~~~
anamoulous
Thanks, I had this weird sense that I had already read this story before but I
thought it had been in Africa? Turns out it was this article.

------
konschubert
It seems quite egoistic to take such extreme risks for leisure if you have a
wife and possibly kids who love you.

~~~
imakesnowflakes
What about being a soldier? Does it seem egoistic continue being a soldier, if
you have a family?

We seem to be Ok, with people, risking their life to protect the interests of
the country and thus protect our interests, but not ok if they risk their
lives for themselves?

~~~
rev_bird
Honestly, it _does_ seem sort of egoistic to continue being a soldier if you
have a family, at least to me. I'm going to have a hard time explaining it in
a way that doesn't seem confrontational, but the most exaggerated example of
this is Pat Tillman[1], the professional football player to turned down a $3.6
million NFL contract to enlist in the Army after the Sept. 11 attacks. Two
years later, he was killed by friendly fire, making a widow out of the woman
he married right before enlisting. Even if you ignore all the absurd, bungled
propaganda surrounding his death, he probably did a lot of good in the Army --
but was it as much good as if he'd stayed home and used a couple million
dollars to help vets or something?

I very much understand the sense of duty that pulls people toward the
military, and I know it's frequently a complicated situation. But I don't
think I'll never understand these guys who marry a woman, have a kid or three
in between deployments, then just go running back into a war zone.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman)

------
ohitsdom
> "This incident happened, and then they've made a film and they all come out
> as heroes," he says. "But these two people should never have died in the
> first place."

What should the divers have done to avoid this? Were they just not experienced
enough for a dive of this magnitude? One mentions they should have done a
practice run, but what does that mean? How do you practice for a dive?

~~~
yoo1I
I have no experience diving in caves, I just read about it on the internet,
but this stuck out at me:

> But after descending about 85m Kankanen returned. Looking upset, he explains
> in the film that he slept badly and is simply not in the right frame of mind
> for the operation.

This happened on the retrial mission, but it hints very softly at the culture
in which this group of people went cave diving.

I interpret the comment about not having to have died in the first place, as
meaning that cave diving is extremely dangerous, and so planning and execution
need to be perfect and require a great deal of mental control.

The first person died after he got entangled by some cord, and then after
panicking being unable to switch to a fresh air supply. Why the second diver
died is unclear. So maybe they weren't in the right frame of mind to deal well
enough with running into dangerous problems at depth.

------
avar
For people interested in getting into diving as a sport I recommend reading
"Diver Down: Real-World SCUBA Accidents and How to Avoid Them" by "Michael
Ange" (just search on Amazon).

It contains numerous case studies of diving screwups that either ended in
death or near-death and what can be learned from them to avoid those
situations.

------
ey0001
Is it because of the water pressure that the guy who died couldn't stop
ingesting the water?

------
Overtonwindow
Incredibly brave people. I don't know about the rest of you lads, but I don't
have the balls nor the fortitude to even attempt such a feat of humanity. My
hats off to them all.

------
stuff4ben
The article hints at them having done something wrong and that it could have
been prevented. Any divers/cavers know?

------
known
99% people do NOT donate their organs posthumously

