By Hazel Barton as tell to Jed Lipinski
TONGZI , CHINA , 2011 — deeply inside the mountain , we hear the sound of a river . The four of us — all researcher who analyze cave — are exploring Quankou Dong , or Big Spring Cave , in a removed , mountainous part of China , just south of Chengdu .
The “ large leaping ” is a river that run through a passageway from one final stage of the enormous cave to the other . Along the way of life , it churns into class 4 rapid . hour sooner , we ’d entered through a dry musical passage . Now , it ’s full of pee , rising tight .
The cave ’s entering is stunning : 100 foot wide-eyed , 300 groundwork high . Once inside , you pass through Cloud Ladder Hall , a 16 - acre elbow room so eminent it has its own weather system . One of the expectant cave chambers in the world , it rises more than 1200 feet , though its roof is typically hidden by clouds .
We first snuff it inside Quankou Dong in 2008 , after it ’d been learn the year before , and we had been back several times . On one occasion , I splay on a rock , fell in , and got tossed around in the rapid ! It was n’t risible at the sentence — grade 4 rapid are very difficult to manoeuvre and can be implausibly dangerous — but my colleagues and I express mirth about it now .
This year , we ’re undertaking an epic 24 - hour geographic expedition . Since you ca n’t rent a elevator car in Tongzi , we give a driver 300 yuan to drop us off and then pick us up the following day . We ’re wear down kneepads , wind - insubordinate PVC courting , and helmets equipped with powerful caving lights . Our packs are full of climbing equipment . Around 2 p.m. , we get in at the backtalk of the cave .
A few hours in , the passage bifurcates into blotto and wry passages . We take the ironical one . Unlike with most geographic features , there ’s no way to identify cave or where they lead without physically inscribe them and explore . This musical passage is about 10 time the size of a train tunnel , and as we climb and rappel into the heart of the mountain , we measure aloofness and inclination and map coordinates . We sketch images of the cave in between . It ’s big . In places , it feel as if we ’re bear outside on a starless night .
We wreak for 20 hr , branch off into narrow passages and other rooms , before deciding to repay . That ’s when we discover the river . After a few hundred feet , we find ourselves staring up at a 30 - invertebrate foot falls . A brand - newfangled river is soar through the ironical passage . It has the strength of an exposed hydrant .
I look at my mate Duncan . He ’s the elusive cat I ’ve ever jazz . He enounce , “ Uh - oh . ”
My mouth hold up dry . I think , “ We are in so much trouble . ”
It takes us a minute to comprehend . We ’ve been underground so long that we did n’t realize it had started to rain . The rain , we assume , has caused one of the pissed passage along the agency to block up like a clotted sink , sending body of water festinate into the juiceless one .
plain , we ca n’t just walk up what is now a violent class 5 speedy . It pass to me that we may have to reverse naturally and climb onto a ledge until the flowage subsides . But how long would that be ? Twelve hr ? Seventy - two ? We have only a few PowerBars left , and we ’re already wiped from the daylong climb .
As I ’m brooding , Duncan springs into legal action . The right hand and left sides of the waterfall are relatively dry . We watch as he free - climbs the right , leap over the fiercer rapids at the top of the falls , and disappears .
Ten minutes pass . I begin thinking terrible thoughts . Then , suddenly , a R-2 comes down . Another teammate , Mike , grabs hold and uprise the 30 - invertebrate foot face . I go next . midway up , I look down into the spin quag below . Slip here , I think , and you ’re idle meat .
I make it over the shelf . There , I find Mike lie on top of Duncan . They ’re both wedged inside an alcove , serving as a human mainstay for the circle . I throw myself on top of them and last out there until our last teammate , Tommy , makes it safely to the top .
And yet the waterfall is n’t our biggest concern . On the way in , the enactment had been nearly sealed off by a massive boulder . We ’d just managed to squeeze around the edges . If the water has risen above it , we ’ll be trapped .
After a three - hour trek , we reach out the bowlder . The river is rushing around only one side of it . The weewee is freezing and neck opening - inscrutable , but we bypass the stone well . Another three minute subsequently , we at last come forth from the cave into the pullulate rain , shivering and soak . We find the van idling on the side of the road . Our driver takes one look at us and smiles .
We know we ’ll return to Quankou Dong . We ’ve left behind stainless - steel climb bolt in the rock . A yr later , we do return . But when we go to clip in , we discover that the bolts have been sheared off the rock by the force of the floodwater . All evidence that we were here before has already been wash away away .
