How does cave exploration compare with mountain climbing in terms of danger and difficulty?
Supercave exploration has been likened to doing Mount Everest in reverse. There are so many different varieties of danger and complications in caves. You can drown, you can be hit with poison gases, you can be buried under rockfall. The scuba-diving aspect of cave exploration adds a whole other dimension of danger that even the great Himalayan mountaineers don’t have to encounter. Mountaineers are probably going to hate me for saying this, but all things considered, I think there are more strange ways to die and get hurt in these supercaves. (See “Sir Edmund Hillary: First Ascent of Mount Everest.”) Bill Stone is portrayed as an extremely polarizing figure, and he was known not to take to writers very well. What was your experience like with him? In the beginning, Bill was very wary and standoffish. It took nine or 10 months before I was able to get the first face-to-face meeting with Bill. Once he learned that I had some caving experience of my own, I think that helped gain his confid
