              
TALL STORIES
That you'll hear many, many times
Index:
THE FLOOD
IN GOUFFRE BERGER (1987)
... or: never again say that your tackle-bag
is too heavy!
In July of 1987 we tried, together with a team of British cavers, to bottom
the "Gouffre Berger" (-1140 m) in the Vercors, France. At the third day
of the expedition, we made a rigging trip that brought us to the depth of
-705m, to the top of Cascade Claudine (see picture).
An important fact was that the entrance pitches of the cave had been rigged
by the British, and that they had failed to rig the flood-prone Puits Aldo
(P42) out of the water, because of a rope that was too short (they had cut
off a part of it, and used it elsewhere).
 Anyway,
after our trip that had taken some 11 hours, we arrived back at the foot
of the Puits Aldo. I went up first in the pit, the silence was complete.
At the top, I continued climbing and also went up the 3 small pitches above
Aldo. Suddenly, I had a vague impression of hearing water flow. Was I dreaming?
I looked around but the pitches under me were dry. Meanwhile, my wife Annette
had joined me, and Rudi had started to climb up Aldo. The sound of water
got louder and louder, and I realized that something would go terribly wrong.
I clipped in my descender and went down the 3 small pitches again, as fast
as I could, to warn Rudi. I raced through the short bit of meander, back
to Aldo, and then the flood pulse came. But much to my surprise the water
didn't run under my feet, but it fell down, somewhere out of the dark ceiling
of Aldo's pitch. The water gushed down, making a terrifying noise and the
wind howled around. Rudi was hardly half way up the pit when he was hit
by the icy water. He struggled up, fighting for his life, much slowed down
by his heavy tackle-bag. I tried to protect him from the falling water by
standing at the platform, and bending over the top of the pitch so that
the waterfall hit me on the back and was diverted a bit. Within minutes,
the water washed nearly every calorie out of my body. Finally Rudi arrived,
completely empty...
Meanwhile, the rest of the team (Strauss, Kris, Leo & Leo Jr.) had also
arrived at the bottom of Aldo. Then, I made a big mistake, but thinking
about it afterwards, it probably saved Rudi's life since another member
of the team was able to get up the pitch that way... I unscrewed the hangers
of the traverse line and hung the rope straight down at the entrance of
the pitch, since the waterfall was falling several meters away, in the middle
of the pitch. This way, young Kris could climb up the pitch, relatively
dry. Then Strauss started to climb up. He was hardly 15 meters up, when
we suddenly heard a terrible noise, as if someone had emptied an entire
swimming pool in the entrance of the cave. A second, and much bigger flood
pulse was racing down and we knew that it was only a matter of seconds.
We screamed down, but Strauss (still climbing beside a 42 m. high waterfall!)
didn't hear us and climbed on. Then the water gushed down, beneath our feet,
and this time it went down exactly where the rope was. It was a real inferno,
water coming down at two different places in the pitch, lots of noise and
a stormy wind that pulled on our oversuits. Strauss, being battered by the
water, managed to keep calm and began switching over from climbing to descending.
The manoeuvre seemed to take hours, we were looking down the pitch and the
little light just didn't seem to move anymore. But then, he finally managed
to get down again. Then, we probably made another mistake: we had two 5
litre plastic containers with us, full of food. We knew that our three friends
down there would have to sit it out, and after yelling a warning, we threw
the 2 containers down. They smashed down on the bottom (they both survived
it!) and our friends were more than happy with this present. In fact, the
three of them would have to wait 16 hours before the water had calmed down
enough. But, us four at the top, did not have any food left at all. Not
a real problem, we thought: we were at -200m, the exit wasn't that far anymore!
We climbed up steadily, me and Rudi in front. Rudi was exhausted, he
progressed slowly and had vision problems. I only had some pieces of "grape
sugar" (dextrose) left and gave them to him (another mistake...).
Puits
Gontard, 25 m high and now a thundering waterfall. Puits Garby, 38 m., dry
as always. The 200 m. long meander. We arrived at the Puits du Cairn, 35
m high. It was very wet; icy water (0 degrees Celsius) came down. I climbed
up, Rudi's light followed slowly under me. Now and them I stopped and asked
if he was O.K. Each time, after a long delay (as if he had to think real
hard about my question) he answered "yes, yes". Then I saw Annette's and
Kris' light deep down, they were following just behind Rudi. He was now
in safe hands and I decided to climb on to alert the rest of the crew. I
got out of Puits Ruiz, 28 m deep, and the small entrance pitch as well.
It was past midnight, the woods were dark and wet from the rain that had
fallen abundantly. I was "knackered" after 16 hours of caving, but without
taking the time to put on my dry clothes, I ran through to woods to the
camp site, 1,5 hours away.
But meanwhile, things went very wrong! Annette found Rudi, hanging on
his re-belay, against the ice of the "Ressauts Holiday". He was nearly unconscious.
They managed to get him up the last metres, at the foot of Puits Ruiz. But
here, the bottom was full of snow, meters thick! There was no way that Rudi
would survive here, he was already in a state of hypothermia and none of
the three had any working carbid light left to build a "warm" shelter. But
how to get him out of this 28 m high, free hanging pitch? Impossible to
build a pulley system, since one long 100 m rope had been used, all the
way from the entrance to the bottom of Puits du Cairn. Derigging it would
have taken too much time. Nobody had a knife, nor carbid-flame to cut through
the rope. It was young Kris, hardly 17 years old then but strong as an ox,
who found the solution: he clipped Rudi with his long "cowstail" onto
his belt, and climbed up the pitch! Now, Rudi was not very big,
but weighed with all his gear and wet clothing at least 65 kilos, and Kris
was a thin guy, tired (as we all) after 17 hours of non-stop caving. It
was an amazing achievement... At the surface, Rudi was immediately put into
a sleeping bag and he luckily revived.
Today, so many years later, I still find this an incredible act. If we
hadn't witnessed it ourselves, we would have never believed it: we tried
afterwards, one day when practising rope-techniques at a 30 m high rock
cliff, to repeat what Kris did. We clipped our partner to our belt and tried
climbing up: nobody managed to climb up more than 10 metres.
Kris unfortunately quit caving some years later, but for me, he will
always be a hero. How many people can say that they have saved someone's
life, and in such a way? As for me: during that catastrophic night in 1987
I made more than one mistake, but I learned a lot from it:
- in case of a flood: go down the pitch right away and sit it out; never
try to climb up a flooded pitch.
- hypothermia symptoms must be recognized by everyone (feeling cold
and tired, speech and vision problems).
- ban grape sugar (dextrose) from your rations: you run the risk of
causing a hypoglycaemia reaction (the body reacts to the sudden input
of glucose by producing insulin. But too much insulin will also break
down your natural sugars in your blood and you will suffer from a shortage
of sugar. The effect is worse than before.
Finally, this story had a weird ending as well. As I explained, the first
flood pulse arrived out of the ceiling of Aldo. The water came by an unknown
way. One month after our expedition (that, by the way, stranded at -900
m due to the bad weather), another British team invaded the cave. After
one of the trips, one noticed that somebody was missing: Alex Pitcher. It
was the start of a giant search operation, that lasted for weeks. Every
stone in the cave was turned, and even the terminal sump was dived again.
But Alex was not found...the mystery was complete. Was he somewhere in an
unknown part of the cave, waiting for his end to come? Was he somewhere
in the woods?
One year later however, some local cavers of Grenoble, who had been thinking
about the disappearance of Alex all winter, decided to start over again.
In the 200 m. long meander (situated at a depth of -100m) they found a gallery,
formerly unknown. They followed it and arrived at a small pitch. At the
bottom there was the body of Alex, who had apparently stumbled into the
pitch and had been crushed by some boulders that had fallen with him. He
seemed to have died instantly. After his body had been recovered, the French
cavers followed the new gallery further on, and arrived ...in the ceiling
of Puits Aldo. Most probably, the flood that had hit us, had followed the
same way.
THE BATTLE
OF THE GOUFFRE D'APHANICE
...the longest night
 Aphanic?..
a legendary cave with it's freehanging drop of 328 m (1100 feet): the "Puits
des Pirates". It is still one of the deepest freehanging pitches in the
world: there are no platforms, not even the slightest step in the smooth
walls of this giant shaft. Also, the pitch begins IN a cave, at a depth
of 155 metres.
In 1988 we were in the area, for the famous Pierre-St-Martin through-trip,
and we did not hesitate long when we had the opportunity to do the Aphanic?
as well. The cave had been rigged by some friends of ours, C.R.S.L. (Liège,
Belgium) and we were more than happy to go and de-rig it!
We had 7 candidates, of whom two ladies who decided to go only as far
as the top of the big shaft: my wife Annette (3 months pregnant) and Micha?a,
who found the shaft a bit too deep...
So we went on our way for what we thought to be an easy trip: the cave was
already rigged, and we were in the shape of our lives after having bottomed
the Lonn?Peyret (-700m) and having done the -1000 m deep Pierre-St-Martin
through-trip. We didn't even bother to take a lot of food and water with
us!
The first thing that cooled us down a bit was the long drive: over 2 hours!
But there was no walk to the cave: we could park the car just besides it.
Since 5 men was a bit much in a 328m shaft, two of them decided to go first
(Rudi and Marc C.). The ladies would follow them to -155m, and the 3 others
(Marc V., Kris and me) would wait another 4 hours before going down and
de-rig the cave.
As a result, it was nearly 15:00 in the afternoon when my team went down.
Those who know caving club Avalon, will agree that this was abnormally late
for us to start in such a big cave (-500m). The first pitches were bigger
and more impressive than expected: a P56 and P41. Then a narrow meander,
followed by a equally narrow 17m pitch: this will be fun going up with the
350 m of ropes, I remember thinking! Then, another short piece of meander
and... nothing! A misty black hole, in which a little waterfall sprayed
down. To make matters worse, our 2 comrades weren't even in sight. I yelled
down the big pitch, and from deep under we heard them replying but couldn't
understand it. Damn!!
We waited for more than an hour before they arrived. Then we started
one of the most spectacular descents of our lives. The shaft had a very
regular shape, 10 m in diameter, 328m deep. At -90m there was a re-belay,
then an incredible 240m free drop (the guys that had rigged it, had managed
to find one big 250m rope!). But going down with the Petzl bobbins didn't
go very fast; the rope was so heavy that it didn't feed through the descenders
and we had to put our Petzl jammers onto it and pull it up. It took us each
30 minutes to go down: another 1,5 hours had gone by!
After some philosophical thoughts about the meaning of life, and more
precisely going down enormous pitches that one has to climb out again, Marc
started climbing out. Kris and me spend the next 1,5 hours under our space
blanket, playing cards! Then Kris went up, and I spend the next hour making
1 picture of Kris who flashed every 10 minutes with a magnesium flashbulb.
Luckily, the result was great and this picture remains, in my humble opinion,
one of the best "big shaft-pictures" ever (see
picture). To make a long story short: by the time I got up
the pitch, it was way past midnight and we were starving from thirst and
hunger.
 Derigging
the pitch was our next problem. The 350m of wet rope were too heavy to pull
up, and at the top of the pitch there was hardly any room to stand with
more than one person (it was a narrow meander). So, we had to build a pulley
system with our jammers. We pulled for over 2 hours and it was more exhausting
than climbing out the pitch. Then, next problem: the other guys had made
a special "super-bag" for the "super-rope". This monstrous tackle bag was
too bulky to pass the narrow meander, and had about the weight of a piano.
But, thanks God, we got some assistance from Micha?a and Marc C., who had
re-descended in the cave.
By 04:00 in the morning we were at the top of the P43 with all of our
gear. I had just derigged the P43, when I made a clumsy gesture and dropped
the tackle-bag (with the rope of the P43) in the pitch again. After 5 minutes
of hysterical laughing (quite normal at 4 AM in the morning) I had to re-rig
the pitch with a piece of the long 250m rope. A big waste of time, since
this pitch had a rather technical rigging. When I got up the P43 again,
I left Marc the honour to de-rig the last pitch (the 56m one). I climbed
up, stumbled through the short entrance tunnel of the cave where I just
saw the sun rising. I fell asleep straight away, but was woken up 15 minutes
later by the roaring of some sort of wild animal. The noise seemed to come
out of the cave. It was Marc, who was screaming, cursing, and swearing to
sell all of his caving gear right away. What had happened? After derigging
the rope, he had tried to pull it up, but it was stuck somewhere. He had
to re-rig it and go down again all 63 metres of the pitch!
At 07:30 hrs, the battle for the Aphanic?was over. We had won it, but
how!
Oh yes: one more detail: we had brought a spectator with us, Herman. He
had waited for some 24 hours and had passed a long and cold night, in T-shirt
and shorts. Thanks Herman!
PS: needless to say that, when we arrived at the campsite around 11 o'clock
in the morning the others were already packing their gear to come and rescue
us.
HOW TO DROWN IN TROU D'HAQUIN
... a users guide
 I
don't exactly know anymore when it happened, I guess in 1987. It was winter
and the Trou d'Haquin, a famous Belgian cave, was in heavy flood. I wanted
to do something "special" again and together with my wife, I went to the
"Nouveau Réseau CRS", a part of the cave that was rarely visited since it
begins with a long and very wet duck. The small pitch
just before the duck was a thundering waterfall. I had never seen it like
that, normally it was bone-dry! Secondly : a very wild river went
through the first duck, 10 metres long and less than 30 cm (1 foot) low
(see picture, taken in dry conditions!).
I decided (what a fool!) to take my chance, and crawled on, having difficulties
to keep my lips above the water. At the end of the duck, there is a narrow
and even lower passage, and I saw that it was totally flooded. Going any
further would have been suicide, because of the amount of water that was squeezed
through this construction. I turned around and tried to go back. But this
time, I had the current against me and the water build up at least an extra
5 cm in height. I was struggling, gasping, breathing more water than air
while trying to get back to Annette who was waiting at the beginning of
the low crawlway. As already explained, the passage is so low that there
is not an inch left between your ear and the roof. I started panicking,
but there was no choice: I had to go on. In the last 2 metres, who were
the lowest, it went very wrong: I went too much to the left, where the ceiling
was even lower and got stuck with my helmet. The water covered me completely
now, I tried to breathe but inhaled only water. Annette did not seem to
realize what was going on, she was a few metres away. My last thought was
"oh no, I'm going to drown in the Haquin" (a cave visited by hundreds of
novices, every week!) and then I lost consciousness.
This could have been the end of Paul De Bie's caving career...but Annette
decided otherwise. She finally realized that I was in big difficulty, and
managed to reach far enough in the low passage to pull me out. I soon recovered
and after having emptied my longs and having vomited a few buckets of water,
I felt O.K. again and could get out of the cave. I must admit that for some
time I wasn't very fond anymore of water caves... until we discovered the
"Bretaye System" in 1990!
A NARROW ESCAPE IN THE
"BRETAYE"
...how the "Salle de l'Ange Gardien"
got it's name
It is winter 1992. In this very cold month of January we are busy with the
final part of the exploration of the "Bretaye System", a cave that we discovered
and that we have been exploring for two years now, every weekend! It is
without doubt one of the wettest caves in the country, with several long
ducks and one free-diving passage (2 metres long). A couple of weeks ago
we found an important lead that could make it possible to realize in this
cave one of the longest through-trips in Belgium. In fact, we are working
in two different caves, one starting in the sinkhole, some 500 m stream
up, the other one starting in the resurgence. After 3 weekends of work in
this new lead, we progressed 75 m. and less than 6 metres is separating
both caves now!
Our terminus is a square room, 5 x 5 m "big" and filled
with chest deep water. In the left corner of the room, a sort of gallery
starts, about 70 cm wide and 2 m long. At the end a narrow crack goes on.
One hour ago, we just have done some "work" to enlarge this crack. I
can't explain in detail here what kind of work this was, but you need a
battery drill for it and some magic stuff. Rudi and me are checking the
results: a chunk of rock is hanging down. Rudi gives it a gentle bang with
a crowbar and then... the whole roof at our left comes down! More precisely;
a giant boulder, 2 metres long, 1,5 m wide and 1 m thick. It is what we thought
to be the left wall of the gallery that we were standing in, and
I was leaning against with my left shoulder. In reality, it was a big boulder,
a couple of cubic metres tall, that was hanging just above the water surface.
While rubbing "gently" my left shoulder, the thing crashes down into
the chest deep water, with a noise as of an atomic bomb. The water in
this small room (only 5x5 m, remember!) is pressed away and the waves
flood us completely for a few seconds. Rudi is in serious difficulties: his foot is stuck under
the boulder. The situation is dramatic: how do you get someone out of a
situation like that (you cut off his leg)?
I can't see his leg, as we are
standing in dark brown muddy water up to our chest. But then, after some
wriggling, his boot comes loose. Fortunately, the bottom of the lake is a very
thick layer of soft mud. This prevented the boulder from crushing Rudi's
foot. As soon as we can, we leave the place (with our hearts beating as
hell).
That very day, we baptized this room: Salle de l'Ange Gardien,
which means "Room of the Guardian Angel".
But, afterwards we noticed that the giant boulder that had splashed down,
had liberated the way on: a low passage between the ceiling and the water
gave way to a vertical fissure. One year later, after numerous weekends
of hard work, we effectively made the junction between the two caves here.
The Bretaye was now one big river cave, 1700 m long. And every visitor of
the cave, is now crawling OVER the boulder, without realizing what epic
moments we have lived here!
OUR LAST THROUGH-TRIP IN ST MARCEL D'ARDECHE
... your passports!
It is May 1989. The whole lot is staying in the French Ard?he department.
Jan Berckmans has been telling us stories every day, about the giant galleries
of the St. Marcel d'Ardeche cave, which is unfortunately closed since a
few years. But in my books I have a description of the "Aven Despeysse",
which is a chimney in the farthest ends of the cave. It goes up for about
100 metres and is said to have been connected with the surface, after a
lot of work by local cavers.
So, one day we go searching for this cave and we find it. Much to our
surprise, the cave isn't gated anymore. This opens up new possibilities!
Despite the fact that we don't have any description at all of this 100 m
deep cave, and that in the books it is said that the "squeeze" that gives
access to the giant fossil galleries is closed with a door (near the Salle
de la Cath?rale) we decide to make a trip in the cave.
Next day, we (a team of six) start our trip, which will probably end
at the famous steel door. It will be an 4 kilometre trip to get to there
and back again. I will save you our adventures in the 100 m deep Aven Despeysse
(always great, rigging an unknown cave) and in the long and very complex
labyrinth. Just reveal that the last hour we mainly crawled on our knees
in those "giant" galleries (Jan told only about their width, not their height!).
After 6-7 hours we arrived at the famous steel door, near Salle de la Cath?rale...
and the door was gone! Yippie, that meant that we could get into the real
big galleries and we decided to go to the original entrance of the cave.
We knew that this would really be the end of the trip, since we checked
it a few days ago and it was firmly sealed by a big iron wall.
 After
a few hundreds of metres in this truly enormous galleries (see
picture) we rounded a corner and suddenly arrived in an apocalyptical
scene: massif steel constructions everywhere, people running around, men
cutting through steel profiles with cutting machines, others were welding;
sparks were flying around. What the hell was going on here? Still unnoticed
we went a bit further, until we arrived at the foot of an enormous steel
staircase that spiralled up towards a giant hole in the wall. Blue light
shone in through the hole which was at least 5 metres wide. At the top of
the staircase, a workman was welding one of the stairs. Then, we realized
what all this was! The big hole up there, was a tunnel that had been drilled
into the cave; and apparently one was very busy to make a showcave out of
this cave. The blue light was daylight! For us, it meant freedom! Let's
give it a try I thought, maybe when we ask it, we are allowed to leave the
cave through here and save us another 8 hours back! I climbed up the stairs
and gently tapped on the man's shoulder. He was still busy welding and hadn't
noticed me. He looked up and nearly fell of his stair when he saw me: a
big, dirty yellow monster, with a flame on top of his head. In my best french
I asked him "Excusez moi, monsieur, mais est-ce qu'on pourrait quitter
la grotte par ici?" (Excuse me Sir, but could we eventually leave
the cave through here?). "Ah...Ehh...mais Oui!" (Ah...Ehh...but
Yes!) he answered after having realized that we were cavers. All
right,
what a luck. The others followed and in a euphoric state of mind we raced
through the nearly hundred metre long tunnel. Where shall we arrive, were
we all thinking.
The cool, fresh tunnel spitted us out into the blazing hot sun, in the
middle of another frantic scene. Trucks and bulldozers where racing around,
and it took just 5 seconds before one of them stopped besides us. On top
of it there was "the guy in charge", he was obviously very angry and he
jumped off and headed towards the six of us. Immediately, without any introduction,
he started in the most tyrannic manner a French tirade against us. Where
did we come from? What did we do here? Louis de Fun? (a French actor, famous
for his nervous tirades) wouldn't have done it better. I explained him patiently
that we came from another entrance in the same cave, far away on the plateau,
and that we had asked for the permission to leave the tunnel and had gotten
it. But he was in no way to be convinced that easily. Another entrance,
he had never heard of it and he accused us of having sneaked into the cave
by night through "his" tunnel and that we were now trying to get out again.
The longer it took; the more hysterical he got. He threatened us with police,
corporal punishments and enormous fines and finally yelled out "vos cartes
d'identit?!" (your passports!). The situation was getting grotesque
and absurd, (was he really thinking that we went caving with our passports
in our pocket?) and we couldn't help it anymore: we started laughing. Then
Jan Berckmans told him "mais calmez-vous un peu" ("but calm down
a bit!") and that really did it. He went completely crazy now! Around
the scene, a circle of labourers had formed and they really enjoyed seeing
their boss loose his face against those cavers.
Then, after 15 minutes, he played out his final card: "Eh bien, si
vous venez de l? vous retournez par l?quot; (Well, if you come
from in there, you go back there!" ) he screamed and he began pushing
us back in the tunnel again! But we didn't feel much anymore for that 8
hour trip back; the weather was great and fresh beer was waiting for us.
We decided to end this show and headed off towards the exit of the place,
leaving the man where he was. And, most amazingly, he didn't try to stop
us.
Even now I still think that he never believed our story of an upper entrance.
But we knew that we stood "straight in our boots", and that was the most
important thing of all. We have always tried to be correct, have never pirated
closed caves or done things without permission. This time we fell on the
wrong guy, that's all.
To end my story: we did have a 7 km long walk to finish the day with,
in complete caving equipment and rubber boots, plus the derigging of the
Aven Despeysse.
Written by Paul De Bie
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