Haroun Tazieff (1914–1998)

Probably everyone who's ever studied speleology--or has ever wondered what it was like to be a caver, for that matter--knows the story that is detailed in this old volume. I'm still trying to figure out where I got it…might've been from Emily Mobley's Speleobooks, or perhaps from a used book store; though I have been more or less out of caving for several years now, I do so still enjoy reading the literature and try to pick up every cave book I can find. This was a rarity too; not just a hardcover but a first edition at that. With the dust jacket more or less intact even!

Though Haroun Tazieff was first known as a vulcanologist and remembered thus worldwide, he's probably best remembered among cavers as one of our own. I don't do French, but his Wikipedia page in English is a paragraph or two, while in his native tongue it's several pages. This was a man who lived fully! One of my quests now is to find out as much about him as I can, because he sounds like an amazingly interesting person.

But back to the book. Caves of Adventure is really the story of one cavern in particular, what we know best as Gouffre de la Pierre-Saint Martin…literally, the abyss of Pierre-St. Martin. At the time it was the deepest known cave on earth. It has been surpassed many times, but that hardly takes away from its import, especially in that its story was detailed in not one but two classic volumes: Norbert Casteret's "The Descent of the Pierre St. Martin", and Tazieff's book. Each has their delights, and perhaps it's the years that have passed since I read Castaret; I just get the feeling that Tazieff's story comes across as more personal. Which is perhaps understandable considering the circumstances: Tazieff was on each of the first two teams to make the descent of the perilous Lepineux shaft and, along with fellow pioneer Marcel Loubens, discovered the vast lengths of capacious passage beyond. But herein is where personal becomes tragic…Loubens died in that cave.

The story is better told by Tazieff, and it's starkly but lovingly penned…you understand how much it meant for this team to lose not just an explorer but a dear friend. It's just heartbreaking to read of what transpired after that cable snapped; Loubens somehow survived nearly three full days after that fall, and amazingly this may have been the first-ever subterranean blood transfusion—but it was for naught. His body was left in the cave at the time, but it was recovered a few years later, an event that was chronicled in Casteret's book.

Cavers will tear right through this, but just plain folks will enjoy it too, not so much for the techniques of the day (fascinating stuff!) but for the very human side. If you can find a copy, I highly, highly recommend it.… (meer)