Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth

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This is the first Nevada Barr book I've read, and I've only been meaning to read it for 8 years. she writes murder mysteries set at different national parks,and this one happens to be set at my park! So ever since I started working at Carlsbad, visitors have been asking if I've read this. I know that I will never have the opportunity to climb the tallest mountain in the world or swim the longest river or even visit another planet, but that doesn't mean I don't think about what it must be like. When I saw this on sale (free) a few days ago, I snatched it up. The tag line is great - Alone and Blind on Everest? I'm all in.

Park ranger Anna Pigeon is assigned to go down into Lechugilla Caverns in Carlsbad National Park, New Mexico, to rescue a fellow ranger who has gotten trapped. But when events turn tragic, Anna begins to suspect that a simple accident may not have been so simple after all. And solving a crime becomes much more complex trapped underground with someone who may be willing to kill again. This one had lots of angles… troubled marriages and former lovers… shady business practices… park politics. There were so many possible suspects, I was left guessing up until the end. Anna is now INSIDE Planet Earth and not liking it much. But ... the show must go on and she signed up for it. I suppose I did too, I'm about as happy about it as she is and I'm only READING about it. My uneasiness is a tribute to the skills of the author. And deeper we go ... In addition to these types of statements, which make it clear that the author has already decided to put his own goals ahead of his role as a Christian husband and father, he later comments that his wife knew who he was when she married him, as if to say that she has to tolerate it now because they are married. How can this type of activity be 'the wisest choice' for anyone in God's sight when there is no spiritual benefit whatsoever? Blind Descent is about The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth, although I suppose you probably already knew that from the subtitle. Well, here’s something the cover doesn’t tell you … it’s specifically about discovering the deepest place IN A CAVE on Earth. It’s an important distinction since there are spots at the bottom of the ocean that are much, MUCH deeper than those discussed in this book.In the previous monthly update, we mentioned about our demo plans. This is exactly what we've been working on this month, and we've done a lot of bugfixes, quality of life improvements and so on. We were also trying to get the new environment assets to work with the weather conditions, such as making leaves wet when it's rainy, or applying wind effects when there is a thunderstorm. Spaces inside the caves vary widely, Tabor says. "They can be very very tight -- near the diameter of your garbage can -- or they can be immense, like a New York subway tunnel." Becoming snowblind, one of the biggest... - The Weather Channel | Facebook". www.facebook.com . Retrieved 2017-03-16.

The pictures in the book were helpful and interesting and gave a very good sense of what segments of the caves were like. Many more pictures would have been useful. One strange thing about some of the pictures (which were all located in the middle of the book) and related captions is that they revealed the location of the deepest cave which helped kill some of the drama. Although the tiring and repetitive writing is mostly responsible for killing the drama. Tabor chronicles the exploration of these two caves with precision and insight. He also looks at the disrepair this passion wreaks on personal relationships. We admire the resourcefulness, skill and dedication of these explorers. Yet, in the end, it is a passion only a select few can understand. Most of us will understand the complaint of a novice caver: But is it fun? It is difficult to accept the answer that fun is besides the point. I like Anna; she’s mentally and physically strong, intelligent, independent, and fiercely determined. Barr includes issues of corporate greed and environmental concerns, while extolling the majestic beauty of pristine caves, and praising the dedication of scientists and volunteers who try to map newly discovered underground treasures.Anybody who knows even the slightest bit about me can probably tell you that I have a pretty strange obsession with extreme, outdoor, one-tiny-mistake-and-you-die sports. Not that I regularly participate, mind you. I just like to read about them and live vicariously through people insane enough (or passionate enough?) to willingly hang their bodies out over thousand foot drops in the middle of nowhere; or sail blindly into unknown waters for months-long journeys in tiny sailboats; or venture miles below the surface of the earth with only a ziploc bag to shit in and crappy freeze-dried food to eat. In Nevada Barr's "Blind Descent", the 6th Anna Pigeon novel, Anna, a ranger serving at Mesa Verde National Park, is tapped to assist in the rescue of a caver with an broken leg and head injury inside Lechuguilla, a vast cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. If you're not familiar with the Anna Pigeon series, each book involves Anna's skills as an outdoors-woman and as a detective. In this case, the injured woman is a co-worker of Anna's, who has asked specifically for her, and tells her when she arrives that her injury was not an accident. Cue the cheesy film noir music! There will never be a cave that is "the world's deepest cave", only "the world's deepest cave so far". How can we know if we can't see?

I think the part about his descent was crazy. I cannot imagine what that had to be like, descending the tallest mountain in the world after having lost one's vision. It was probably "the best part" of the book, but it was also funny because I did not get a sense of "danger" or "impending doom" from him. I realize he survived and there is probably that aspect interfering with any sense of danger, but I have read other books where I know the person survived and yet there were still suspenseful moments in the book. I don't know how to describe it; it is just that the tone did not completely match the dangers the author actually faced. I have never once in my life had the desire to explore caves. I am not really claustrophobic but I don't like the idea of being underground. Anna, on the other hand, suffers badly from claustrophobia. If it hadn't been her dear friend Frieda lying 800 feet below the surface with a concussion and a broken leg, Anna would have begged off. Unravel the secrets of the Martian underground world by exploring its vast and formidable environments. Experience full freedom of exploration with enjoyable new mechanics. One GR reviewer points out that the caver who departed with news of Frieda's injury could have been the guilty party. No mentioned by Anna or the author, however. But ... would that person(if the guilty party) have left the job unfinished?No surprise, books like Blind Descent are all time favorites for me. Adventurous, outdoorsy, and oh-so-delightfully-morbid, this trip down the world’s deepest supercave was everything an (admittedly weird) girl could ask for. Enormous underground cliffs were rappelled, sumps were navigated, a few casualties were endured… all in a noble, twisted effort to get closer to Hell than any other human being has ever been before. In retrospect, the very first sentence should have put me on my guard: “As the fifteenth century began, we believed, absolutely, that the earth was flat.” The parts that shined for me were his examples of how his Navy training helped him at certain times. Those are the types of details that make the reader care and want to read more.

I've gotten one recurring question from people who don't climb: 'Why do you do it?' For me, it mostly comes down to the way God has wired me. I have a deep drive to set big goals for myself and then strive to achieve them. If I don't, I feel like I'm not living my life to the fullest and becoming the person God created me to be." But cave explorers like Vesley and Farr could not see the route and so could not anticipate the dangers, a partial list of which includes drowning, fatal falls, premature burial, asphyxiation, hypothermia, hurricane-force winds, electrocution, earthquake-induced collapses, poison gases and walls dripping with sulfuric or hydrochloric acid. There are also rabid bats, snakes, troglodytic scorpions and spiders, radon and microbes that cause horrific diseases like histoplasmosis and leishmaniasis. Kitum Cave in Uganda is believed to be the birthplace of that ultragerm the Ebola virus. I think what made me the most annoyed is the author never portrayed the satisfaction of caving and help the reader understand why these people do it. My very limited caving experience showed me the wonders, challenges, and the joy of caving. Having completed the demo, we've reached a significant milestone. It's been a long journey, but now we're prepared to move on to the next phase: pitching our game to publishers. Over the coming months, this will be our primary focus. As a result, we may not be able to provide monthly updates every month, since we won't be working on the base game for some time. However, we'll make sure to keep you informed whenever there's important news to share. I was not quite sure how I felt about he "justified/defended" his leaving his family to climb Everest. While he justifies his climbing mountains as a combination of how he is wired, how he is created, with his experiences in the military, he also shares how he used his mountain climbing to raise money and awareness for various charities. So it was a mix of what seemed like valid reasons for climbing (raising awareness and money) and "not-so-valid" (the thrill, the excitement, the challenge). His children crying like they did as he was saying good-bye to them, followed by his wife's struggles, and ending with his leaving a "final message" to his family in case he died did not sit well with me. Had he still been in the military, that would have been one thing. But just the fear and sorrow that he put his children through, their sobbing because they were worried they'd never see him again, followed by the justifications he gave, just did not "feel right" to me. However, each of us has "our own race to run" and has to answer for what we said or didn't say, did or didn't do, so I cannot throw too many stones (as it were). He has accomplished far more than I ever will.In this book, my favorite passages (pun intended!) included Barr's descriptions of fear and the human touch, which I recognized as absolutely authentic: Riveting tale and very likeable character. Brian seems a good-natured, likeable person and his experience is a harrowing tale of living through being snow-blind while descending the Everest summit. That said, the book could've been better edited, better-constructed, with emphasis on the highlight of the story: how he made his descent by largely feeling his way through the most dangerous parts of his Everest climb.