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. The deepest cave on earth was a prize that had remained unclaimed for centuries, long after every other ultimate discovery had been made: both poles by 1912, Everest in 1958, the Challenger Deep in 1961. In 1969 we even walked on the moon. And yet as late as 2000, the earth’s deepest cave—the supercave—remained undiscovered. This is the story of the men and women who risked everything to find it, earning their place in history beside the likes of Peary, Amundsen, Hillary, and Armstrong. Blind Descent captures the challenge and characteristics of supercaving. It requires at least the preparation of an ascent to Mt. Everest; the endurance of a trek across the South Pole; the athleticism to endure a triathlon; and the perseverance to know, that if injured, it’s much easier for an extraction if several of your long bones are broken and folded over to conserve space in the wormy pitches and oblique faults you’ll be pushed and pulled along like a ball, eventually reaching the top several days later. 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!

Does their circadian rhythm re-establish itself immediately on surfacing and having a good night's sleep or does the caving rhythm persist? Are there any long-term effects from prolonged darkness and being deep underground? 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. Everything is going well, but for now there is not so much new content that we can share here like we did before. We are mostly working on improving things and creating the gameplay rather than adding new mechanics, so that keeps the list short. This month will be crucial for us to see where we are, and hopefully we will reveal more details in the next monthly update about the upcoming demo. Drowning, poisonous gas inhalation and electrocution are perils of journeying through a supercave. Tabor says there are more than 50 ways for a person to die during these explorations. 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. The year 2071. You are tasked with finding the pioneer team who went missing while exploring the newly opened mine on Mars.

You have no communication with the surface, and there's no sign of the lost pioneer team that you have been sent for. You start moving through the tunnel and see something you never expected. The writing was very inconsistent; at times it was interesting and well written but at many other times it was stilted and ham fisted. The first hundred times the author talked about the dangers of spelunking were bad enough but the next hundred times were completely annoying. Everything about cave exploring is dangerous and he means EVERYTHING! And over and over again he described the environs: cold, dark, wet, loud, forbidding. Repeat again, and again... Did I mention it's extremely dangerous in these caves? So what exactly is a "supercave"? Think of Mount Everest, and now picture it in reverse ... and that's your basic supercave.

What Curators Say

You and a few team members began descending into a 10-mile deep Martian cave. During the descent, the elevator crashes, and only a few of you survive. 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. Barr was named after the state of her birth. She grew up in Johnstonville, California. She finished college at the University of California, Irvine. Originally, Barr started to pursue a career in theatre, but decided to be a park ranger. In 1984 she published her first novel, Bittersweet, a bleak lesbian historical novel set in the days of the Western frontier. NB and Tony H. both write mysteries set in the SW USA. I like his writing a little better. A bit less dramatic/ominous and more straightforward.

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 ...I'm out of step on this book, a lot of people really liked it. You might too. But it's only a 2 star book to me. But that's the safe part. Only two or three feet to the left lay the open macadam of Main Street itself, a pulsating river of deadly metal. Consider that the top speed of a sprinter is somewhere around 20 to 23 miles per hour. Yet on Main Street, cars and buses weighing up to several tons flashed by at speeds close to twice that--any one of which could flatten a human being instantly, or crush it underneath its indifferent wheels. After the indescribable agony of a bus-on-carriage accident, death would be a pleasure. 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. This was an alright book. I was weary of reading it at first, since I've actually met one of the "super cavers" that this book is about a number of times (Bill Stone), and I find him to be an utter twat. I really didn't want to read a book that glorified this man in any way, shape, or form. 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.

If you are interested in participating in the demo, please join our Discord channel to see more details about it. It will be a closed demo where we only invite active Discord members. 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? it's also randomly juuuuuuust a lil sexist for absolutely no reason. just in case you were wondering, it is good to be a "type a alpha male" and being so excuses all sorts of rude, controlling, and general bad behavior. Also there are very few female cave explorers but all of them are young and beautiful :) Are there any animals or even bacteria that live in the depths of the world? If so what? Does it become hotter as you go down further or colder, no matter how the cave started off? What about diving - is the water affected by the air temperature or not? What about crystalline structures as in some South American caves? How were the caves formed, exactly, not just briefly about limestone, water and sulphuric acid. Where does the sulphuric acid come from, how do they protect themselves from it?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. As you can imagine, the people who choose to do this are not ordinary people. Blind Descent gives us vivid portraits of some of these characters. These are not efforts where a few guys go cave exploring for the day. These are huge teams and logistics operations with camps established along the way like for Everest climbs, only upside down with the hardest part at the end. Finished this a while ago but forgot to review. If I reviewed at the the time, this probably would've gotten 3.5 stars, rounding up to 4. But with time and reflection, I'm rounding down to 3. Harvest resources and craft new tools, climb anywhere dynamically, row the underground seas with your boat and build structures that help you overcome obstacles along your way.