Cave Passages: Roaming the Underground Wilderness

If cave diving is the ultimate in extreme sport, then cave exploration is right behind it. Taylor, a veteran caver and expedition leader for the National Speleological Society, points out that because the last frontiers are space, the ocean floor and underground, caving is the obvious choice for most individuals. He gives a vivid account of special adventures--slithering through narrow chimneys, using rock-climbing techniques to descend, and squeezing through passages less than a foot high in icy water. The Grim Crawl of Death, in Wyoming's Great Expectations Cave, is, he says, the ultimate test of skill and resolve; it is the Eiger of American caving. Taylor describes a 1991 rescue--which took four days and involved 170 people--of a woman in the Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico. He chronicles other underground adventures in China, Jamaica and the Old Croton Aqueduct in New York State. Taylor reminds us that caves are exceedingly fragile systems--a careless or clumsy caver can destroy 10,000 years of geologic sculpture. This is an involving introduction to another mysterious world. (June)