Underground Flood: Climbing Through Caves

An expedition to the deepest known cave in the world goes suddenly wrong. In 1977, British caver Dick Willis and his companions descend into the dark heart of the French Pyrenees. But with the three friends thousands of feet underground, an electrical storm breaks out on the surface - sending torrents of rain cascading into the caves. As the water level rises around their feet, the race to escape is on… A Noiser production, written by Nicole Edmunds. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  When you shop Kroger Delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of fifty dollars or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger. Fresh for everyone.

• 0:33John Hopkins?

  It's early morning on August the 7th, 1977. On the verdant slopes of the French Pyrenees, not far from the Spanish border, the sun's first rays are starting to glow.

• 0:46John Hopkins?

  Pale streams of yellow break through moody storm clouds, lighting up the mountainsides to reveal a blanket of greenery, scattered with puddles and rocks. The warmth of the day seems to bring everything on the earth's surface to life.

• 1:03John Hopkins?

  But hundreds of meters underground, there is a cavernous world where sunlight is a stranger.

• 1:11John Hopkins?

  Deep beneath the Pyrenees lies an elaborate cave system known as the Gouffre de la Pierre Saint-Martin.

• 1:19John Hopkins?

  Winding for more than fifty miles, its limestone walls are jagged and angular. Its passageways twist and turn like a coiled snake. Winds blow through every crevice. Water seeps in from neighboring streams. And everywhere you look, you're greeted by darkness.

• 1:41John Hopkins?

  Far inside this subterranean labyrinth, 24-year-old caver Dick Willis is climbing. He's moving slowly upwards, trying to escape an increasingly alarming situation.

• 1:58John Hopkins?

  Dick's gloved hands, rigid and numb with cold, claw around in the pitch black, tracing indentations on the wet rocks. His feet slip and slide as he tries to balance his weight.

• 2:13John Hopkins?

  All around him, underground waterfalls cascade down, pelting him with sharp, icy torrents.

• 2:22John Hopkins?

  Dick's friends, Andy and Paul, are climbing somewhere below him. The roar of the water makes communication between the trio impossible, and the cave's gloom renders the pair invisible.

• 2:38John Hopkins?

  Dick's hands find a narrow gap in the rocks above, and with great effort, he squeezes his body through.

• 2:46John Hopkins?

  He clings to the rope that guides him, a literal lifeline.

• 2:52John Hopkins?

  Eventually, the rope leads onto a ledge where he can pause to catch his breath.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  I got up to the ledge, and I turned around and I shouted down, "Rope free", which was the indication the next person had come up. And it was just this maelstrom of spray and thunderous water, and I couldn't hear anything.

• 3:16John Hopkins?

  Dick calls out again, yelling into the blackness.

• 3:21John Hopkins?

  But there's still no response from his friends.

• 3:25John Hopkins?

  Carefully, so as not to lose his balance, he turns his head toward the passage through which he's just scrambled.

• 3:35John Hopkins?

  His torchlight dances off its walls, illuminating the dark green algae on either side and the crystal-clear liquid rushing down. But there's just no sign of Andy or Paul.

• 3:49John Hopkins?

  Why aren't they answering?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  I have absolutely no idea how long I was there, none. And I was shouting "Rope free" and there was no response.

• 4:02John Hopkins?

  His friends could be in desperate trouble. But Dick is freezing cold, hundreds of meters underground, and the water around him is rising by the second.

• 4:13John Hopkins?

  Turning back in these conditions could be fatal.

• 4:19John Hopkins?

  All alone in the deep, Dick has an impossible decision to make: between his own life and those of his friends.

• 4:35John Hopkins?

  Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

• 4:58John Hopkins?

  In this episode, we meet Dick Willis. In the summer of 1977, he joins a British expedition exploring the Gouffre de la Pierre Saint-Martin in France, known at that time as the deepest cave in the world.

• 5:13John Hopkins?

  But while Dick, Andy and Paul are far underground, an electrical storm breaks out above, sending water flooding into the cave.

• 5:23John Hopkins?

  The race to escape is on.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  I start going up the 45-degree cascade. Andy, who was behind me, saw a wall of water coming down, what we call a flood pulse. So this wall of water came down and over me, and then down towards where he and Paul were.

• 5:43John Hopkins?

  The route out is flooding, and in the confusion and claustrophobia, Dick is separated from Andy and Paul.

• 5:51John Hopkins?

  As the minutes pass, it seems increasingly possible that they won't all see the sun again.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  This was the most god-awful place, because it's very windy and the water's 2 degrees, and it's not a place you want to be, really.

• 6:07John Hopkins?

  I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Podcast Network. This is Real Survival Stories.

• 6:36John Hopkins?

  It's August the 6th, 1977. The midday sun warms the lush greenery of the French Pyrenees. An undulating patchwork of forests, rocky outcrops, and sparkling lagoons.

• 6:52John Hopkins?

  High up on one of the steepest slopes, where an unseasonably chilly wind swirls, a group of twenty people are gathered.

• 7:03John Hopkins?

  They are stationed outside the entrance to an immense cave, believed to be the deepest in the world.

• 7:11John Hopkins?

  These men are here on a mission, one that will take them to the lowest known point within the cave, and if they're lucky, perhaps even further.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  In 1977, I was invited to go with an OLSA expedition, University of Leeds, to the Gouffre-Pierre-Saint-Martin, the French Pyrenees, which was at the time the world's deepest cave. They'd been a year or two years before, and they'd bottomed the cave, but they'd run out of gear, and the conditions were absolutely dreadful. So they couldn't pursue beyond the end of the cave. So in 77, they decided to go back.

• 7:51John Hopkins?

  The cavers are chatting and laughing as they pass around flasks of hot coffee and handfuls of high-energy snacks.

• 8:00John Hopkins?

  Three of them, Dick Willis, Paul Everett, and Andy Evis, are preparing to enter the cave in the next few minutes.

• 8:08John Hopkins?

  The men pull on their wetsuits and boots, then shrug waterproof oversuits on top. Though it's dry out here on the mountainside, experience has taught them that within the cave, conditions will be vastly different.

• 8:23John Hopkins?

  Next, they strap on helmets fitted with torches. Round their necks, they sling emergency bike lights. Their gear isn't exactly high-tech, but it'll have to do. The gloves on their hands are rubber marigolds, like the ones you'd use to do the dishes. Dick twists the light on his head torch to test its beam, and a bright white glow shines on the grass. He nods to Andy and Paul, and after some words of encouragement from the rest of the team, they're ready to enter the cave. Together, they approach the foreboding steel doors that guard the entrance.

• 9:07John Hopkins?

  Even though they're about to enter a tight, twisting underground world, 24-year-old Dick doesn't show a trace of nerves. After all, he's a seasoned caver by now. He's had years of honing his craft, ever since his first taste at university.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  I joined the diving club in those days, and I made this wetsuit. I'd done all my pool training. I was about to go on my first open-water dive, and then I pulled a muscle in my back. So I was sat in my room, feeling exceedingly grumpy, and a mate of mine came in and said, "What's wrong with you?" And I explained, and he said, "Well, we're going caving this afternoon. You've got a wetsuit, go caving." So I went caving. And I went down Swirons Hole in Mendip with another complete novice and three or four members of the caving club. And I loved it from the first moment I got in the dark. It was just fantastic. And on the way out, I said to my friend, "This is fantastic, isn't it?" And he looked at me and he said, "I am never, ever, ever going to do this again." And he never did. But I did, and it quite simply took over my life.

• 10:11John Hopkins?

  Seizing every opportunity thrown his way, Dick joined expeditions to far-flung corners of the world and made friends and memories to last a lifetime.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  I managed to blag my way onto a big expedition to Papua New Guinea in 1975. A friend of mine introduced me to it, got me on the trip. As a biologist, for some reason, they took me. And I went on the trip, and I never did any biology. I just went caving all the time. And it was fantastic. It was a completely life-changing experience.

• 10:44John Hopkins?

  Dressed in handmade wetsuits and packed off with basic, non-specialist gear, there was always a high element of risk in exploring these unknown underground worlds. But luckily for Dick and his cave team, his university studies in geology provided an intimate understanding of these subterranean enigmas.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  So most caves are in limestone. Limestone is formed by the shells of billions of small sea creatures, which over millennia die and it formed to the bottom of the sea and it forms a sludge. And as the sludge builds up, the weight of the sludge on top compresses the stuff at the bottom into rock. Then sometime in the future, the rock movements, because the surface of the earth is constantly moving, force that rock up to the surface. And in the process, it may crack and break. And when it's on the surface, it's exposed to rain. And as the rain falls out of the sky, it picks up carbon dioxide from the air and from the soil, and that makes it slightly acidic. And that acid can eat away at the limestone.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  So the acid water gets into the limestone through the cracks and flows through it, gradually eating it away. And when it hits the junction between two limestone beds, it may form a little tube, a little channel. And as long as that channel is completely full of water, the water will eat away at the sides of the channel all the way around. So it gets bigger and bigger as a tube. And they can get 100 feet, more than 100 feet across, 30, 40 meters, maybe even more, really big.

• 12:22Speaker 00

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• 12:52John Hopkins?

  This November, on the Noiser Podcast Network. On Real Dictators, the story of Rafael Trujillo concludes with an epic shootout scene, plucked straight from a mafia movie. On Short History of, join us as we un-thor utsi the Iceman, Europe's oldest-known natural human mummy, and step back into the swinging 60s. On Real Survival Stories, on Ben Nevis, Scotland's highest mountain, a chilling tale plays out in the mist. And, after a volcanic eruption in New Zealand, a helicopter pilot scrambles to respond. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes' Short Stories, the tale of hidden treasure and murder continues in The Sign of Four.

• 13:35John Hopkins?

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. And for our American listeners, a special offer on Noiser's debut book, A Short History of Ancient Rome. Head to bookshop.org and use the code NONFIC26 for 15% off. Valid for US customers November 1st to 30th. That's bookshop.org and use the code N-O-N-F-I-C-26.

• 14:06John Hopkins?

  In 1977, two years after his life-altering expedition to Papua New Guinea, Dick caught wind of a British caving trip to the French Pyrenees.

• 14:17John Hopkins?

  A team from Leeds University were organising a mission to the Gouffre de la Pierre Saint-Martin, otherwise known as the PSM.

• 14:26John Hopkins?

  Dick wanted in.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  In those days, that particular cave wasn't just the deepest cave in the world, but it had the world's biggest underground chamber, a thing called La Salverna.

• 14:41John Hopkins?

  Meandering for 86 kilometres, the PSM is a hidden treasure. The quaint village that sits on the surface gives no clue as to what lies below.

• 14:53John Hopkins?

  The PSM's largest chamber, La Salle Werner, stretches 250 metres wide and rises 195 metres tall. Meanwhile, the cave's lowest known point sits roughly 1,400 metres beneath its entrance. In 1975, the team from Leeds attempted to push, to break through the PSM's alleged end point. They were unsuccessful, but undeterred. Two years later, they're back, this time with Dick Willis in tow, ready to push for glory again.

• 15:36John Hopkins?

  They arrive in the village of Leek at the beginning of August 1977. Before embarking on their mission, the team spend a number of days relaxing in the rural French settlement, drinking in local bars and snapping photos of the landscape. But, taking in their surroundings, some potential issues start to present themselves. Local water levels seem high, and the saturated ground squelches beneath their feet. Ominous storm clouds form in the blue skies above.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  We run out, we drove there, and we all met in a village called Leek at the bottom of the mountain. And it was exceedingly wet, the river was really high. But that's how it was. We carry our stuff up to a hut on the side of the mountain.

• 16:26John Hopkins?

  Set up in their mountainside shack, the team start prepping the first sections of the cave, making them ready for climbing and descent. And any concerns about the weather or water levels starts to recede.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  So we start making our way down this, fixing bolts at the top of each pitch, attaching ropes, going down. That process took a couple of days. As we were going down, the water levels were going down as well. And we were young and enthusiastic and stupid because we should have really paid more attention.

• 17:01John Hopkins?

  Finally, on August 6th, it's time to properly explore the PSM. Between them, Dick, Andy and Paul share a world of caving experience. But this will push them further and deeper than ever before.

• 17:23John Hopkins?

  With the sun at its height, they zip up their wetsuits, tighten their hoods and helmets, and switch on their torches. Then they wrench open the squeaking steel doors.

• 17:36John Hopkins?

  The cave's entrance is a jungle of jagged rocks and immovable boulders. A small stream splashes along the ground, water bouncing off the limestone. Glimmers of light seep in through cracks, casting giant shadows as the men enter.

• 17:54John Hopkins?

  With the entrance already lined with ropes by the team, Dick, Andy and Paul descend the first few pitches of the cave with ease. Andy leads the way, clipping his harness onto the ropes as he goes.

• 18:10John Hopkins?

  The layout constantly changes as the darkness intensifies. Sometimes the ground is flat enough and the ceiling tall enough for all three men to walk upright, though they clutch the ropes for extra balance as their feet slide over the rocks.

• 18:28John Hopkins?

  The beams from their head torches swing with every stride. This is second nature to them. But every now and then, a stomach-churning drop reminds them of the dangers involved.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  As I was beginning my cave-in career, there was a move in the activity to move towards called "single rope techniques". So you don't take the ladder, you just take the rope, and you fix the rope to the side of the cave and hang it down the shaft, down the vertical section, and then you slide down it using a friction device which is attached to a harness. And when you get to the bottom, you can recline it using ratchet devices attached to your harness and the rope. You obviously have to be very careful about how you hang the rope, because if you hang it so it rubs on the rock, then with your weight on it, it can abrade and break, and you've only got one rope.

• 19:28John Hopkins?

  The trio make their way down the pitches bit by bit as the walls close in. Sometimes the passageways are rib-crushingly narrow. Flatter sections are interrupted every few hundred metres by descents to the next pitch.

• 19:46John Hopkins?

  These long, tube-like drops are where things have the potential to get really tricky. The cavers must belay themselves down, feeding the rope through inch by inch as their boots bounce off the rocky walls.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  So, in a deep shaft or in an awkward position, you put in what we call a rebelay. So you put a fixing in the wall, which might be something natural like a stalagite or a bolt in the rock. Back in the day when I started doing this, we fixed the bolts in the rock by hammering them in with a lump hammer. Quite a laborious process, took quite a long time.

• 20:27John Hopkins?

  Metre by metre, they allow themselves to be swallowed by the cave.

• 20:34John Hopkins?

  Through the roots, a small, steady stream of water trickles downwards, a tiny underground river leading the way.

• 20:44John Hopkins?

  After around half a mile of meticulous walking, crawling, and absailing, the three reach a natural break.

• 20:53John Hopkins?

  The vast, jaw-dropping Salwerner, the largest underground chamber in the world.

• 21:02John Hopkins?

  The light from their torches is engulfed by the darkness. Their feeble beams illuminate tiny fractions of the gigantic chamber at a time, joining the scene together like a jigsaw.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  You're following the river down through the shafts and through a series of galleries and passages into this enormous chamber, the bottom of which is covered in boulders. And the river flows between the boulders and then sinks at the end.

• 21:30John Hopkins?

  Giant layers of rocks rise above their heads, curving and culminating in an uneven limestone ceiling.

• 21:39John Hopkins?

  The men take a moment in this capacious cavern, catching their breath and stretching their tight limbs. A welcome respite, having been stooped and scrambling for so long.

• 21:57John Hopkins?

  But it's not long before they have to get moving again. Dick turns his gaze to the stream, trickling off into another dark drop. That's where they're headed next. And from here, things start getting really complicated.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  And then you turned off that into an horrific section of passage called the Meander Martin. So this is a very long, very windy passage that's narrow and very high. And you have to make your way down it, bracing yourself against the walls on either side. And if you slipped into the bottom of it, it would be extremely difficult to get out.

• 22:40John Hopkins?

  Painfully wedging themselves between two rock walls, the men shimmy down.

• 22:47John Hopkins?

  If one of them falls, it could be disastrous for all three. They remain vigilant, gritting teeth, bracing muscles, and clambering ever deeper into the belly of Mother Earth.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  You get to the end of that eventually. And the end of that is a small chamber and a small river coming in from the side. That goes down a series of pitches, five, I think, five pitches, to the point that Ulcer had got to two years before, where you drop the final pitch and the river disappears through this slot under a boulder.

• 23:25John Hopkins?

  They're getting close now to the point where the previous expedition met a dead end.

• 23:31John Hopkins?

  And as the three men squeeze and wriggle their way down, excitement rises. They could be about to go deeper underground than anyone has before.

• 23:45John Hopkins?

  But what the men don't know is that thousands of feet above them, dense clouds have gathered over the Pyrenean countryside.

• 23:54John Hopkins?

  The mountains have grown dark, and the patter of raindrops has begun.

• 24:00John Hopkins?

  It's the start of a storm, one that will seep downwards with drastic consequences for the trio of explorers.

• 24:14Speaker 03

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• 26:12John Hopkins?

  The hours pass, and Andy continues to lead his friends towards the bottom of the world's deepest known cave.

• 26:20John Hopkins?

  Dick and Paul follow, trusting Andy's instincts and copying his movements.

• 26:28John Hopkins?

  The total lack of natural light has thrown the men's circadian rhythms out of sync. They have little idea of the time of day, or how long they've been caving for.

• 26:40John Hopkins?

  But each of them has studied the map of the PSM in detail, and as the tunnels narrow into dark jagged tubes, they sense they're almost at their destination.

• 26:52John Hopkins?

  Though the further they descend, the higher the stakes rise. And now it's impossible to ignore the fact that the water around them is rising by the second. It swirls past their ankles, dripping into their boots and through their socks.

• 27:08John Hopkins?

  Each time Andy ties a rope, he has to fasten it with two additional metal bolts to secure the knots. If the rising water loosens the ropes, there will be no way out.

• 27:23John Hopkins?

  Eventually, they follow the stream to a sloping passage.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  So, the passage was about forty-five degrees of boulders with the river. So we made our way down, we scrambled down this cascade to the top of the next pitch, and put two bolts in, and upsailed down that one, and then dropped the final pitch, which was about thirty meters, to the chamber at the bottom.

• 27:48John Hopkins?

  Finally, after what must be at least seven hours of caving, the trio hook on to the last set of bolts and lower themselves through the awaiting pitch.

• 28:01John Hopkins?

  They're almost there, almost at the bottom of the cave.

• 28:07John Hopkins?

  However, when the team unhook their harnesses, their boots thudding onto the rocks below, the joy of their achievement is quickly undermined by the brutality of the conditions.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  The bottom of the PSM is a godforsaken place. The most god-awful place. Because it's very windy. The river has always got a wind coming down with it. And the water's two degrees. And it's not a place you want to be, really. We're all freezing cold. You know, it was cold, muddy. There was nothing pretty in it. It was just rock and water.

• 28:42John Hopkins?

  They've hit rock bottom in more ways than one.

• 28:48John Hopkins?

  After hours of punishing caving, the unpleasantness of the bottom pitch is a bitter pill to swallow. And yet, they stand on the edge of history. They believe they might be able to go even deeper. If the men can push, i.e. break through the bottom of this cave, they'll be able to see how far it really goes.

• 29:14John Hopkins?

  Just then, Andy spots something and points it out to the other two.

• 29:20John Hopkins?

  A narrow passage in one of the cave walls.

• 29:24John Hopkins?

  It looks tiny, wide enough for just one person. This could be it. Andy splashes towards the gap and squeezes his body through, leaving Dick and Paul hanging back, waiting with bated breath.

• 29:40John Hopkins?

  Minutes later, he reemerges, soaking wet, shivering, and shaking his head solemnly.

• 29:48John Hopkins?

  It's a dead end.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  You can make places like this bigger by chiseling bits off the walls or use explosives. And we ascertain fairly quickly that without a huge amount of effort trying to make this slot bigger by various techniques, we weren't going to go through it.

• 30:07John Hopkins?

  It signals only one thing. Their mission is over.

• 30:15John Hopkins?

  But they'll have to shake off the disappointment quickly. Now, for reasons they cannot be sure of, the stream is rising faster than before. And all of a sudden, becoming trapped, even drowning, has become a very real possibility.

• 30:34John Hopkins?

  Dick wades back through the water and clips his harness onto the rope. There's no time to lose. They have a long, perilous journey ahead.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  So I climb the first pitch, on the way out, bottom pitch. Get to the top, shout that everything's okay. Andy comes up and joins me. Turns around and shouts to Paul that everything's okay.

• 30:57John Hopkins?

  They try to ascend as efficiently as they can. But as Dick leads the team, it's immediately clear that the roots and the cave's conditions have changed dramatically since they descended.

• 31:10John Hopkins?

  If it was tough getting down here, it'll be a gargantuan effort to get back up.

• 31:16John Hopkins?

  Now everything is not just damp, but soaking wet. The ropes are saturated, making a proper grip near impossible. Dick's legs are almost entirely underwater as he splashes through the chambers.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  I start going up the forty-five degree cascade. Because I was concentrating what I was doing, I wasn't very conscious of the water. But Andy, who was behind me, saw a wall of water coming down, what we call a flood pulse. So this wall of water came down and over me, and then down towards where he and Paul were.

• 31:57John Hopkins?

  High above them, in the peaks of the Pyrenees, the storm has gathered momentum.

• 32:04John Hopkins?

  The deluge has burst the banks of the rivers and streams, sending floodwater gushing underground.

• 32:14John Hopkins?

  Now, every passage, every gap they enter, has its own swirling, freezing current, pushing them back, as if trying to trap them.

• 32:24John Hopkins?

  All the trio can do is grit their teeth and continue to climb.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  I'd made my way to the top of the cascade, and I attached myself to the rope, and I prosopt up to what we call the belay at the top, where the rope was attached. On the way down, that had been dry. Now it was underwater. So I had to swap from that rope to the rope going up the next sloping section, with all my gear underwater.

• 32:51John Hopkins?

  Through the suffocating darkness, Dick begins to hear sinister, crashing sounds.

• 32:59John Hopkins?

  The running water is starting to loosen the boulders in the chambers above. Carried down by the stream, they could block the way out, or worse, crush the cavers as they climb.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  You can hear the thunder of storms coming down, and you don't need a very big one to do you damage.

• 33:22John Hopkins?

  Time continues to warp as Dick slowly, exhaustingly navigates upwards through the maze. Chilling winds howl through every crack and crevice.

• 33:36John Hopkins?

  It's now impossible to hear Andy or Paul, but Dick trusts their following. Eventually, he finds a flat ledge mere inches above the waterline. Here, he can pause for breath and change his ropes while the others catch up.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  I got up to the ledge, and I turned around and I shouted down, "Rope free", which is the indication that it's supposed to come up. And it was just this maelstrom of spray and the thunderous water, and I couldn't hear anything.

• 34:08John Hopkins?

  Dick waits a few seconds. Maybe they're just lagging behind. Maybe the cacophony of water is muffling their replies.

• 34:17John Hopkins?

  He waits a few more moments, then calls down again.

• 34:22John Hopkins?

  He shines his light through the passage.

• 34:25John Hopkins?

  Nothing. No reply. No sign of Andy or Paul.

• 34:32John Hopkins?

  Dick is alone.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  And I shouted again and I couldn't hear anything. And I was shouting "Rope free" and there was no response. By this stage, I'd started thinking this was something wrong.

• 34:49John Hopkins?

  Seconds turned to minutes and still Dick waits on the narrow ledge.

• 34:56John Hopkins?

  When did he lose them? Are they in trouble?

• 35:00John Hopkins?

  One thing is clear. His body is starting to suffer. He's beginning to shiver on the ledge. His oversuit is soaked through. His gloves and boots saturated. There's not an inch of dry skin on him.

• 35:17John Hopkins?

  He hasn't eaten or drunk anything for hours. His energy levels are dropping.

• 35:23John Hopkins?

  It's clear Dick needs to get out of the cave while he's still got the strength.

• 35:28John Hopkins?

  But what about Andy and Paul?

• 35:31Speaker 02

  When I was young, there was an Italian cartoon which featured a guy who had an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder and they used to have a dialogue. I found myself on that ledge in that position. I had the sensible one going, "The cave's flooding, you need to get out." And the other one on the other side saying, "It's just really wet, you're on your own, you're a wimp, they'll take the piss out of you." So this dialogue went on, me in the middle, for anywhere between two minutes and half an hour.

• 36:07John Hopkins?

  Water fills the gaps and cuts off passages as boulders continue to tumble through the labyrinth. The beam from his head torch starts to flicker and dim.

• 36:20John Hopkins?

  Time is running out.

• 36:23John Hopkins?

  Eventually, Dick's internal debate reaches its conclusion.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  I have absolutely no idea how long I was there, none. If you've got mates, you need to make sure your mates get out. But the main thing was the sensible bit of me eventually won and said, you know, you're getting really cold and it's really wet, you need to get out. So I clipped onto the ropes and I carried on. At which point it was, I've got to get out and I've got to raise the alarm and get the others.

• 36:56John Hopkins?

  The best way to help Andy and Paul could actually be to leave them behind.

• 37:02John Hopkins?

  If Dick can reach the support team on the surface, they'll be in a far better position to launch a rescue attempt.

• 37:09John Hopkins?

  Harness securely clipped onto the rope, Dick slips down from the ledge and splashes through the floodwater. Once more, his gloved hands claw the jagged rocks and he squeezes his body through the ascending tunnels. At one point, he decides to strip off his clamp, harness and oversuit, leaving them on a patch of relatively flat ground. This extra equipment could be of some use later on, either to the rescue teams or to Andy and Paul themselves. If they're still alive.

• 37:49Speaker 00

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• 38:19John Hopkins?

  This November on the Noiser Podcast Network. On Real Dictators, the story of Rafael Trujillo concludes with an epic shootout scene, plucked straight from a mafia movie. On Short History of, join us as we un-thor Utsi the Iceman, Europe's oldest-known natural-human mummy, and step back into the swinging 60s. On Real Survival Stories, on Ben Nevis, Scotland's highest mountain, a chilling tale plays out in the mist. And after a volcanic eruption in New Zealand, a helicopter pilot scrambles to respond. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes' Short Stories, the tale of hidden treasure and murder continues in The Sign of Four.

• 39:02John Hopkins?

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. And for our American listeners, a special offer on Noiser's debut book, A Short History of Ancient Rome. Head to bookshop.org and use the code NONFIC26 for 15% off. Valid for US customers November 1st to 30th. That's bookshop.org and use the code N-O-N-F-I-C-26.

• 39:34John Hopkins?

  At last, Dick nears the cave's exit. Up ahead is one final obstacle. The benign stream that had trickled so gently along the cave floor when they first entered has now expanded beyond recognition.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  It was a lake, so I had to hop from boulder to boulder.

• 39:56John Hopkins?

  Teetering on sharp, slick rocks, Dick carefully navigates this enormous, swollen lake, one step at a time.

• 40:06John Hopkins?

  And then, finally, he reaches the other side. A punch of adrenaline sends him racing along the final tunnel towards sunlight. So close. He's so amped up that he doesn't notice how low the ceiling is, how close his helmet is to the solid rock just above his head.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  And then my reflector on my carbide light caught the roof and floored me backwards. Nearly broke my neck, and that hurt.

• 40:38John Hopkins?

  Thankfully, the helmet takes the brunt of the impact. A quick shake of the head, and he's back on his feet within seconds. And then, he sees the steel doors of the PSM's entrance.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  I'm so hyped up, I'm not exhausted. In those circumstances, you're running on adrenaline, so I don't have any memory of being tired at that point. I got to the steel doors, and I opened the steel doors, and I shut them. And normally, you need two people to shut those gates. But I shut them on my own. That was a measure of how hyped up I was.

• 41:22John Hopkins?

  At 8:45 a.m., around 20 hours since the mission began, Dick bursts out of the cave. He's been climbing upwards almost nonstop for the past 12 hours. Without a backwards glance, Dick sprints across the sodden grass towards the hut where his team is sleeping. The sun is rising, and the brightness of the August morning is a shocking contrast to the cave's total darkness. Dick wrenches open the hut's door. Groggy faces look back at him, bemused. Frantically, he explains what's happened. His colleagues leap from their beds.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  And all my mates were asleep. And I woke them up and told them what was going on. And they'd all been out. There'd been this huge electrical storm. And they'd all been out taking photographs of the lightning. Well, we were having this epic down the bottom. Anyway, Dave Brook, who was the expedition leader, is an extraordinary caver, wonderful bloke. He got everybody together, organized the team, sent people down to the bottom to get more gear. And they started carrying kit in.

• 42:33John Hopkins?

  Dick is given a hot drink and told to zip himself into a sleeping bag. He's done all he can.

• 42:42John Hopkins?

  With exhaustion finally hitting him, he lies down and grabs some fitful shut-eye. Meanwhile, the rest of the team gets to work.

• 42:54John Hopkins?

  First, they place a bright, artificial dye directly into the stream. This turns the water a different colour as it descends down through the cave system. If they are still alive, this should alert Andy and Paul that help is coming.

• 43:11John Hopkins?

  Then a group of rescuers head into the cave. Morning melts into afternoon, then evening, and by 6pm the group returns.

• 43:22John Hopkins?

  It's not good news. No sign of Andy or Paul. The team have travelled through the entrance, past the salverna and down several of the pitches with no success. The one silver lining is that the water levels are going down.

• 43:40John Hopkins?

  The next group of rescuers buckle up their harnesses, switch on their torches and head into the depths.

• 43:47John Hopkins?

  Dusk becomes darkness and another full night passes before the pale blue of dawn arrives.

• 43:57John Hopkins?

  And at last, at around 4:45am, one of the cavers re-emerges.

• 44:04John Hopkins?

  Andy and Paul have been spotted.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  What then happened was, these rescue teams went down. They got to the small chamber where I'd left my oversuit. And as they were going down, they met Andy coming back up. And he said, "Paul's following me." So they went down and they found Paul standing up to his waist in water on that ledge where I had this dialogue between the sensible and the nonsensible part of me. And he was beginning to suffer from exposure because it's so cold. But worse than that, all his lights had gone out. The rescue team got to Paul and by complete chance, they'd taken with them the first ever fibre-powered sleeping bag to be manufactured in Britain.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  A sample, because Dave Brooke worked in the textiles department at the university and they'd given him this sample to bring in. So they brought that down and they put Paul in this sleeping bag on this wet ledge and they ferried hot soup down to him from the chamber at the top.

• 45:10John Hopkins?

  As Paul is warmed up in the sleeping bag, Andy scrambles through the remaining pitches and out into the open air of the Pyrenees.

• 45:20John Hopkins?

  There, he is finally reunited with Dick.

• 45:29John Hopkins?

  Swapping stories, it seems that as Dick was ascending, Andy and Paul fell further and further behind, until cold and exhaustion threatened to overwhelm them.

• 45:41John Hopkins?

  Eventually, they arrived at a ledge where they decided to stop, taking their chances with the rising water level.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  They were on that ledge for something like eighteen hours. What had happened with them was that they snuggled up and kept each other warm, until they made the decision to come out. Now, that was partly prompted by the rescue team who came in and got to the top of the pitches, and they put a coloured dye in the water to tell Paul and Andy that they were there and on their way.

• 46:12John Hopkins?

  While he still had the strength, Andy decided to go on and try to hasten the help that Paul needed.

• 46:19John Hopkins?

  Though it seems Andy feared his other friend was already beyond help.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Afterwards, he told me Artie carried a knife in his teeth, because he expected to find me hanging on a rope, having been hit by a boulder and killed. So he was going to cut my body off and drop it. Charming.

• 46:41John Hopkins?

  That all three men survived is testament to their fortitude and skill.

• 46:47John Hopkins?

  But still, there is tragedy elsewhere in the caves that day.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  In another cave nearby, the same storm killed two French cavers, and they died on the ropes. They were hit by boulders.

• 47:07John Hopkins?

  In the coming days with renewed caution, the expedition does continue. The team sends further groups down into the PSM, still hoping to achieve what they set out to do.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  It wasn't the end of the expedition because, I mean, we all got out safely and that's the main thing. There are other, what we call, leads in that cave, so they go off sideways and the rest of the expedition was taken up pushing those to see if they provided a route to the bottom that went below the one we got to.

• 47:37John Hopkins?

  Unfortunately, it's not to be, and the British cavers exit the PSM without the glory they'd dreamt of. But for Dick, the remaining warm summer days in the French Pyrenees are not a mark of their failure. Instead, they give him a chance to reflect on the ordeal that he and his friends have just been through.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  I'm a firm believer in luck. I mean, I was competent in the use of my equipment, so I was able to do a transfer with my hands out of sight underwater, which I suspect some people with less experience may be not able to do. I didn't panic for some reason, partly because I didn't want people to take the piss out of me afterwards. You know, self-esteem is an important thing, and I think we were lucky. Unlucky in one way and lucky in another, to be honest now. I mean, I know people who'd been through the wring out, as it were, and come out and

• 48:42Speaker 02

  think, my God, I've got to make the most of everything, but I don't think I did that. You know, I came out and then I was thinking about, well, what's on next?

• 48:52John Hopkins?

  Two years later, in 1979, Dick joins a caving trip to Spain, while the following decade takes him to southeast China, Java, and Central Asia.

• 49:04John Hopkins?

  Despite the risks, nothing can shake his love for it.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  What it does do is reinforce the importance of your friends and the ability to be able to rely on them to do things. We don't exist in splendid isolation. We need social contact, we need people we trust, we need people we can call on if we need them. And that was very evident in that rescue. So, that's the only thing, you know, if you're going to go on expeditions, go with people you like and trust. You develop deep bonds with people that you risk your life with. You know that if you have a problem, they'll get you out. And they know that if they have a problem, you'll do your best to get them out. So the bonds are very deep.

• 49:56John Hopkins?

  Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Sheena Levitt.

• 50:02John Hopkins?

  In September 1974, Sheena is working on board a vessel in the English Channel, the busiest shipping lane in the world. They're on a simple job, transporting cargo from London to Guernsey, but they won't make it that far. When pounding waves flood the craft, her three-person crew will be forced into a decision that every sailor dreads: abandoning ship. Sheena will find herself alone, without a life jacket, unsure if she'll ever see her crewmates or land again.

• 50:39John Hopkins?

  That's next time on Real Survival Stories. You can listen right now without waiting a week by subscribing to Noiser Plus.

• 50:49Speaker 00

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• 51:18John Hopkins?

  This November on the Noiser Podcast Network. On Real Dictators, the story of Rafael Trujillo concludes with an epic shootout scene, plucked straight from a mafia movie. On Short History of, join us as we un-thor Utzi the Iceman, Europe's oldest-known natural human mummy, and step back into the swinging 60s. On Real Survival Stories, on Ben Nevis, Scotland's highest mountain, a chilling tale plays out in the mist. And, after a volcanic eruption in New Zealand, a helicopter pilot scrambles to respond. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes' Short Stories, the tale of hidden treasure and murder continues in The Sign of Four.

• 52:01John Hopkins?

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. And for our American listeners, a special offer on Noiser's debut book, A Short History of Ancient Rome. Head to bookshop.org and use the code NONFIC26 for 15% off. Valid for US customers November 1st to 30th. That's bookshop.org and use the code N-O-N-F-I-C-26.