Boudinet - Cave Diving

CAVE DIVING

Motivations to Practice an Engaged Activity

PIERRE BOUDINET

Copyright 2015 by Pierre Boudinet.

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Rev. date: 06/25/2015

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Contents

By 1996, when I met Pierre Boudinet, he told me that he was to begin cave diving. He was eager to participate in a training session that was to take place shortly after. He was scuba-diver since more than ten years and diver under ice since four years, he thought that cave diving was the achievement of his sport and exploration career.

Then caving has been a continuity equation in order to learn and to understand underground surroundings. In order to explore, study and survey caves, Pierre has learned more and more light rope techniques inside more and more deep, narrow and wet shafts. Mastering these techniques was a necessity in order to reach sumps that are beyond the pits.

Pierre tells you his experiences, his feeling, his successes and failures regarding a lot of explorations he made. This isnt diving just for fun, nor touristic caving. All has been calculated, planned, in order to progress and to understand the cave and to be at ease in it. I never saw him deliberately taking too much risk for him or for other people. Stopping a too hazardous exploration isnt shameful, on the contrary this is bravery because it enables to be still alive.

In order to be more at ease underground, Pierre starts climbing in order to be able to progress beyond sumps. One might be tempted to believe it is a pure leisure but his mind is always oriented towards enhancement.

This is a book about exploration from an individual, systematic, careful and informed cave diver. You will read that he hasnt always been approved by his fellows, but since 19 years I know him, his diligence is linked to many works he performed. He has been published in several magazines and he demonstrates us that all that isnt only a passion but also scientific, geologic and human exploration.

With such a teacher, I spent very good moments of learning underground: in addition to prospection and exploration, Pierre knew very well how to share his passion with his family and friends, with a lot of pedagogy. Even if we dont continue, the experiences we got in caves and underground rivers will remain forever in the minds of the neophytes we are.

I wish you, Reader, a nice journey underground, underwater, on rock walls

Nathalie Boudinet

During each period, each generation has to face the following problem: how to do something new when all has already been done? This question is pregnant regarding all the human activities involving creation: art in all its forms, trading and science. Increasingly during the past ninetieth and twentieth centuries, this question has also become pregnant regarding minor or undisclosed activities such as sport and outdoor activities. In our early twenty-first century, these activities are no longer undisclosed. For the largest number of those who practise, this has joined the field of mass consumption. However, a smaller number remains who doesnt fully follow this trend: I am one of these few people out of the largest number of consumers.

The pregnant question above has no answer outside the philosophical and ethical fields. I spent many hours, months and even years to think of it. Regarding the undisclosed and dicey outdoor activities I practise, caving and cave diving, it took me a lot of time to reach the conclusion that making something new is foremost a question related to thoughts and to a non-material field. Indeed, we are in technological times where all is virtually possible if you have enough means, team or money. A very caricatured example: if you want to have a cave to explore in your garden, just buy the proper plot and pay for digging! We are also in a world where very few areas remain unexplored: all is already known by direct exploration or at least by aerial or satellite imagery and by other geophysics means. Regarding material facts, almost what can be explored has already been explored and what remains is unreachable at the scale of only one (wo)man. Eventually, all is submitted to regulation; and even to reach wild unregulated places, you have to pass through the net. You have to be selected by this net, where regulations very often favour collective endeavours to the detriment of sheer individual achievement.

In this book, I expose my own solution to this question of making something new when all has already been made and how I have been led to this solution because of sundry events. In order to do that, the following things must be developed: How have I learnt caving and cave diving? How do I practise them, and how do they link with other parts of my life? How have they shaped my relationships with other people? Why did I become (and still am) cave diver and caver? Why do I prefer solo caving? Practising such activities engages ones full existence and being. Again, due to the fact we are in technological times and that almost all has already been discovered, my personal solution doesnt deal exclusively with caves. It is foremost a struggle in order to avoid to be overwhelmed by the anonymous mass. Being well-known is probably important for business, but what matters for oneself is to have a full biography. What matters is to preserve oneself as a clearly distinct being, character and soul when coping with the different events of life, whether they take place inside or outside caves.

A play of words borrowed to the great history: it could be regarded as a battle of the sum, for it requires a high level of integration of different parts of life with unavoidable losses. In order to really exist, you have to coordinate your professional, outdoor and familial lives. There are three lives, whereas other people have only two lives. In order to understand something, this triple sum cannot be crumbled. The different thoughts you have during a given moment in a given place depend on a whole; these three lives are weaved together here. They cannot be disconnected.

I will mainly tell things about my caving life and how I regard caving, but I will also unravel some other threads of my character and some other parts of my life: in short, who am I really? Those things are sometimes far from sumps, pits and underground beauties; perhaps another author would manage to conceal them. Therefore, thinking of readers only interested by technical aspects of cave diving or to people only interested in sport and outdoor adventures, I would like to apologise. Im not interested in sending you back the perfect image of the perfect caver and cave diver. Im not the template you are looking for.

Not all the readers are cave divers or cavers or engineers. I would like to apologise again: it is very difficult to give you the right amount of technical explanations when needed. There will be sometimes too much and sometimes not enough. Anyway, what matters is not only the technical aspect of things. The most important is foremost a question of thoughts, something inside a non-material field. Techniques are often regarded as the most important obstacle, as what does or doesnt enable things. Nevertheless, at the scale of a human life, technical difficulties are easier to solve than conceptual and philosophical ones. The most difficult is to gain the proper outlook and the corresponding confidence. Some references are given at the end of the book or after some quotations. Among them, only few are about caving or cave diving, but they all contain precious philosophical elements that have sometimes been vital to the author in order to reach the proper point of view.