Blooming heck, underground for a day and the thread is two pages longer!
Really interesting to read people's perspectives, I particularly enjoy the window into caving before my time.
I agree with a lot of what you say (as someone who's been largely an outside observer for twenty years now?). When I said that things haven't changed much over the last 40 years I meant it in the sense of a kind of revolutionary change. A skinny rope is still a rope and an improved ascender is still an ascender. An electron ladder is still a ladder just like a rope ladder. I would argue that the evolution of rope ladder to electron was not a revolution like the onset of SRT was? The only common point was that they both involved upward and downward movement. I have photos of myself caving in 1986 and they could pretty much pass for someone caving in 2026 (apart from the Petzl expedition carbides!). Photos of me in my caving kit from ten years earlier in 1976 would definitely look like from another era.
I think we're in agreement on that anyway, I just fell for the "not much has changed" hook line and sinker (not implying it was meant as a trap, but it does make excellent armchair caving bait).
The ladder to SRT draws a pretty clear line in the sand, and I also think there isn't fundamentally anything different from a sketchy polyprop that might melt in your descender to sketchy dyneema dental. They're ropes, we use certain equipment to ascend and descend it, that's it.
Light is a tricky one, especially from someone who has never caved on carbide himself (though I have seen them in use underground). Is an LED light fundamentally different from carbide? I guess not. But I do stick by the "light is the only thing that will instantly make you a better caver". It allows faster movement, makes navigation easier, and illuminates previously invisible avens or other high level passages.
If headlamps get any brighter you might
as well take up canyoning and save yourself the £720.00 it costs for a new 1500 Lumen Scurion.
I'd agree. Case in point, me and most others I know will run their headlights (whether it's Scurion, Rude Nora, whatever) at a fraction of their capability most of the time, simply because that's all you need. Occasionally I'd use the brighter spot/ flood setting if I'm unfamiliar with the cave, or a high spot for shining up an aven, but 95% of the time that lamp chugs away at a setting that will make 2 cells last the same number of days and camp use to boot. There's also a bit of an arms race, if you're walking in front of someone shining the sun down a passage, all you can see is your own shadow. Unless you also crank up the brightness. So "light etiquette" is now probably more important than it was before - whenever you chose to place that point in time.
AlexR, When you say LED lights in 2008 were pretty so-and-so, do you mean not very good?
Yes, but I guess that's an issue of personal perception - in 2008 I had literally just started caving, whereas you were in active exploration. Naturally that meant I had a club-issued halogen light, later followed by acceptable LEDs, whereas you were playing with the newest toys
So my personal timescale is a little off here.
Cordless drill technology in 1993 didn't stop Badlad and me climbing almost to the top of the +100m Astrodome in Uzueka,
Matienzo in a very similar 10m/hr. We did a 25m climb each on both the days we spent on the climb, and we carried all our own gear.
We used a Bosch GBH24VRE, or maybe the earlier version, with a separate battery (motorcycle battery sized) that we hung on our
harness in a small bag.
We'd be back to the question of what constitutes fundamental change vs. incremental improvement. Fundamentally the above could also have been achieved hand bolting, but it would be pretty grim. So yes, you can argue bolt climbing hasn't changed that much, but only in the essential sense that you're working your way up an aven by means of drilling holes. I'm willing to bet that with modern technology you would have clocked in closer to 40m per day.
A lead acid battery has an energy density of around 35 Wh/kg, NiMH won't get you much more than 110 Wh/kg. Li-Ion clocks in at around 200 Wh/kg. It's not even close. If the same person/ team is climbing with either technology, one will be faster and have a significantly easier time getting there. And that's not counting the lighter drill which is much nicer to hold high above your head. Whether that simply translates to faster progress or the abiltiy to climb in more remote locations makes no odds.
Over 30 years on, I still can't think of another way of getting over the mud band. It must be one of those 'really specialised cases'.
I don't want to get too sidetracked, but a) yes, I'd say it is and b) depending on the exact nature of the difficulty/ mud I've had some success with simply drilling deep holes at an angle (20-30cm or so, ideally until I've hit something that feels like rock), hammering in bolts, tying off where appropriate, gentle bounce test, onwards. Whether that's better or worse than a maypole I cannot say. Warthogs seemed like a good idea but only work in a very specific consistency and depth of clay - and when do you have consistent specific conditions for any length of a climb.
I'm not convinced putting a bolt in by hand necessarily equates to it being put in the right place.
It certainly does not - but making a young eager student put in a bolt by hand, inevitably on the surface, ensures they actually think about where they want to put that bolt.
So, someone who's only caved for 18 years (me) is maybe not best placed to say whether a lot has changed in the last 40 years or not. And what has improved for me personally is in good part due to learning, exposure to new equipment and methods, etc. that have existed for much longer, but I was simply not aware of at the time.
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