Cave exploration, underground encounters, and discovery of the secrets of the earth's core

Cave exploration, underground encounters

Discover the secrets of the center of the earth

More than ten years ago, Jin Hao watched a British horror movie "Dark Invasion". The film tells the story of six girls who met for an adventure trip and came to a cave. A sudden collapse sealed the entrance of the cave, cutting them off. With no contact with the outside world, six girls encountered a secret cave monster that was eating people crazily while exploring in the dark.

This movie suddenly made his eyes light up: it turns out that the underground world is so exciting and full of unknowns. At that time, Jin Hao was already an outdoor enthusiast and would go out basically every weekend. Those similar outdoor projects were no longer new to him. After the movie, he started searching online for caves around Chengdu. The Internet was not very developed and there was very little cave information available. He locked the first cave he was going to explore in Qionglai.

I picked a weekend and took my colleagues with me. The first cave attempt was almost beyond his cognitive scope. "It was very nervous. The entrance to the cave was very small, as big as a door at home. There was an open space inside, divided into several levels, and there were many forked holes." At that time. , it’s almost impossible to talk about equipment. They bought helmets and headlamps for construction sites. The lighting range is not wide enough and they cannot see the distant and surrounding environment. It is very disadvantageous for observation. People can be vaguely heard talking, and they can also hear people talking normally. There are all the rustling sounds that are not here, and people are on tenterhooks, and people will have wild imaginations. But that time I saw bats, small stalactites and sediments in the cave, which were shiny and "quite strange."

So, starting from Qionglai, Jin Hao began his journey of cave exploration. In 2010, he and several enthusiasts established the Sichuan Cave Expedition Team, and went underground with more people again and again to explore and discover primitive caves: The longest underground corridor in Guangxi, the deepest shaft in Guizhou, Shaanxi The ice cave in Hunan, the large cave in Hunan, the Luosui Cave in Yunnan, the world’s highest cave hall in Chongqing...

Unlike most outdoor sports that "meet at high places", this group of people has chosen to go to caves for more than ten years. Everyone meets underground, turns on the lights, illuminates the center of the earth, and uses their energy in the darkness to In this way, they are connected to each other.

(Turn on the lights and illuminate the center of the earth)

Caves: Secrets of the Earth's Core

Generally speaking, a cave refers to a natural space that people can enter and exit, which is divided into primary caves and secondary caves. Primary caves are formed at the same time as the surrounding rocks, such as volcanic caves; secondary caves are formed by external forces (such as water). More than 90% of what we see now are secondary caves. The shape and topography of caves are different. Flat caves can be entered directly, vertical shafts may be hundreds of meters deep and require ropes, and water caves may require boating to enter. China's native caves are mainly concentrated in the southwest: Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan, Sichuan and Chongqing. Guizhou has especially many caves; Guangxi is famous for its sinkholes; Chongqing has many mountains and rich water systems, which can easily form vertical shafts; Yunnan Most of the caves have not been explored; Sichuan caves are mainly in Luzhou, Jiangyou and Guangyuan, Yibin.

Cave exploration is not only an emerging adventure sport that relies on rope technology to satisfy human curiosity, but is also a comprehensive sport that integrates geology, hydrology, humanities, climate, medicine, zoology and botany, etc. Extremely high team behavior. Currently, more than 80% of the famous caves in the country have been explored by the British and French. Jin Hao said that in the cave circle, most of them are based on new discoveries, and basically they will not go there. Following the footsteps of our predecessors, the Chinese people's cave exploration capabilities and local exploration in recent years are actually no worse than those of foreigners.

The mountain peaks have an end, and people can reach the top of the world, but the underground area is very large and endless. The Sichuan Cave Expedition Team has been exploring a cave in Jiangyou for seven or eight years, but it cannot reach the end. Therefore, currently, the place where people cannot pass is what everyone calls the "end". "The cave resources we have discovered so far are less than 5% of the entire earth, and more than 95% have not been reached by humans. We know very little about the information and secrets of the earth's core ”

One year, Jin Hao and his team went to explore the world's highest cave hall in Chongqing. Because it was so high, it was impossible to descend from the cave entrance to the bottom. The hole is also very big, and the place where the headlight can shine is dark. The person is completely suspended in the air. He is hung on a rope. He doesn’t know when he will get down to the bottom. When he is really tired, he just hugs the rope and rests. I went to Guiyang to explore a water cave. I entered the water at 10:30 in the morning and didn't come out until 1 in the morning. There was a huge underground river in the cave. They wore diving suits and floated in the water. It was extremely cold in the middle of the night. "When people are in the middle, they always don't know where the end point is. It's both unknown and interesting."

Depending on their needs, they stayed in the cave for varying lengths of time, ranging from five days to ten days. He had also experienced the fear caused by the darkness of the cave. "When you adapt to that process, entering the cave is like going back home." It's like home." There is no sense of time in the cave. In fact, there is not much difference between five and ten days. It is all night anyway. Sometimes when they were exploring caves for a long time, they were completely isolated from the outside world. They ate when they were hungry, slept when they were tired, and got up to continue working without even knowing what time it was. "I gain three pounds every time I go caving" is a joke in the cave circle. Sometimes they are very tired in the cave. Jin Hao once lost eight pounds in five days, and then quickly gained weight back after he came out. They may even feel that this state is quite good: they can torture and enjoy it at the same time.

"The most exciting process is the moment I come out of the cave, I feel like I'm back to modern civilization: it's great to be alive."

(The most exciting process is the moment you come out of the cave)

The past of the Sichuan Cave Expedition Team

The original Sichuan cave exploration team was based on everyone's interests and hobbies, loosely and freely. In 2015, the purely playful stage passed. Jin Hao did something in the second year: disbanded the previous expedition team and reorganized the team. , trying to do caving in a commercial and professional way. At this time, everyone reached a consensus: "First support yourself, use business to support the expedition, let the expedition team itself grow, and then feed back to the business section, creating a virtuous cycle."

Taking the commercial path has been questioned by other expedition teams, who felt that they were impure, as if commercialization was just to make money. The team has been exploring and settling under pressure. After opening up the business model in the past two years, the strength and influence of the expedition team have been greatly improved and enhanced. Only then can everyone see: This is a sustainable development path. In this way Only then will we have more energy to influence more people.

Caving itself is different from other outdoor sports. It involves many natural subjects and cannot be fought alone. Each cave exploration mission is more like a marching army. It requires everyone to work together to complete it. Currently, the Sichuan cave exploration team consists of a pioneer team, a photography team, a survey team, a biological survey team, and a logistics support team. The members of the expedition team are composed of professionally trained experts in various fields, including geology professors, survey engineers, rope elites, and biomass experts. Physiologists, humanities researchers, photographers, medical experts, etc.

Everyone who has become a member of a cave exploration team has gone through this stage: they started to get in touch with caves out of curiosity. During the cave exploration process, they filled their sense of freshness and curiosity, and gradually fell in love with it. Later, they discovered that there is a huge social aspect to cave exploration. Value and economic value, at this time, many people are really willing to stop and do this.

As the exploration deepened little by little, the cave expedition team members felt novel when they first saw bats. Later, when they saw a crack in the cave, they began to think about how this crack was formed and how it evolved to this day. Many times, The work of cave exploration teams is becoming more and more like wild geological survey teams, making up for the shortcomings of geological experts. For example, some people study bat guano. The deposits of bat guano in some caves can reach up to two or three meters. This may take hundreds of thousands of years of deposition. Members of the expedition team extract information through sampling at different levels and infer geological changes to predict the future. , “That’s an interesting thing in itself.”

In addition, the Sichuan Cave Expedition Team conducts two national geological surveys and exploration activities every year, which are public welfare activities. They previously participated in the karst water survey project in the poverty-stricken area of ​​Wumeng Mountain in Yunnan, helping tens of thousands of people in the karst area to resolve the problem. The problem of water resource scarcity; carrying out cave tourism exploration projects in poor counties in Yunnan to help the economic development of poor areas; participating in the post-disaster reconstruction project of the Mama Farm Youth Science Base in Beichuan, "Our cave investigations have affected the lives of many people and changed the world." The fate of some people really has a sense of meaning.”

Jin Hao said that his current sense of accomplishment mainly comes from the team, "Individual power is too limited. I hope to see the growth of the entire team, and then more and more people will join in cave exploration."

(Footprints of the Sichuan Cave Expedition Team)

Meeting people underground

In his second year of exploring caves, Jin Hao encountered a strange thing. Now that he thinks about it, he finds it interesting. He went to the end of a very narrow cave, twisting and turning. He didn't know how long he had been drilling, and suddenly he came into a cave hall. After getting in, I looked up and saw a statue of a green-faced and fanged god in front of me. He was startled, turned on the light and walked around, but found no other passages. He was about to return, but found that he could not find the way he came. The whole figure seemed to be trapped in a sealed box, completely confused. He sat next to the statue and smoked a few cigarettes. He remembered that he had crawled here, so he lay down and found the passage in the corner.

Afterwards, he always thought that our ancestors had already visited such a secret cave and made statues here. He has encountered more than one cave like this, and in this way, he met people underground from countless years ago and shared secrets like this with each other. "Human beings have a very close relationship with caves. For humans, caves are a natural refuge for shelter from wind and rain, beasts of prey and war. Caves are a natural refuge."

Jin Hao said that when entering the cave, what he values ​​most is the emotional connection between people . At this time, you will be safely isolated from the outside world. The cave is an independent, small society. Therefore, the cohesion of the team or the sharing between people and the communication between people will make him feel particularly precious. After everyone truly joins this team, they become dedicated people who are willing to share roles in the team.

In recent years, they have developed some cave experience activities for the general public, both for adults and teenagers, allowing everyone to get in touch with and understand caves and experience cave exploration. It was very difficult at the beginning. Jin Hao recalled that when he did the first Leshan experience activity in 2016, he could only recruit a few people. At that time, when everyone mentioned the cave, they thought it was dangerous and cold. Why should they go to the cave? After several years of With the market cultivation, more and more people are exposed to cave exploration, and the acceptance rate is obviously high. "Unlike the previous studies where you couldn't find an organization and had no one to teach you, and you had to mess around blindly. We have a systematic set of content that can help you transform from a novice to a professional cave explorer."

Jin Hao said that he has gained a lot in the past two years. The team members come from different industries and fields, with different ages, genders, and personalities. It is important for him to integrate everyone to complete one thing and deal with different people. It was difficult to talk about it. "To be exaggerated, I think I have social anxiety and resist communicating with others, but this matter requires me to communicate with people, and I also need to communicate with different people. At the beginning, I found it very difficult and the effect was not good. , Now that I am slowly accumulating, I feel that I am much better, which is also a gain. "

Think about yourself, have you ever lost anything? Jin Hao said that he had nothing to lose. When he first started doing this, his family didn't understand him. They thought it was dangerous for him to run around in the mountains all day long. He didn't know what he was trying to do. Why couldn't he find a job and go to work? In the worst cases, he didn't even want to go home. "Like many people, I was once very confused and didn't know what I could do. If I hadn't done caving, I would have still worked nine to five, played basketball after get off work, and walked outdoors on weekends. It was actually pretty good. Okay, but for me, it's a bit too plain. Now I know in my heart that I may not regret doing this in this life. I want to see what I can do with myself in this life. Look. "

This was a path he discovered by chance and then walked on, and it gradually became his true career, something that gave him a very sense of certainty. He said that he used to be a competitive character and liked all kinds of competitive sports, but this incident made him really calm down, stop, and move forward with peace of mind. It was an explanation for himself.

Currently, the most difficult thing for the cave exploration team is getting official attention and recognition. There are half a million registered cave exploration enthusiasts in the UK, while there are only 500 in China. They want to build a relevant system through organizations like the Expedition Survey Team so that more people can understand cave exploration and everyone can participate.

"This road is difficult to walk, but someone has to walk it. This is something worth doing for the rest of my life. If I succeed, I will feel that my life is worth it."

(A road to the center of the earth and a team)