The Sentence Is Death

I knew we shouldn’t have gone down Long Way Hole. That’s the truth of it. Looking at those clouds, cumulonimbus, I knew in my gut that we could be in trouble. The air was unstable. I had no doubt there was going to be a storm but I persuaded myself it was in the distance, that it wasn’t going to come our way. Maybe it was the fact that it was the one time I was in charge. Richard and Charlie both trusted me. There was an 18-metre pitch next to the waterfall. We set up the rig and went down.

We only had two miles to cover to the exit at Drear Hill, but you know Long Way. That first pitch to start off with and we had to set up a pull-down system as it was a through trip and we were coming out the bottom end. Then there’s a 35-metre waterfall pitch and a couple of awkward climbs and all that before you even reach Drake’s Passage and Spaghetti Junction. Not for the faint-hearted. But we were all OK as we set off. Lots of laughing and joking. Just like old times and all that.

I’m not going to go into all the details. You’re sick to death of it and I’ve only got so much time to finish this. But here’s the bottom line. I lied to you. I lied to the inquest. Charlie Richardson never got lost and he didn’t die the way we said.

What happened was that the storm hit us when we were about two-thirds of the way through. I was first, then Richard, then Charlie. We knew at once that we were in trouble. In all my years caving, I’d never experienced anything like it. First off, there was a change in air pressure. Our voices didn’t come out the same any more. And we could feel this sort of throbbing inside our ears and even in our bones. All the walls were glistening and water was dripping down, making its way through. That was just the start of it. There was this echoing sound, a rumbling that seemed to come out of the bowels of the earth, and all the time it was getting louder and louder until we had to shout to make ourselves heard. You’ve got to remember that we were 85 metres underground, on our own, and it was like the whole world was ganging up on us. We had to make a decision and we had to do it fast.