Spelunking in Las Vegas

LowellPorter writes "There's an article here about some reporters who check out the sewers in Vegas after a known criminal escapes a police dragnet through them. They expect to find lots of people living in there, but only end up interviewing a couple of bums."

Re:Just bums?

[cybercuzco]

Read the article, they actually do find mutant goldfish and cockroaches and mutant crayfish and a troll.

Odd choice in equipment...

[Thag]

Firstly, neither of them mentioned the most important thing: a backup flashlight.

MAG-lites are wonderfully durable, but their bulbs and batteries are still prone to damage in an abusive environment like a cave. I know: on my one caving trip in college, my primary mag-lite gave out halfway through. Fortunately I had a AA backup. Better yet would be an LED flashlight: they're incredibly tough.

Secondly, a kukri? Please. I own one, and it's mostly useless except as a heavy-duty machete. And it might get you arrested. And was he carrying it stuck through his belt without a sheath?

Important stuff for caving:

• Some kind of helmet. We used Army helmet liners, which were protection enough without being too heavy.
  
• Multiple light sources. The best would be an LED light on a headband, so you can use it hands-free. Bring extras in case you lose your primary, or your buddy does.
  
• Your buddy. At least they got this one right.
  
• Overalls, or plan to change clothes when you get out. Caves are filthy even when they're not a sewer. You're going to come out dirty from head to toe.
  
• Work gloves. Protect your hands.
  
• Tell someone where you're going, so if you run into problems they can send help eventually.
  
• Anywhere you might need rope for, you shouldn't be going.
  

Jon Acheson

Re:caving

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to try caving take a look at these sites:
http://www.caves.org (NSS, US)
http://www.orbonline.net/~tcg (Toronto)
http://www.caving.uk.com

Mother Earth's caves are FAR more interesting than what man makes.

Dark Days

[Salsaman]

For anyone who is interested in this kind of thing, I highly recommend the film Dark Days [imdb.com].

It's a documentary about people living in the Amtrak subways in New York, and is both fascinating and moving.

Re:Hope they took a flashlight....

[cybrpnk2]

For those of you young whippersnappers who have never heard of a grue, download and play Zork [csd.uwo.ca] or any of the old, great Infocom games [csd.uwo.ca]... from the "good old days" of computing, when anything over 16 kilobytes was a tremendous amount of free memory...

Re:caving

[speleo]

Actually, it's not the word that's the problem--it's the attitude of the people that choose to use that word.

Caving is a very dangerous activity--more so than most because it's a very short trip to disaster. Rescue is difficult--no helicopers here folks. An inexerienced person can be just fine one minute and the next--when his flashlight batteries go dead--he's toast. Oh, yeah, those cell phones don't work well underground, either.

"Adventure Sports" are attracting a lot of people these days that should just stay home in front of the TV. Caving is one of the more dangerous of these and it's not to be taken lightly. In addition to the danger there's the aspect of how fragile the cave ecosystem is and how easy it is to do real lasting damage.

However, local caving groups are very receptive of new members. The National Speleological Society [caves.org] can hook you up with a local group if you really want to learn about caves and how to safely explore them.