September 14, 2025 • 53 mins
Meet Dr. Hazel Barton, a remarkable scientist who descends into Earth's darkest corners in search of microscopic life that could transform our future. Nicknamed the "Lara Croft of microbiology," Hazel combines cutting-edge science with death-defying exploration in some of the most remote cave systems on our planet.
The heart of this episode recounts Hazel's terrifying near-death experience in a cave in China. Miles underground in what they believed was a dry passage, Hazel and her team suddenly heard the roar of approaching water as an underground river changed course. What followed was a desperate fight for survival against a raging torrent, requiring split-second decisions and extraordinary human cooperation to escape. Her vivid description of climbing across slippery ledges with certain death below will leave you breathless.
Beyond the adventure, Hazel reveals how her research carries profound implications for our everyday lives. Her team has discovered cave microbes capable of breaking down nylon—potentially revolutionizing how we handle this problematic plastic that often ends up as ocean pollution. Other microorganisms they've studied can extract rare earth elements from rock, offering potential solutions for securing these crucial components used in everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.
Hazel's journey from a working-class British family to becoming a geology professor who's explored caves across 37 countries and all seven continents is equally fascinating. She shares how an early experience watching pus shoot from a cat's abscess at a veterinary clinic sparked her interest in microbiology, while a childhood caving trip revealed her unusual comfort in underground spaces. Her career advice is refreshingly straightforward: focus on what makes you jump out of bed in the morning, not titles or salaries.
Whether you're fascinated by extreme exploration, cutting-edge science, or simply curious about extraordinary career paths, Hazel's story offers a perfect blend of adventure and inspiration. Listen now to discover the hidden worlds beneath our feet and the microscopic treasures they contain.
BOOK: Lechuguilla Cave: Discoveries in a Hidden Splendor - https://www.amazon.com/Lechuguilla-Cave-Discoveries-Hidden-Splendor/dp/3982171423
Hazel Barton wins the "Oscar" of Caving Award in 2025 - https://geo.ua.edu/2025/09/10/dr-hazel-barton-wins-prominent-caving-award/
Hazel's Lab Website - http://www.cavescience.com/
Follow Hazel on X - https://x.com/cavescience
Follow Hazel on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hazel-barton-4124148/
If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five-star rating and review, and tell a friend about the show.
WANT TO BE A GUEST? You can submit your own career story through our website at noordinarymonday.com or email us at hello@noordinarymonday.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Imagine being miles underground the air's damp, the
rock walls are closing in andthe only way out is a narrow
passage that you've just spenthours descending down.
Then, somewhere in the chambersabove, you hear it the
unmistakable roar of water.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Like that's when the fear kicks in.
You know all those reflexes youhear about, you know and people
realize things are really likemy stomach dropped, my legs got
weak, like I started breathingfast.
I was like this is bad.
And the water was coming downit under such force, it was like
a fire hydrant, it was likearcing out.
You couldn't get anywhere nearit.
(00:40):
You would have been immediatelydrowned, basically.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
In that moment, hazel Barton and her team faced a
choice Climb into a pitch blackalcove to hope and wait, or
fight their way out against theflood.
What followed was a desperatestruggle for survival, with
lives hanging by the strength ofa single rope and the human
anchor holding it.
One, two, three, four by thestrength of a single rope and
the human anchor holding it.
(01:10):
Hello and welcome to anotherepisode of no Ordinary Monday.
Thank you so much for joiningus.
I am your host, chris Barron,and each week I sit down with a
guest whose job is far fromordinary.
We explore how they got there,what it's really like behind the
scenes, and then I ask them torelive the single most
unforgettable experience oftheir career.
Now, if you're enjoying thisshow, make sure to hit follow or
(01:33):
subscribe, and that way youwon't miss any of the incredible
guests we have coming up.
Our guest this week is someonewho's been described as the Lara
Croft of microbiology, ascientist whose work has taken
her into some of the most remote, unexplored caves on earth, not
just to map them, but touncover the scientific secrets
that hide in the darkness.
(01:53):
Dr Hazel Barton is a caveexplorer, microbiologist and
professor who has spent decadesbalancing science with
exploration.
Hazel and I first met whilefilming a documentary series in
New Mexico's Lechuguilla Cave,which is one of the most
spectacular cave systems in theworld.
It's absolutely unbelievable.
(02:13):
Hazel is an extraordinarypresence on the ground.
She's not just an amazing caverbut, as you'll see, she's just
a really fun person to be around.
And as you heard in that intro,hazel's big story takes us to a
cave in china where a suddenflood turned exploration into a
fight for survival.
So stay tuned for a grippingbehind the scenes.
(02:34):
Look at what it takes toexplore the world beneath our
feet and the risks that comewith it.
On that note, just a quick headsup.
Some of the stories in thisweek's episode do talk about
bodily functions and some mildlygross things.
Um, it's mostly in the first10-15 minutes or so, so you can
skip ahead and enjoy the rest ofthe episode if you're sensitive
to that kind of stuff.
(02:55):
And finally, just a quicktechnical note.
We had some issues with therecording quality on hazel's mic
, so I've managed to clean it upquite a bit, but there may be
one or two bits where Hazelsounds like she has a cold.
But that's just the compression, so rest assured we'll iron out
these technical issues forfuture episodes.
And with that you're listeningto no Ordinary Monday.
(03:15):
Let's get into the show.
Okay, hazel Barton, welcome tothe podcast.
How you doing today to thepodcast.
How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I'm good.
How are you?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
doing.
I'm fantastic.
I think the last time that weactually saw each other face to
face, we were in New Mexico,carlsbad Caverns, lechuguilla
Cave, on a filming trip.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
We were filming you doing some amazing work down in
Lechuguilla doing some amazingwork down in, down in
lechuguilla, and I remember youcoming out of the cave and we
were down there what nine or tendays, something like that.
I remember you coming out of thecave and you, you did the last
big rope drop and you got.
You were.
That's amazing, that's justamazing.
(04:00):
You get the um when you've beenunderground for a while.
I don't know if you got it, butwhen you've been underground
for a long time there's nosmells down there, right.
The only smell is like otherpeople and it gets pretty foul
after a few days.
So once you start comingtowards the surface, you start
to smell like um microbes andsoil produces compound called
(04:21):
jasmine.
Yeah, and it smells like freshcut grass a little bit, you know
, a little bit like soily cutgrass, and when you start to
come out the cave you start toget whiffs of that, just like
the whole, the whole surfacejust isn't.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
It must be like, you know, suddenly becoming a dog
and and realizing other smellsor something, and you're like
everything is super intense itwas one of the most, I think,
unique experience of my lifecoming out, because it's been
over a week underground and it'smusty and there is no smell,
apart from other humans, and youjust come out.
(04:56):
It just, it's just life.
It's like everything is justratcheted up like to 11 in terms
of intensity of depth of smelland and sights and sounds.
It was, it was amazing yeah yeah, but the the other thing, just
on that, I think you.
I listened to another podcast.
You won you.
Actually you ended.
You credited us with one of theum must-haves in a cavers day
(05:22):
pack.
Do you remember what it was?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Was it you guys that came up with those?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Well, you said it was a National Geographic team that
went to Lech Gia and it was us.
We brought the biffy bags.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
You brought the biffy bags.
Those were the best things inthe world.
You can poo in those, you canpee in them, you can bark in
them.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I think, yeah, we have to explain it with biffy
bags.
For I mean, basically, I thinkit'd probably be good for you to
set up, let your Gear quickly,and why you need a biffy bag.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Oh yeah, it's an incredibly remote environment
and there's no.
You know, you're undergroundand it's a special kind of cave.
It's called a hypogenic cave,which means it was formed by
water coming from deep in theground and getting pushed up,
and so you force the water tospread out and make this
incredibly long, complex cavesystem.
(06:14):
So it's over 150 miles now, butthere's not a lot of water in
it.
There's pools that form whereyou have stalad mites and
staladites and they're drippinginto the pools and you can drink
that water, but there's nowater to wash, there's no water
to flush, there's no bathroomsand you can't leave anything
behind because obviously thatwould have a remarkable effect
(06:37):
on the ecosystem.
Right, the biggest organismdown there is, like you know,
maybe some fungal spores.
So you can't leave anythingbehind and everything comes out.
And we were explaining to youguys how you deal with a number
one and a number two, and anumber one is pretty easy, but
with the number two, and we sowhat?
(06:59):
Until you guys showed up,because you've really
transformed exploration in thatcave.
Guys showed up, because you'vereally transformed exploration
in that cave.
Until you guys showed up.
What you would do is you take abig piece of foil and you
create like a target and you usethe target of the foil and then
you wrap the foil up and thenyou put it in two ziploc bags.
But it's a bit stinky, eventhough the foil is supposed to
(07:20):
stop the smell, but it's alittle bit stinky.
And then you guys, you were, um, uh, so bougie.
You showed up with these thingsthat were called bippy bags and
, um, they were made of mylarand so the smell doesn't get out
.
And they come with a littlepiece of toilet paper and a wet
(07:41):
wipe so you can wash your handsafterwards.
And it's got an enormouscarrier bag inside with little
straps on it so you can openthis thing up, open up the
straps and tie it around like adiaper and kind of cracks down.
So you put this you don't have atarget, like it doesn't matter
what you do, it will get trappedit just falls down yeah, it
(08:01):
falls down and then it's got allthese polyethylene glycol at
the bottom that could absorblike 50 000 times its own volume
and moisture.
So it just like goes, yeah, andthen you close it up.
You, you know, throw it, closeup the big bag and then you put
your um pp in there andeverything and close it up and
it's sealed um, I mean, Iremember it's one of the stories
I tell most often.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It's kind of like you know um you know, as an
astronaut, how do you go totoilet in space?
It's one of the stories.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I tell.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Most often it's kind of like you know, as an
astronaut, how do you go totoilet in space?
It's kind of that kind of story.
You know you've got to in ascenario where you cannot, you
know, leave anything in the cave.
What do you do about the toiletsituation?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And yeah, I'm sure most people have stopped
listening to this now.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, what a setup to who you are and what you do.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
but I mean, well, it's caving caving I know, I
think it's, it is important,right?
It's like, um, if you reallyget into rescue, right?
I know we're going to go backto the scatology here, but they
always tell people, if youreally want to be into rescue
but you don't think you couldbring yourself to wipe somebody
(09:04):
else's butt, then you shouldn'tbe in rescue.
And if you're, if you areinterested in doing exploration,
depending on the environmentyou're in, there's always
something that you have to do.
That's not standard to whatsociety deems appropriate
behavior and even what you woulddiscuss appropriately.
(09:25):
So, yeah, I?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I think, yeah, no, that's exactly right.
I think that, yeah, as I said,you are, um, your explorer and
we mentioned a little bit aboutthat and a microbiologist, but I
guess okay.
So I've seen you a couple oftimes just to go into who you
are and what you do, and there'sa there's a phrase that I've
seen batted around some of thearticles about you and it says
you are the lar you do, andthere's a there's a phrase that
I've seen batted around some ofthe articles about you and it
says you are the lara croft ofmicrobiology.
(09:49):
And I just wanted to ask youhow accurate do you find that um
description of yourself?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
from the waist up.
Terrible um, she would never bean effective caver she would
get stuck everywhere, um,proportionally, um, no, I mean,
I think so.
If it's a misogyny thing or not,I mean I I kind of like it.
When I was a kid, I wanted tobe indiana jones, right.
(10:19):
So, yeah, started to age myself, but when the first indiana
jones movie came out, all mygirlfriends were like, oh god, I
want to snog indiana jones.
I didn't want to snog indianajones, I wanted to be indiana
jones, right.
I wanted to nice, yeah, all ofthe world, speaking different
languages, exploring things andand finding these discoveries.
(10:40):
And this is so embarrassing.
I even got one of the fedorasright, for I don't know how old
I was 12, maybe I I begged and,begged and begged, and I think
my granddad gave me a fedora forchristmas, which is funny oh my
god, that's so cute yeah, nobrand.
Granddad probably wore a fedorain the 40s.
But um, yeah, yeah, um, I justjust wanted to be Indiana Jones.
(11:04):
And so when I got older, thefirst time I was in the
newspaper, someone called meDiana Jones and I I got.
I felt that was kind of funbecause it was like I hadn't
really even thought that my,it's not like.
You know, I wanted to be afireman and then I spent my
whole life working towards beinga fireman.
(11:24):
You know, I wanted to be afireman and then I spent my
whole life working towards beinga fireman.
I wanted to be a vet when I waslittle and I was working yeah,
professionally toward becoming avet.
So the indiana jones is more oflike a fun fantasy, something
that is certainly not like I'vedecided I'm going to be this
thing and spend a career workingtowards it.
It's just one day I woke up andpeople were other people were
(11:47):
kind of like um, aligning mewith that you know, stereotype.
But I wanted to be a vet and Iread that the best way to become
a vet was to volunteer atveterinary practice.
So I did it for four years andat the end of four years I was
like I would rather die than bea vet, because it's wow it's 90
(12:08):
cats with diarrhea and it's dogswith diarrhea and the thing
that was really fun I meanhelping with the surgery, like
towards the end, I was soexperienced, even though I was
only like 18 or 19, that I washelping with the surgeries.
You know nothing more than likemopping up blood and putting
bits and buckets and things.
Um, yeah, but this thing that Ithought was so cool, and this
(12:31):
is after.
We just spent the first fiveminutes talking about poo.
Maybe people are going to judgeme on this, but I don't care.
Yeah, us, us is just soexciting.
So what yeah, the first timethere was a cat that came in and
its whole face was swelled up.
I'm getting there, is a pointto this, I'll get there, but
(12:51):
it's all faces filled up.
And then the vet said this isthe first time.
The vet said, oh, this is um,this is an abscess, we need to
to drain it.
So he just kind of grabbed thethe cat's head and took a
scalpel and just went justreally fast and the puss jumped
like four feet to the other sideand the cat just went.
(13:13):
And you know, the cat was superrelieved.
I was like wow.
And then I heard this enormousclang like someone was ringing a
bell and we both looked overand the owner had fainted with
the pot and it was their headhitting the radiator.
And I was like awesome, and soI'm in there.
(13:36):
Becoming a medicalmicrobiologist came from his
experiences like that.
It's like you know I'll be in.
Being a vet is a lot of fun,but these microbes are freaking
awesome wow, how old were youthen?
oh gosh, 15, I think maybe 16,15, wow I see you're still at
school, still high school yeah,yeah, oh well, but you're in the
(13:58):
uk at that point, weren't you?
yeah, so is it I was doing my olevels, then I was on track to
becoming a vet.
I discovered boys when I wasdoing my A-levels so that kind
of derailed it, but at thatpoint I wasn't as focused on
becoming a vet as I had been.
But definitely the microbes.
(14:19):
There'd always been afascination with that, but that
was it.
I'm going to be amicrobiologist Wow, so that was
it?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I'm going to be a microbiologist, wow, so that's
when it started and where I mean.
You've come a long way sincethen, obviously, but what would
you describe yourself as rightnow?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
So my PhD is medical microbiology.
So I got my PhD back in 1997.
And then I went to work for aguy called Norm Pace who was a
caver.
And then I went to work for aguy called norm pace who was a
caver, but he was the guy whofigured out that you could use
this uh enzyme that tom brockhad discovered in yellowstone.
Um, another lab had figured outthat you could amplify dna with
(14:56):
it.
And norm figured out that youcould use these amplified dna
fragments like a barcode toidentify organisms in the
environment.
And norm norm likes to say itblew the door off the microbial
world and it did.
I mean, you know people,everybody knows about their
microbiome.
Now it's amazing microbes areeverywhere, literally everywhere
(15:17):
you can think of even likenuclear reactors have microbes
yeah, yeah, it's um, and it'sgood too, because they're, you
know, without you know, withmacroscopic life you could wipe
out all life you could see onthe planet and the our biosphere
would just keep ticking along.
But if you wiped out allmicroscopic life, um, our
(15:37):
biosphere would collapsesomewhere between four to seven
days and then all life on earthwould get wiped out.
So they, yeah, they're reallysmall, but they, they're very
good at what they do.
Anyway, I worked for norm normand he was a, he was a caver,
but I worked with him ontuberculosis, which is a fun
project.
(15:58):
And then I got involved in animax movie and the?
Im was like well, we want youbecause of your skill set, but
we want you to do environmentalmicrobiology.
And of course I was in Norm'slab, which is an environmental
microbiology lab.
And then we're like, okay, well, we'll go look at caves.
And Norm was like, well, go forit, you know you're, you're,
(16:20):
you can do the kind of cavingthat most people can, and you
have a PhD in microbiology, sogo figure it out.
So then I became a cavemicrobiologist and started my
own lab.
I did that for almost 20 yearsand then that was in a biology
department, but we were creepingtowards geology.
So we're looking at microbes incaves and so they interact with
(16:44):
rocks and minerals, and most ofwhat we were doing was so
geology-based that it wasactually hard to get.
It was hard for my students toget their PhDs in biology
because what they were doing wasso geology-orientated.
And then I got offered a job atUniversity of Alabama in a
geology department.
So now I'm in a long story I'mactually a professor of geology,
(17:07):
even though that all startedout with like pus leaping out of
the face of the plant.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, that's really cool.
That's really cool.
I mean just going back.
Like you said.
You know that sort of seed ofinspiration in microbiology was
planted in that room when youwere 15, seeing the the big pus
sprout from the cat but the um,the seed of that right.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I mean it it that's a cool story.
It's pretty visual well, thevial and it was green, and
suddenly my life was changed.
It's like no.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
This really disgusting thing happened it is
yeah, it is funny, but the, theseed of the caving like that,
was planted around about thesame time, wasn't it when you're
in your teenage years?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
yeah.
So when I was 12 we did.
We got taken on an outwardbound course where they take a
bunch of city kids.
There was a gaggle kid way, waytoo big of a group for a single
adult that was taking us around, right, you know, never, never
do that these days, but itshould be like 20 kids and one
(18:10):
adult.
And we had this really sketchykind of lights and helmets and
one of the kids his light wentout and he was kind of getting
left behind and I'm like, well,let's just share my light, and
so I took my light off my helmetand we were kind of sharing it
to see where we're going, and itdidn't faze me at all, whereas
everybody else was prettyterrified.
So I just, I don't know, I justfelt super comfortable in that
(18:34):
environment and I think a lot ofpeople who explore caves have
the same kind of scenario.
It's.
It's an environment that youeither immediately love not
necessarily in explainable waysor you hate and you never want
to go back.
It's old, muddy, it's wet, youcan't see.
It's climby, you can fall.
Some people are like, no, thisis not the thing, yeah, very
(18:56):
dangerous.
But other people are like thisis just like a 3D jungle gym.
I just want to go explore everyhole.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Maybe a lot of people listening to this might be
curious.
They may have never even beeninto a cave, let alone a wild
cave, what is?
Can you visualize or describethe emotions that you experience
when you're entering a cave forthe first time, or going into a
deep part of a cave unexplored,or just being inside these
(19:24):
spaces under the ground?
What's it like for you?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I mean, the best feeling in my life is to go into
a cave, find a big hole and notknow where it goes and then
explore and map it.
You've probably played videogames where the video game is
like there's a map that as youexplore a dungeon, the map gets
built over time so you don'tknow where everything is.
But the map gets built overtime so you don't know where
(19:51):
everything is.
But the more you explore around, the more you build that map so
you know where everything is.
Caves are just like that.
So it's um, and the stuff youfind, I mean the incredibly
beautiful environments.
You, you went to, let you gethere.
You saw some of the best cavepassage in the world.
You know.
Just imagine walking into that.
Nobody knew it was there.
And then you, you walk intothis incredibly decorated room.
It's just, it's reallybeautiful, it's like art.
But the the thing is, a lot oftimes you get skunked right for
(20:14):
every time that you find thatone amazing passage.
You might get skunked 20 timesand I think that that if it was
easy and you always found greatstuff, I don't think caving
would be as much fun.
It's the trial and error andall that effort and time and
building upon knowledge to makethose breakthroughs, I think is
(20:35):
what is really part of thediscovery and the fun.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Just to sort of give listeners an idea of the, I
guess, the purpose of the workthat you do, like you know what
kind of applications or whatkind of discoveries are you
hoping to uncover?
Speaker 2 (20:52):
And that's the nice thing about so.
We call it basic research and Ithink when you say basic
research, a lot of peoplebecause that's jargon right, I
mean it's a specialist term thatmeans the fundamental
underpinnings of how things work.
So when we talk about basicscience was like, like, what are
the fundamentals?
And so we're trying tounderstand the fundamentals of
(21:14):
caves and cave forming processesand some people are like, oh, I
don't care about that, that'snot important to me.
But those fundamental processesteach us things about
microorganisms that have somereally remarkable applications.
We think we've figured out howto recycle nylon, because we've
seen ways that nylon is beingbroken down in caves by microbes
(21:35):
.
So we have a novel and youthink about you see all those
fishing nets and the turtlesgetting caught in the fishing
nets in the ocean.
You can't do anything withnylon.
You can't recycle it.
It's a terrible plastic.
It's micro crystalline.
It's very hard cake to use.
It basically gets shredded anddumped in landfills.
We think we can actually breakthat down and turn it back into
(21:56):
a fertilizer again looking athow microbes in caves work.
Another thing we're doing isunderstanding how microbes in
caves can segregate differentkinds of metals, because some
metals in rock are toxic, sowhen they're in the rock doing
their thing this came from somework we were doing in Brazil on
(22:21):
iron caves in Brazil is thatthey can actually segregate
something called a rare earthelement.
So these are elements that arein very, very low supply but are
incredibly critically importantRight now.
I think China's just recentlyprevented sales to North
America's rare earth elements.
(22:41):
Well, they're used in, you know, batteries and chips,
microprocessors, rare earthmagnets I mean our entire.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Most technologies need it yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
And that's again from micros make caves in Brazil.
So, yeah, it's all.
Yeah, I know it's like peopleare like why should we?
You know?
Why should we fund science?
It's like you know who cares.
It's like you don't be you know.
Why should we fund science?
This is like you know who cares, it's like you don't.
You don't know how or why youcare, right, and I think this is
why you know like this, thisattack on you know, scientists
(23:11):
and expertise and everythinglike you know.
Well, I could figure this out.
It's like you could, but itwould take you a lot longer to
do and ai is not going to dothat trick for you right?
The?
The ability of the psc patternsand this is part of the
teaching someone to get a phd islike helping them.
Like, how do you take complexproblems, break them down into
(23:33):
testable solutions and then useyour knowledge to find those
links that build it all backtogether, and then you end up
with novel carbon sequestrationtechnologies, ways of getting
rare earth elements out of rock.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
So yeah, Before you jumped on this podcast, I asked
you to think of a story acrossyour long career that kind of
stood out as significant andsort of you know, for one reason
or another stands out as ahighlight or something that was
scary or exciting or orsignificant.
(24:06):
Um, I wonder if you could sharethat with us yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
So we talked about a few things and, being a cave
explorer, there's been therehave been more than one
occasions where I thought I wasgonna die, and so those
definitely stand out.
I should say that, um, you know, nobody goes into a cave
thinking they're gonna get intotrouble.
Um, I don't think anybody woulddo that.
(24:31):
You know there are certainpeople that think it's about
adrenaline and it's not.
One of the issues we have is iswater.
A lot of people have lost theirlives in caves because of water
.
You do have to be very, verycognizant of it and aware of
what's going on, and so, for us,we were in china and we were
(24:53):
exploring, um, a big cave there.
It's called chonko and it has aginormous entrance that was, I
don't know, 100 meters high and40 meters wide, just going right
into the mountain.
So we were exploring that caveover many, many years and it
splits.
(25:13):
You go, you follow thisenormous river into the passage
and then it splits about 200meters in.
You go to the left and you goup something called the wet side
and that is pretty terrifying.
There are waterfalls andstrainers and everything you
know you can.
It looks like a class 5 rapidto get up this thing and then it
(25:34):
ends in a sump in the otherdirection.
You go and you traverse a bunchof pools and then you climb up
and then you get into this drypassage, this dry borehole, and
it is ginormous, some of thebiggest cave in the world.
And so we were.
We were working on this dryside and, uh, there was this big
(25:56):
pool of water and I don't thinkwe ever, like I don't think we
ever sat down.
It's like, where did this poolof water come from?
But anyway, you could swimacross the pool of water or you
could do this traverse, and thetraverse was really super
sketchy.
It was, it was super smooth andthe footholds there were barely
any footholds.
There was certainly nothing tograb onto with your hands.
(26:18):
You just had to lean into therock and trust your feet and
kind of step around this thing.
And I hated it and I said weneed a rope on it because
someone's going to fall off.
It wasn't a big fall, it waslike six feet, but you were
going to, you know, take apretty big splash into this pool
of water and then it's wayacross.
And my friend Mike would alwayslaugh.
(26:38):
He's like come on, hazel, we'repracticing for the real thing.
I was like who made it thisdamn perverse?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
So we get up and we're pushing the cave from two
different directions at the time.
So this is unexplored.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Just to this is unexplored at this point
Unexplored, but we're checkingholes in this whole mountain,
right?
So this is this big kind ofpointy mountain in China and you
could walk up around this bigentrance and it had a big
passage that went in for likehalf a mile and then there was a
hole in the floor and you threwa rock down and it took 13
(27:17):
seconds to hit the ground whichis ginormous.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
It's like 800 plus feet, so but I mean, yeah, just
just to give people a sense ofthat, like, um, can you have you
got a stopwatch or something?
I just I can just count it hereactually yeah and just throw it
through.
It put a picture in our head,threw it in for us okay, all
right.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So right, I You're going to do the bang, right.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Okay, I got the rock.
I'm walking up to the side ofthe pit Ready.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
It's a big one yeah yeah, I can barely handle it.
Hang it Ready, I'll get it.
Yeah, it's top clock, I'm goingnow.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Boom, boom, wow it's more like yeah, geez, yeah, so
what?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
was so.
Basically, you threw a rockdown and the entire cave just
reverberates yeah, after a verylong period of time.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
So we, oh man, we knew it was at least 200 meters,
um, so it was going where wewere going upstream in this big
passage.
It was right, it was goingright towards where that was.
So the next trip, somebody wentdown with a rope and we came up
the drive passage from belowand we actually connected in
(28:45):
that route and it ended up beingthe third biggest room in the
world.
So then the ceiling was 400meters, so 1200 feet high.
That pit was 900, 934 feet, Ithink, something like that.
Um, and we connected in themiddle.
And one of the things we did onroute was there was this huge
(29:06):
lake that we had to traversearound.
So we put we the person we werewith, who was a sketcher,
didn't want to get cold, so weactually put a rope up against
the wall so he could traversearound without getting wet by
wading through this lake, andthis will come in later.
(29:26):
So we decided to do this bigtrip.
It's going to be 24 hours andwe were going to go in that
entrance and then connect upinto the main, the big room, and
then we basically have found aroute through the mountain.
So we went in and it's China,so there's no way you could get
a weather report, and we weren'tthat worried because we were in
(29:51):
the dry side, so we didn't haveto worry about it.
So we went in and we startedsurveying and we were able to
connect up to the main passageand we found some other passages
heading off to connect it up tothe main passage.
And we found some otherpassages heading off and we it's
like I said I don't know twoo'clock in the morning or
something at this point.
And then we're like well, we'vestill got some hours, what?
(30:13):
What are we going to do next?
And uh, somebody said well, youknow where that really big lake
was.
There's a big passage headingoff into the wall there that's
about 20 feet wide sorry, 20meters wide and about five
meters high.
No one's been in there.
Why don't we go survey that?
Like okay, so we walk all theway down, uh, through the big
(30:34):
room, past this big lake, intothis passage, and we're
surveying it till about six orseven o'clock in the morning.
And they were like yeah, weshould probably leave now
because the bus is gonna comeget us.
It's gonna take a couple ofhours to get out.
We're coming out of thispassage and we kind of duck
under and go into the big roomand then you can hear waterfalls
(30:55):
and this is a passage that'sbeen bone dry whenever we've
been in there.
And we were there with someduncan price and duncan said
uh-oh, and that's like likethat's when the fear kicked in.
You know all those reflexes youhear about, you know when, when
people realize things arereally like my stomach dropped,
(31:19):
my legs got weak, like I startedbreathing fast.
So it's like this is bad thatDuncan went, oh, and there's the
guy that you, who's like?
Speaker 1 (31:28):
he's like the expert caver If he says oh, you know
it's serious.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Nothing phases this guy right, nothing.
It doesn't matter howhorrendous the situation is,
he's, he's just happy and he'slike whoa.
And so there was a wall ofwater coming down the passage
towards us and we had like justa few minutes to make a decision
.
And there was a high.
There was a high kind of levelpassage we could get up to and
(31:56):
basically we would have to stayup there until whatever the
water was coming through andflush through, or we could try
and fight our way out, knowingwhere we were and knowing that
there was this upper entrancethrough the big room.
So we decided to try and fightour way out because we didn't
know how high the water wasgoing to come and how long it
was going to stay high.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah, because if you go to that high spot you could
be waiting there and the watercould just keep climbing, and
then you would drown.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yeah, there was no guarantees, and it turned out
that then we suddenly realizedwhat that big pool of water was
from.
It was that this was anoverflow passage.
So what would happen is thatwet side, with the sump
basically, had become soinundated with water that it
could no longer drain the rivergoing into the cave.
(32:46):
So that river had backed up andwas now going into the cave
from a completely differentdirection, and that direction
sent it barreling straight downthe passage towards us.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Your exit basically was the overflow.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Our exit was now like a class three river, a big
class free river, and so we werekind of forcing our way up
river against the wall, kind ofholding like imagine you were if
you were in a big river, orgetting behind rocks and being
in the lee side of the rocks andtrying to get out behind that
and we get to this one spotwhere it was an easy climb down
(33:27):
when it was dry, but it was likean enormous sluice, uh, and it
was.
It was about two meters wideand about three meters high and
the water was coming down itunder such force, it was like a
fire hydrant, it was like arcingout for about two meters before
it came down right.
So you can imagine almostcoming horizontal before it
(33:48):
starts to bend down and it'slike you couldn't get anywhere
near it.
You would have been immediatelydrowned.
Basically, this thing wouldhave just had the you know so
much force.
It would have just tumbled youaround.
So duncan was like let me, letme see if I can find a way
around it.
And he jumped over the top ofthis thing and disappeared.
And then about six or sevenminutes later, a rope came down,
(34:12):
just a rope, and you could hearduncan say, climb.
And so mike climbed up thisrope.
So we have these mechanicalsenders we use to climb up.
So mike went up the rope andthen he, he yelled, climb.
And then, um, I think I, yeah,I came up the rope and I get to
the top of the rope and what Isaw was a meat anchor, which
(34:36):
probably not going to meananything to anyone unless you're
a climber.
So there was nothing to rigthis rope off of.
So so what Duncan had done istied it around his waist and
jammed himself into this alcoveand Mikey basically climbed up
using him as the anchor.
And then, as soon as Mike hadclimbed to the top, mike had
(34:58):
thrown himself on Duncan to giveDuncan more support.
I came up and saw this yelleddown, you know, rope free.
And then I piled on top of Mikeand we were basically holding.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Duncan in the area.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
and then we got to the top of this thing and it
looks we can just about see away out and we've got to do this
traverse.
And it's on a super slick,slick slope that's angled with
very poor footholds and nohandholds, and it looks exactly
like the traverse that I've beencomplaining about all the way,
because Nemesis, that I'd alwaysmanaged to climb across but I'd
(35:36):
hated it.
So I was like, oh Jesus.
And Mike turns to me and he'slaughing hysterically and he
said, look, look, I told youyou're practicing for the real
thing.
So we.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
So this is is this like, basically like ninja
warrior, but if you fall you dieyou?
Speaker 2 (35:52):
die.
There is no.
Yeah, you're gonna.
You're gonna fall aboutprobably five or six meters into
that hydrant.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I mean it's certain death if you sleep and then
you're just being shot like arocket out of the worst.
Yeah, water slide in the world.
You're not surviving that?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
I mean, you probably would.
You might have a 50 chance ofsurviving the fall, but the last
few seconds you're going to bemiserable.
So then we get out and there isthis, this other pool, where
we'd rig this high traverse linewhich we'd rig about I don't
know four meters up the wall sothat we could stay dry.
And it was now underwater andyou could swim over to it and
(36:33):
use it to pull yourself across.
And then we got out, yeah, andthen we climbed out into that
big room and we could see thisnew river of water that suddenly
everything makes sense.
And we could see this new riverof water that suddenly
everything makes sense.
Right, all the passagesculpting and everything that we
saw just suddenly made madesense about why it was the way
it was.
But, yeah it, that was the.
(36:57):
I'm pretty sure I have PTSD fromthat, because I've been flooded
in a couple of times since thenand uh, there's a couple of
nights.
I just react very differentlythan everybody else, even if
it's not that particularly badof a flooding event.
So I do think that you knowit's a funny story and I love to
tell it people, especially whenthey've had a couple of beers.
But uh, there is, I thinkthere's.
So I mean, it was.
(37:18):
It was pretty terrifying, yeah,and it was one of those moments
afterwards where it's like, wow, I, I can't believe I made it
through that.
So, yeah, water, water is notfun in caves and you know, you
can tell this story prior to thetype of rescue thing and people
will be like, yeah, yeah, andnow they're like why the hell
are you in there?
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, oh, my god.
So what were you, what wereyour emotions like obviously you
know, before the climb, whenthe rope came down and obviously
, doing that scary ninja warriorsection were you?
What was going through yourmind?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
I think, just to keep one foot going in front of the
other.
I get asked this a lot likebecause there's not a lot of
people that really truly havelike a near love.
People be like I had anear-death experience, there was
a close one.
I had a near-death experience,there was a close one on the
road or something like that.
But for me it was like reallybeing frustrated with my body,
that my body, you know, it's thefight or flight thing and I was
(38:25):
just kind of frustrated with mybody, that I, you know, I
thought you always imagine that,like when the shit hits the fan
, you're, I'm usually prettycalm and collected, like if I'm
the expedition leader andsomething terrible goes wrong, I
just I just immediately fitinto that like team lead role
and just start making decisionsand things like that.
But in this situation, um, Iwas a follower, not the leader.
I wouldn't have been a greatleader in that situation anyway.
(38:45):
It was not my skill set, but Iwas just, I just thought that I
would.
I would be more heroic in themoment than I was and I and I
think at the time I wasdisappointed in myself for not
not being more of a hero Um, butyou can.
You can see why people underyou know terrible situations.
I don't think anyone has anyright to judge anyone when
(39:08):
something goes wrong, about howthey reacted, because a lot of
times it's completely out ofyour control.
It just comes down to hormonesand physiology at that point.
So that was the thing that Ithink.
Afterwards.
It was like, you know, I can'tbelieve I'm alive.
This is a whole new world forme.
I must admit, when I came backto the airport, I came through
(39:31):
Chicago and had my earbuds inand I can't remember.
I got off the plane and I wasjust walking through the airport
in Chicago.
I looked around me.
It was almost like Neo in theMatrix, where you look around
and there are people havingentirely different lives with
entirely different prioritiesand experiences around you and
(39:55):
you're like there's not a lot ofpeople that are.
Well, it was lucky or stupidityto have experienced those kind
of things.
And I'm.
What a life is?
I live stupidity to haveexperienced those kind of things
and and what a life it is I.
I live and I do, I do.
Whenever I get down and thingsaren't as great and I get
frustrations at work and stuff,I do try to step back and I
(40:15):
remember that feeling ofeuphoria, being alive and being
fortunate enough to live thatkind of lifestyle.
And you know, I know it's knowit's a privilege and it's one
that I fought very, very, veryhard to have, especially as a
woman in a male-dominated sport.
But that's getting better.
I think some of the best caversin the world are women now.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
Do you think you're better orworse off after an experience
like that?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Oh, always better, Unless it goes wrong, and then
you're way worse off.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Unless it goes wrong.
Yeah, yeah, but it's almostthat you have to push it to that
point to feel alive, as youjust said.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yeah, but that gets into that whole adrenaline
junkie thing.
I don't know if it's that.
I think that we have to bewilling to take risks, right,
and you know we're talking aboutpeople changing careers and
things like that.
My husband, you know, hechanged careers.
Well, he's a perfumer, he'salways been a perfumer, but you
know, kind of jumped and wentinto a different company and it
(41:20):
was a very, very scary thing todo and he just loves everything
there is.
And so, yeah, I think you know,being risk averse in any form,
it's, it's understandable.
But you know, I think we maybeas a society, that's something
we've we've lost a bit andthat's why people are so focused
on social media and livingvicariously through other people
(41:40):
and maybe there's a little bitof loss of willing, willingness
to go out and do those thingsyeah, it's complicated, yeah,
absolutely real.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Um, well, that's, yeah, absolutely mind-blowing
story.
Um, as you say, very importantto take risks, but, uh, not to
hopefully push it too far.
But, um, um, I want to justwant to sort of bring it back
out again to your career bigpicture kind of stuff.
What are, I guess, the best andworst parts of the job that you
(42:13):
do at the moment?
Speaker 2 (42:16):
As a university professor, gosh, worst parts
administration.
I think that's the thing isthat you know, I, I'm more like
a conductor in an orchestra nowthan a, you know, first, first
row, um, uh, instrument player.
So there is a lot ofadministration.
(42:37):
Um, trying to trying to, I, myjob is to make the role that my
students play more efficient sothey can be more successful,
because ultimately, a lot ofwhat I talk about you know,
these findings and discoveries,you know those are not my hands
in the lab anymore.
I haven't been in there, yeah,an experience for a long time.
So the worst, the worst part,is administration.
(43:00):
Um, it's certainly managed,manageable.
I think I make it worse formyself by putting things off the
best part, gosh, there's a lot.
I enjoy teaching, I enjoyseeing in the classroom and also
(43:21):
in the lab.
It's hard to become a scientist.
You have to change the lab.
You know it's.
It's hard to become a scientist.
You have to.
You have to change the way youview the world.
So people talk a lot aboutlight bulb moments and that
seems like a cliche.
But you, you do really seetransformational events in, in
thinking, in these students,whether that's in the classroom
(43:43):
or in the research lab wherethings suddenly come together
and they make those connectionsand then there's a dramatic
increase in in theirunderstanding, expectations.
So that is pretty amazing.
And then you know, obviouslyyou know the travel, the places
I've been in the world visitingcaves, yeah.
(44:05):
So now I think 37 countries,maybe 38 or 39, both poles, yeah
, all seven continents.
Wow, clovers are just great.
I mean cavers are.
You know, there's a certainmindset to want to go do these
things, to want to take thoserisks, to want to take those
risks, to want to lie in thecold and the mud and the wet,
(44:28):
and and it creates kind of acamaraderie where everybody,
everybody just gets it right.
You don't have to try andexplain yourself.
It's always very difficult toexplain to non-caver.
It's why you want to go do this, especially when you talk about
accidents and incidents, and sothose meeting those people
making those connections ispretty fabulous.
So I I have a very privilegedlife, you know.
(44:51):
I have a lifestyle that was,you know, I came from a working
class family with noexpectations beyond, like you
know, like working as asecretary or something like that
, and I had a fantasticgrandfather that opened up
science to me.
And you know british tv right.
Some of the documentaries I gotyeah, I was a kid even got to
(45:12):
work with david attenboroughthat was.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
That was pretty wild that's cool yeah, he's just
that's a life call right thereso, yeah, it's, and I get paid.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Well, right, the university professor.
It's like there's there's a lotof work, but you get to be your
own boss and you get to think,and that's a real joy.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
I mean, I had this question in mind just about your
particular lab, and I'm surethat going into a lab like yours
, for some of the roles you needto be both a caver and a
scientist.
And I was just wondering do youthink it's harder to be a
scientist that learns to be acaver, or do you think it's
harder to be a caver that learnsto be a scientist?
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Well, how interesting .
I think it's harder to be ascientist that learns to be a
caver for one really easy answer, and I think that's harder to
be a scientist that learns to bea caver for one really easy
answer.
And I think that's that.
Cavers are curious, so I have alot of.
I think everybody in my labright now came in as a caver,
right?
That's why they want to comework for me is that they're
(46:17):
cavers and we want to get intocave science.
But these people areself-motivated, they're, you
know, curious.
They're always asking questions, I mean, all the things that
makes you a classic explorer,right is, basically, there's not
a lot of difference betweenthat and science.
So I don't think it's hard toteach anyone how to be a caver.
(46:38):
You just have to do it right.
It's pretty easy to do.
You know, take a, take a tourin a most showcase, have a wild
cave tour, take it and see ifyou like it, and then, you know,
just find a caving club and go.
But the only reason I say it'seasier to take a caver and turn
them into a scientist is justbecause of the, the way that
(47:01):
their their minds and I thinkthat's Norm had a lot of you
know.
Norm's a super famousmicrobiologist who's won about
every award out there, beennominated for the Nobel Prize
twice, and you know he says hejust he likes hiring cavers
because he just likes the waythe cavers think.
And so maybe I'm a little bitbiased in my response because
(47:23):
I've always had that feeling.
But, yeah, it's curiosity is allthat science is.
The difference between scienceand caving is just location.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Interesting.
I guess they're both forms ofexploration, science and caving
in their own rights and foranyone sort of in that space
explorers and stuff who might bewanting to follow your
footsteps or get into academiaor just listening to you now and
want to do what you do, whatkind of advice would you have
(47:55):
for them?
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Just go caving you can find.
If you go to any country in theworld, we'll have a caving
organization in it.
In America you go to cavesorg,I think.
In the UK it's ucracouk, butevery nation has a caving
(48:18):
organization.
And as far as science, I thinkthe important thing to think
about when you think aboutcareers is not what it is you
want to be, but what it is youwant to do.
And the distinction is, likesome people say I want to be a
doctor, but they don'tnecessarily think about what the
day to day in a doctor's lifeis.
You know, is that really whatyou want to do?
(48:42):
Like, when you get out of bedin the morning, what's the thing
that's going to make you jumpup and and be excited to go do
your job, and that's the thingright.
So you've got to figure outwhat it is you want to do.
And so for science is, whateveris interesting it.
You know, I've been pulled inmultiple directions and now I'm
a geology professor because Ijust kind of followed my nose.
(49:03):
What was most interesting to meat the time and I think that's
the important thing with scienceis to, you know, not let anyone
say, well, you should be anengineer because you're going to
get paid better.
It's like are you passionateabout engineering?
Do you want to?
Are you curious?
Do you want to jump out of bedand go do an engineering thing?
You know and there are manypeople that do and they love it.
But if that's not you, then youneed to figure out what it is
(49:25):
that motivation is well,fantastic, hazel.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Um, just to wrap things up, is there anything
that you would like to plug onyour behalf, or is there
anywhere else that people mightbe able to find out more about
you or follow you on socialmedia?
Anything like that?
No.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Leave me alone.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
No, leave you alone.
That's absolutely fine as well.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Scientists.
Now, if anybody wants to fundour research, I've got tons of
students that would appreciatesome funding to explore some of
this stuff, and you know theycan always find me by Googling
me.
But yeah, no, I don't have anypluggables.
I should, I should have a bookor something, shouldn't I?
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yeah, you should have a book.
Oh, we do.
You've got tons of photos.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
We have a photo book on Lechia.
Do you know this?
Speaker 1 (50:16):
When was that made?
Speaker 2 (50:17):
When did that come out?
I think we published thatBefore or after, that's way
after the trip 2022.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Oh, after yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, it's called Lechia, is it?
I've forgotten what we calledit.
No, I don't even have it on thebookshelf.
That's terrible, isn't it?
It's something like, oh,explorations in a Hidden
Splendor.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Explorations in a Hidden Splendor.
Okay yeah, explorations in aHidden Splendor.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Yeah, you should have thought about having a blog.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Do you have any photos?
Speaker 2 (50:49):
I'm going to be on a podcast.
Does it have?
Sorry?
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Does it have any pictures from our trip or is it
from all your other expeditions?
Speaker 2 (50:56):
No, we didn't have any permissions for your photos,
but it's the other expeditions.
You should check it out, you'dlove it, um yeah, yeah it's uh,
it's nice, um, we it.
It's kind of a coffee table bookof photos, but what we did was
have, um, people talk about whatit is, what it's like to camp
in the cave, what it's like todo exploration in the cave, what
(51:18):
it's like to climb in the cave,what the latest cave science is
.
So it's a little bit more.
There's like 14 chapters orsomething that are, like, you
know, vignettes or 2,000 wordsor something about it.
But a lot of people said it's alot of fun because we try to
write it for a general public.
So a lot of these books tend toget written for cavers, but
(51:40):
this one we try to write for thegeneral public.
So, yeah, I do have a pluggable.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
There you go.
Amazing.
All right, Hazel.
Thank you so much for your time.
It's been fantastic speakingwith you.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yeah, you too.
Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
And that is it for this week's episode.
A huge thanks again to Hazelfor sharing her incredible
stories from a lifetimeunderground, and a big thanks to
you all as well for listening.
For photos, links and moreabout this episode, head to
knowordinarymondaycom and lookfor the episode page.
You'll also find our socialsFacebook, instagram, linkedin
(52:19):
and more.
Next week's episode takes us tothe chaos of a film set.
Next week's episode takes us tothe chaos of a film set.
My guest is david wrigleywilliamson, a good friend of
mine and also a special effectsartist, who has built everything
from exploding buses for jackiechan, giant spaceships for star
wars and or and I may have alsoconvinced him to have his
(52:40):
wisdom tooth extracted underhypnosis or a BBC documentary
once.
So yeah, we'll get into that.
Hit subscribe now so you don'tmiss it.
If you'd like to share your owncareer story with us, we'd love
to hear from you.
Get in touch via our socials oremail hello h-e-l-l-o.
At no ordinary mondaycom, oruse the submit your story page
(53:02):
on our.
And if you enjoyed this episode,please do two really quick
things for us Click five starsand, if you have time, write a
little review for us.
That would be amazing.
And the other thing is tell afriend and that's it.
It really helps us grow theshow and attract more amazing
guests and inspires newlisteners.
This show is produced, hostedand edited by me, chris Barron.
(53:24):
Thank you so much for listeningand have a great Monday,
everyone.
This show is produced, hostedand edited by me, chris Barron.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
Thank you so much for listening and have a great
Monday everyone.
Imagine being miles underground the air's damp, the
rock walls are closing in andthe only way out is a narrow
passage that you've just spenthours descending down.
Then, somewhere in the chambersabove, you hear it the
unmistakable roar of water.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Like that's when the fear kicks in.
You know all those reflexes youhear about, you know and people
realize things are really likemy stomach dropped, my legs got
weak, like I started breathingfast.
I was like this is bad.
And the water was coming downit under such force, it was like
a fire hydrant, it was likearcing out.
You couldn't get anywhere nearit.
(00:40):
You would have been immediatelydrowned, basically.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
In that moment, hazel Barton and her team faced a
choice Climb into a pitch blackalcove to hope and wait, or
fight their way out against theflood.
What followed was a desperatestruggle for survival, with
lives hanging by the strength ofa single rope and the human
anchor holding it.
One, two, three, four by thestrength of a single rope and
the human anchor holding it.
(01:10):
Hello and welcome to anotherepisode of no Ordinary Monday.
Thank you so much for joiningus.
I am your host, chris Barron,and each week I sit down with a
guest whose job is far fromordinary.
We explore how they got there,what it's really like behind the
scenes, and then I ask them torelive the single most
unforgettable experience oftheir career.
Now, if you're enjoying thisshow, make sure to hit follow or
(01:33):
subscribe, and that way youwon't miss any of the incredible
guests we have coming up.
Our guest this week is someonewho's been described as the Lara
Croft of microbiology, ascientist whose work has taken
her into some of the most remote, unexplored caves on earth, not
just to map them, but touncover the scientific secrets
that hide in the darkness.
(01:53):
Dr Hazel Barton is a caveexplorer, microbiologist and
professor who has spent decadesbalancing science with
exploration.
Hazel and I first met whilefilming a documentary series in
New Mexico's Lechuguilla Cave,which is one of the most
spectacular cave systems in theworld.
It's absolutely unbelievable.
(02:13):
Hazel is an extraordinarypresence on the ground.
She's not just an amazing caverbut, as you'll see, she's just
a really fun person to be around.
And as you heard in that intro,hazel's big story takes us to a
cave in china where a suddenflood turned exploration into a
fight for survival.
So stay tuned for a grippingbehind the scenes.
(02:34):
Look at what it takes toexplore the world beneath our
feet and the risks that comewith it.
On that note, just a quick headsup.
Some of the stories in thisweek's episode do talk about
bodily functions and some mildlygross things.
Um, it's mostly in the first10-15 minutes or so, so you can
skip ahead and enjoy the rest ofthe episode if you're sensitive
to that kind of stuff.
(02:55):
And finally, just a quicktechnical note.
We had some issues with therecording quality on hazel's mic
, so I've managed to clean it upquite a bit, but there may be
one or two bits where Hazelsounds like she has a cold.
But that's just the compression, so rest assured we'll iron out
these technical issues forfuture episodes.
And with that you're listeningto no Ordinary Monday.
(03:15):
Let's get into the show.
Okay, hazel Barton, welcome tothe podcast.
How you doing today to thepodcast.
How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I'm good.
How are you?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
doing.
I'm fantastic.
I think the last time that weactually saw each other face to
face, we were in New Mexico,carlsbad Caverns, lechuguilla
Cave, on a filming trip.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
We were filming you doing some amazing work down in
Lechuguilla doing some amazingwork down in, down in
lechuguilla, and I remember youcoming out of the cave and we
were down there what nine or tendays, something like that.
I remember you coming out of thecave and you, you did the last
big rope drop and you got.
You were.
That's amazing, that's justamazing.
(04:00):
You get the um when you've beenunderground for a while.
I don't know if you got it, butwhen you've been underground
for a long time there's nosmells down there, right.
The only smell is like otherpeople and it gets pretty foul
after a few days.
So once you start comingtowards the surface, you start
to smell like um microbes andsoil produces compound called
(04:21):
jasmine.
Yeah, and it smells like freshcut grass a little bit, you know
, a little bit like soily cutgrass, and when you start to
come out the cave you start toget whiffs of that, just like
the whole, the whole surfacejust isn't.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
It must be like, you know, suddenly becoming a dog
and and realizing other smellsor something, and you're like
everything is super intense itwas one of the most, I think,
unique experience of my lifecoming out, because it's been
over a week underground and it'smusty and there is no smell,
apart from other humans, and youjust come out.
(04:56):
It just, it's just life.
It's like everything is justratcheted up like to 11 in terms
of intensity of depth of smelland and sights and sounds.
It was, it was amazing yeah yeah, but the the other thing, just
on that, I think you.
I listened to another podcast.
You won you.
Actually you ended.
You credited us with one of theum must-haves in a cavers day
(05:22):
pack.
Do you remember what it was?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Was it you guys that came up with those?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Well, you said it was a National Geographic team that
went to Lech Gia and it was us.
We brought the biffy bags.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
You brought the biffy bags.
Those were the best things inthe world.
You can poo in those, you canpee in them, you can bark in
them.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I think, yeah, we have to explain it with biffy
bags.
For I mean, basically, I thinkit'd probably be good for you to
set up, let your Gear quickly,and why you need a biffy bag.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Oh yeah, it's an incredibly remote environment
and there's no.
You know, you're undergroundand it's a special kind of cave.
It's called a hypogenic cave,which means it was formed by
water coming from deep in theground and getting pushed up,
and so you force the water tospread out and make this
incredibly long, complex cavesystem.
(06:14):
So it's over 150 miles now, butthere's not a lot of water in
it.
There's pools that form whereyou have stalad mites and
staladites and they're drippinginto the pools and you can drink
that water, but there's nowater to wash, there's no water
to flush, there's no bathroomsand you can't leave anything
behind because obviously thatwould have a remarkable effect
(06:37):
on the ecosystem.
Right, the biggest organismdown there is, like you know,
maybe some fungal spores.
So you can't leave anythingbehind and everything comes out.
And we were explaining to youguys how you deal with a number
one and a number two, and anumber one is pretty easy, but
with the number two, and we sowhat?
(06:59):
Until you guys showed up,because you've really
transformed exploration in thatcave.
Guys showed up, because you'vereally transformed exploration
in that cave.
Until you guys showed up.
What you would do is you take abig piece of foil and you
create like a target and you usethe target of the foil and then
you wrap the foil up and thenyou put it in two ziploc bags.
But it's a bit stinky, eventhough the foil is supposed to
(07:20):
stop the smell, but it's alittle bit stinky.
And then you guys, you were, um, uh, so bougie.
You showed up with these thingsthat were called bippy bags and
, um, they were made of mylarand so the smell doesn't get out
.
And they come with a littlepiece of toilet paper and a wet
(07:41):
wipe so you can wash your handsafterwards.
And it's got an enormouscarrier bag inside with little
straps on it so you can openthis thing up, open up the
straps and tie it around like adiaper and kind of cracks down.
So you put this you don't have atarget, like it doesn't matter
what you do, it will get trappedit just falls down yeah, it
(08:01):
falls down and then it's got allthese polyethylene glycol at
the bottom that could absorblike 50 000 times its own volume
and moisture.
So it just like goes, yeah, andthen you close it up.
You, you know, throw it, closeup the big bag and then you put
your um pp in there andeverything and close it up and
it's sealed um, I mean, Iremember it's one of the stories
I tell most often.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It's kind of like you know um you know, as an
astronaut, how do you go totoilet in space?
It's one of the stories.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I tell.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Most often it's kind of like you know, as an
astronaut, how do you go totoilet in space?
It's kind of that kind of story.
You know you've got to in ascenario where you cannot, you
know, leave anything in the cave.
What do you do about the toiletsituation?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And yeah, I'm sure most people have stopped
listening to this now.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, what a setup to who you are and what you do.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
but I mean, well, it's caving caving I know, I
think it's, it is important,right?
It's like, um, if you reallyget into rescue, right?
I know we're going to go backto the scatology here, but they
always tell people, if youreally want to be into rescue
but you don't think you couldbring yourself to wipe somebody
(09:04):
else's butt, then you shouldn'tbe in rescue.
And if you're, if you areinterested in doing exploration,
depending on the environmentyou're in, there's always
something that you have to do.
That's not standard to whatsociety deems appropriate
behavior and even what you woulddiscuss appropriately.
(09:25):
So, yeah, I?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I think, yeah, no, that's exactly right.
I think that, yeah, as I said,you are, um, your explorer and
we mentioned a little bit aboutthat and a microbiologist, but I
guess okay.
So I've seen you a couple oftimes just to go into who you
are and what you do, and there'sa there's a phrase that I've
seen batted around some of thearticles about you and it says
you are the lar you do, andthere's a there's a phrase that
I've seen batted around some ofthe articles about you and it
says you are the lara croft ofmicrobiology.
(09:49):
And I just wanted to ask youhow accurate do you find that um
description of yourself?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
from the waist up.
Terrible um, she would never bean effective caver she would
get stuck everywhere, um,proportionally, um, no, I mean,
I think so.
If it's a misogyny thing or not,I mean I I kind of like it.
When I was a kid, I wanted tobe indiana jones, right.
(10:19):
So, yeah, started to age myself, but when the first indiana
jones movie came out, all mygirlfriends were like, oh god, I
want to snog indiana jones.
I didn't want to snog indianajones, I wanted to be indiana
jones, right.
I wanted to nice, yeah, all ofthe world, speaking different
languages, exploring things andand finding these discoveries.
(10:40):
And this is so embarrassing.
I even got one of the fedorasright, for I don't know how old
I was 12, maybe I I begged and,begged and begged, and I think
my granddad gave me a fedora forchristmas, which is funny oh my
god, that's so cute yeah, nobrand.
Granddad probably wore a fedorain the 40s.
But um, yeah, yeah, um, I justjust wanted to be Indiana Jones.
(11:04):
And so when I got older, thefirst time I was in the
newspaper, someone called meDiana Jones and I I got.
I felt that was kind of funbecause it was like I hadn't
really even thought that my,it's not like.
You know, I wanted to be afireman and then I spent my
whole life working towards beinga fireman.
(11:24):
You know, I wanted to be afireman and then I spent my
whole life working towards beinga fireman.
I wanted to be a vet when I waslittle and I was working yeah,
professionally toward becoming avet.
So the indiana jones is more oflike a fun fantasy, something
that is certainly not like I'vedecided I'm going to be this
thing and spend a career workingtowards it.
It's just one day I woke up andpeople were other people were
(11:47):
kind of like um, aligning mewith that you know, stereotype.
But I wanted to be a vet and Iread that the best way to become
a vet was to volunteer atveterinary practice.
So I did it for four years andat the end of four years I was
like I would rather die than bea vet, because it's wow it's 90
(12:08):
cats with diarrhea and it's dogswith diarrhea and the thing
that was really fun I meanhelping with the surgery, like
towards the end, I was soexperienced, even though I was
only like 18 or 19, that I washelping with the surgeries.
You know nothing more than likemopping up blood and putting
bits and buckets and things.
Um, yeah, but this thing that Ithought was so cool, and this
(12:31):
is after.
We just spent the first fiveminutes talking about poo.
Maybe people are going to judgeme on this, but I don't care.
Yeah, us, us is just soexciting.
So what yeah, the first timethere was a cat that came in and
its whole face was swelled up.
I'm getting there, is a pointto this, I'll get there, but
(12:51):
it's all faces filled up.
And then the vet said this isthe first time.
The vet said, oh, this is um,this is an abscess, we need to
to drain it.
So he just kind of grabbed thethe cat's head and took a
scalpel and just went justreally fast and the puss jumped
like four feet to the other sideand the cat just went.
(13:13):
And you know, the cat was superrelieved.
I was like wow.
And then I heard this enormousclang like someone was ringing a
bell and we both looked overand the owner had fainted with
the pot and it was their headhitting the radiator.
And I was like awesome, and soI'm in there.
(13:36):
Becoming a medicalmicrobiologist came from his
experiences like that.
It's like you know I'll be in.
Being a vet is a lot of fun,but these microbes are freaking
awesome wow, how old were youthen?
oh gosh, 15, I think maybe 16,15, wow I see you're still at
school, still high school yeah,yeah, oh well, but you're in the
(13:58):
uk at that point, weren't you?
yeah, so is it I was doing my olevels, then I was on track to
becoming a vet.
I discovered boys when I wasdoing my A-levels so that kind
of derailed it, but at thatpoint I wasn't as focused on
becoming a vet as I had been.
But definitely the microbes.
(14:19):
There'd always been afascination with that, but that
was it.
I'm going to be amicrobiologist Wow, so that was
it?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I'm going to be a microbiologist, wow, so that's
when it started and where I mean.
You've come a long way sincethen, obviously, but what would
you describe yourself as rightnow?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
So my PhD is medical microbiology.
So I got my PhD back in 1997.
And then I went to work for aguy called Norm Pace who was a
caver.
And then I went to work for aguy called norm pace who was a
caver, but he was the guy whofigured out that you could use
this uh enzyme that tom brockhad discovered in yellowstone.
Um, another lab had figured outthat you could amplify dna with
(14:56):
it.
And norm figured out that youcould use these amplified dna
fragments like a barcode toidentify organisms in the
environment.
And norm norm likes to say itblew the door off the microbial
world and it did.
I mean, you know people,everybody knows about their
microbiome.
Now it's amazing microbes areeverywhere, literally everywhere
(15:17):
you can think of even likenuclear reactors have microbes
yeah, yeah, it's um, and it'sgood too, because they're, you
know, without you know, withmacroscopic life you could wipe
out all life you could see onthe planet and the our biosphere
would just keep ticking along.
But if you wiped out allmicroscopic life, um, our
(15:37):
biosphere would collapsesomewhere between four to seven
days and then all life on earthwould get wiped out.
So they, yeah, they're reallysmall, but they, they're very
good at what they do.
Anyway, I worked for norm normand he was a, he was a caver,
but I worked with him ontuberculosis, which is a fun
project.
(15:58):
And then I got involved in animax movie and the?
Im was like well, we want youbecause of your skill set, but
we want you to do environmentalmicrobiology.
And of course I was in Norm'slab, which is an environmental
microbiology lab.
And then we're like, okay, well, we'll go look at caves.
And Norm was like, well, go forit, you know you're, you're,
(16:20):
you can do the kind of cavingthat most people can, and you
have a PhD in microbiology, sogo figure it out.
So then I became a cavemicrobiologist and started my
own lab.
I did that for almost 20 yearsand then that was in a biology
department, but we were creepingtowards geology.
So we're looking at microbes incaves and so they interact with
(16:44):
rocks and minerals, and most ofwhat we were doing was so
geology-based that it wasactually hard to get.
It was hard for my students toget their PhDs in biology
because what they were doing wasso geology-orientated.
And then I got offered a job atUniversity of Alabama in a
geology department.
So now I'm in a long story I'mactually a professor of geology,
(17:07):
even though that all startedout with like pus leaping out of
the face of the plant.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, that's really cool.
That's really cool.
I mean just going back.
Like you said.
You know that sort of seed ofinspiration in microbiology was
planted in that room when youwere 15, seeing the the big pus
sprout from the cat but the um,the seed of that right.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I mean it it that's a cool story.
It's pretty visual well, thevial and it was green, and
suddenly my life was changed.
It's like no.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
This really disgusting thing happened it is
yeah, it is funny, but the, theseed of the caving like that,
was planted around about thesame time, wasn't it when you're
in your teenage years?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
yeah.
So when I was 12 we did.
We got taken on an outwardbound course where they take a
bunch of city kids.
There was a gaggle kid way, waytoo big of a group for a single
adult that was taking us around, right, you know, never, never
do that these days, but itshould be like 20 kids and one
(18:10):
adult.
And we had this really sketchykind of lights and helmets and
one of the kids his light wentout and he was kind of getting
left behind and I'm like, well,let's just share my light, and
so I took my light off my helmetand we were kind of sharing it
to see where we're going, and itdidn't faze me at all, whereas
everybody else was prettyterrified.
So I just, I don't know, I justfelt super comfortable in that
(18:34):
environment and I think a lot ofpeople who explore caves have
the same kind of scenario.
It's.
It's an environment that youeither immediately love not
necessarily in explainable waysor you hate and you never want
to go back.
It's old, muddy, it's wet, youcan't see.
It's climby, you can fall.
Some people are like, no, thisis not the thing, yeah, very
(18:56):
dangerous.
But other people are like thisis just like a 3D jungle gym.
I just want to go explore everyhole.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Maybe a lot of people listening to this might be
curious.
They may have never even beeninto a cave, let alone a wild
cave, what is?
Can you visualize or describethe emotions that you experience
when you're entering a cave forthe first time, or going into a
deep part of a cave unexplored,or just being inside these
(19:24):
spaces under the ground?
What's it like for you?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I mean, the best feeling in my life is to go into
a cave, find a big hole and notknow where it goes and then
explore and map it.
You've probably played videogames where the video game is
like there's a map that as youexplore a dungeon, the map gets
built over time so you don'tknow where everything is.
But the map gets built overtime so you don't know where
(19:51):
everything is.
But the more you explore around, the more you build that map so
you know where everything is.
Caves are just like that.
So it's um, and the stuff youfind, I mean the incredibly
beautiful environments.
You, you went to, let you gethere.
You saw some of the best cavepassage in the world.
You know.
Just imagine walking into that.
Nobody knew it was there.
And then you, you walk intothis incredibly decorated room.
It's just, it's reallybeautiful, it's like art.
But the the thing is, a lot oftimes you get skunked right for
(20:14):
every time that you find thatone amazing passage.
You might get skunked 20 timesand I think that that if it was
easy and you always found greatstuff, I don't think caving
would be as much fun.
It's the trial and error andall that effort and time and
building upon knowledge to makethose breakthroughs, I think is
(20:35):
what is really part of thediscovery and the fun.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Just to sort of give listeners an idea of the, I
guess, the purpose of the workthat you do, like you know what
kind of applications or whatkind of discoveries are you
hoping to uncover?
Speaker 2 (20:52):
And that's the nice thing about so.
We call it basic research and Ithink when you say basic
research, a lot of peoplebecause that's jargon right, I
mean it's a specialist term thatmeans the fundamental
underpinnings of how things work.
So when we talk about basicscience was like, like, what are
the fundamentals?
And so we're trying tounderstand the fundamentals of
(21:14):
caves and cave forming processesand some people are like, oh, I
don't care about that, that'snot important to me.
But those fundamental processesteach us things about
microorganisms that have somereally remarkable applications.
We think we've figured out howto recycle nylon, because we've
seen ways that nylon is beingbroken down in caves by microbes
(21:35):
.
So we have a novel and youthink about you see all those
fishing nets and the turtlesgetting caught in the fishing
nets in the ocean.
You can't do anything withnylon.
You can't recycle it.
It's a terrible plastic.
It's micro crystalline.
It's very hard cake to use.
It basically gets shredded anddumped in landfills.
We think we can actually breakthat down and turn it back into
(21:56):
a fertilizer again looking athow microbes in caves work.
Another thing we're doing isunderstanding how microbes in
caves can segregate differentkinds of metals, because some
metals in rock are toxic, sowhen they're in the rock doing
their thing this came from somework we were doing in Brazil on
(22:21):
iron caves in Brazil is thatthey can actually segregate
something called a rare earthelement.
So these are elements that arein very, very low supply but are
incredibly critically importantRight now.
I think China's just recentlyprevented sales to North
America's rare earth elements.
(22:41):
Well, they're used in, you know, batteries and chips,
microprocessors, rare earthmagnets I mean our entire.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Most technologies need it yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
And that's again from micros make caves in Brazil.
So, yeah, it's all.
Yeah, I know it's like peopleare like why should we?
You know?
Why should we fund science?
It's like you know who cares.
It's like you don't be you know.
Why should we fund science?
This is like you know who cares, it's like you don't.
You don't know how or why youcare, right, and I think this is
why you know like this, thisattack on you know, scientists
(23:11):
and expertise and everythinglike you know.
Well, I could figure this out.
It's like you could, but itwould take you a lot longer to
do and ai is not going to dothat trick for you right?
The?
The ability of the psc patternsand this is part of the
teaching someone to get a phd islike helping them.
Like, how do you take complexproblems, break them down into
(23:33):
testable solutions and then useyour knowledge to find those
links that build it all backtogether, and then you end up
with novel carbon sequestrationtechnologies, ways of getting
rare earth elements out of rock.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
So yeah, Before you jumped on this podcast, I asked
you to think of a story acrossyour long career that kind of
stood out as significant andsort of you know, for one reason
or another stands out as ahighlight or something that was
scary or exciting or orsignificant.
(24:06):
Um, I wonder if you could sharethat with us yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
So we talked about a few things and, being a cave
explorer, there's been therehave been more than one
occasions where I thought I wasgonna die, and so those
definitely stand out.
I should say that, um, you know, nobody goes into a cave
thinking they're gonna get intotrouble.
Um, I don't think anybody woulddo that.
(24:31):
You know there are certainpeople that think it's about
adrenaline and it's not.
One of the issues we have is iswater.
A lot of people have lost theirlives in caves because of water
.
You do have to be very, verycognizant of it and aware of
what's going on, and so, for us,we were in china and we were
(24:53):
exploring, um, a big cave there.
It's called chonko and it has aginormous entrance that was, I
don't know, 100 meters high and40 meters wide, just going right
into the mountain.
So we were exploring that caveover many, many years and it
splits.
(25:13):
You go, you follow thisenormous river into the passage
and then it splits about 200meters in.
You go to the left and you goup something called the wet side
and that is pretty terrifying.
There are waterfalls andstrainers and everything you
know you can.
It looks like a class 5 rapidto get up this thing and then it
(25:34):
ends in a sump in the otherdirection.
You go and you traverse a bunchof pools and then you climb up
and then you get into this drypassage, this dry borehole, and
it is ginormous, some of thebiggest cave in the world.
And so we were.
We were working on this dryside and, uh, there was this big
(25:56):
pool of water and I don't thinkwe ever, like I don't think we
ever sat down.
It's like, where did this poolof water come from?
But anyway, you could swimacross the pool of water or you
could do this traverse, and thetraverse was really super
sketchy.
It was, it was super smooth andthe footholds there were barely
any footholds.
There was certainly nothing tograb onto with your hands.
(26:18):
You just had to lean into therock and trust your feet and
kind of step around this thing.
And I hated it and I said weneed a rope on it because
someone's going to fall off.
It wasn't a big fall, it waslike six feet, but you were
going to, you know, take apretty big splash into this pool
of water and then it's wayacross.
And my friend Mike would alwayslaugh.
(26:38):
He's like come on, hazel, we'repracticing for the real thing.
I was like who made it thisdamn perverse?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
So we get up and we're pushing the cave from two
different directions at the time.
So this is unexplored.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Just to this is unexplored at this point
Unexplored, but we're checkingholes in this whole mountain,
right?
So this is this big kind ofpointy mountain in China and you
could walk up around this bigentrance and it had a big
passage that went in for likehalf a mile and then there was a
hole in the floor and you threwa rock down and it took 13
(27:17):
seconds to hit the ground whichis ginormous.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
It's like 800 plus feet, so but I mean, yeah, just
just to give people a sense ofthat, like, um, can you have you
got a stopwatch or something?
I just I can just count it hereactually yeah and just throw it
through.
It put a picture in our head,threw it in for us okay, all
right.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So right, I You're going to do the bang, right.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Okay, I got the rock.
I'm walking up to the side ofthe pit Ready.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
It's a big one yeah yeah, I can barely handle it.
Hang it Ready, I'll get it.
Yeah, it's top clock, I'm goingnow.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Boom, boom, wow it's more like yeah, geez, yeah, so
what?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
was so.
Basically, you threw a rockdown and the entire cave just
reverberates yeah, after a verylong period of time.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
So we, oh man, we knew it was at least 200 meters,
um, so it was going where wewere going upstream in this big
passage.
It was right, it was goingright towards where that was.
So the next trip, somebody wentdown with a rope and we came up
the drive passage from belowand we actually connected in
(28:45):
that route and it ended up beingthe third biggest room in the
world.
So then the ceiling was 400meters, so 1200 feet high.
That pit was 900, 934 feet, Ithink, something like that.
Um, and we connected in themiddle.
And one of the things we did onroute was there was this huge
(29:06):
lake that we had to traversearound.
So we put we the person we werewith, who was a sketcher,
didn't want to get cold, so weactually put a rope up against
the wall so he could traversearound without getting wet by
wading through this lake, andthis will come in later.
(29:26):
So we decided to do this bigtrip.
It's going to be 24 hours andwe were going to go in that
entrance and then connect upinto the main, the big room, and
then we basically have found aroute through the mountain.
So we went in and it's China,so there's no way you could get
a weather report, and we weren'tthat worried because we were in
(29:51):
the dry side, so we didn't haveto worry about it.
So we went in and we startedsurveying and we were able to
connect up to the main passageand we found some other passages
heading off to connect it up tothe main passage.
And we found some otherpassages heading off and we it's
like I said I don't know twoo'clock in the morning or
something at this point.
And then we're like well, we'vestill got some hours, what?
(30:13):
What are we going to do next?
And uh, somebody said well, youknow where that really big lake
was.
There's a big passage headingoff into the wall there that's
about 20 feet wide sorry, 20meters wide and about five
meters high.
No one's been in there.
Why don't we go survey that?
Like okay, so we walk all theway down, uh, through the big
(30:34):
room, past this big lake, intothis passage, and we're
surveying it till about six orseven o'clock in the morning.
And they were like yeah, weshould probably leave now
because the bus is gonna comeget us.
It's gonna take a couple ofhours to get out.
We're coming out of thispassage and we kind of duck
under and go into the big roomand then you can hear waterfalls
(30:55):
and this is a passage that'sbeen bone dry whenever we've
been in there.
And we were there with someduncan price and duncan said
uh-oh, and that's like likethat's when the fear kicked in.
You know all those reflexes youhear about, you know when, when
people realize things arereally like my stomach dropped,
(31:19):
my legs got weak, like I startedbreathing fast.
So it's like this is bad thatDuncan went, oh, and there's the
guy that you, who's like?
Speaker 1 (31:28):
he's like the expert caver If he says oh, you know
it's serious.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Nothing phases this guy right, nothing.
It doesn't matter howhorrendous the situation is,
he's, he's just happy and he'slike whoa.
And so there was a wall ofwater coming down the passage
towards us and we had like justa few minutes to make a decision
.
And there was a high.
There was a high kind of levelpassage we could get up to and
(31:56):
basically we would have to stayup there until whatever the
water was coming through andflush through, or we could try
and fight our way out, knowingwhere we were and knowing that
there was this upper entrancethrough the big room.
So we decided to try and fightour way out because we didn't
know how high the water wasgoing to come and how long it
was going to stay high.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah, because if you go to that high spot you could
be waiting there and the watercould just keep climbing, and
then you would drown.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yeah, there was no guarantees, and it turned out
that then we suddenly realizedwhat that big pool of water was
from.
It was that this was anoverflow passage.
So what would happen is thatwet side, with the sump
basically, had become soinundated with water that it
could no longer drain the rivergoing into the cave.
(32:46):
So that river had backed up andwas now going into the cave
from a completely differentdirection, and that direction
sent it barreling straight downthe passage towards us.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Your exit basically was the overflow.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Our exit was now like a class three river, a big
class free river, and so we werekind of forcing our way up
river against the wall, kind ofholding like imagine you were if
you were in a big river, orgetting behind rocks and being
in the lee side of the rocks andtrying to get out behind that
and we get to this one spotwhere it was an easy climb down
(33:27):
when it was dry, but it was likean enormous sluice, uh, and it
was.
It was about two meters wideand about three meters high and
the water was coming down itunder such force, it was like a
fire hydrant, it was like arcingout for about two meters before
it came down right.
So you can imagine almostcoming horizontal before it
(33:48):
starts to bend down and it'slike you couldn't get anywhere
near it.
You would have been immediatelydrowned.
Basically, this thing wouldhave just had the you know so
much force.
It would have just tumbled youaround.
So duncan was like let me, letme see if I can find a way
around it.
And he jumped over the top ofthis thing and disappeared.
And then about six or sevenminutes later, a rope came down,
(34:12):
just a rope, and you could hearduncan say, climb.
And so mike climbed up thisrope.
So we have these mechanicalsenders we use to climb up.
So mike went up the rope andthen he, he yelled, climb.
And then, um, I think I, yeah,I came up the rope and I get to
the top of the rope and what Isaw was a meat anchor, which
(34:36):
probably not going to meananything to anyone unless you're
a climber.
So there was nothing to rigthis rope off of.
So so what Duncan had done istied it around his waist and
jammed himself into this alcoveand Mikey basically climbed up
using him as the anchor.
And then, as soon as Mike hadclimbed to the top, mike had
(34:58):
thrown himself on Duncan to giveDuncan more support.
I came up and saw this yelleddown, you know, rope free.
And then I piled on top of Mikeand we were basically holding.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Duncan in the area.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
and then we got to the top of this thing and it
looks we can just about see away out and we've got to do this
traverse.
And it's on a super slick,slick slope that's angled with
very poor footholds and nohandholds, and it looks exactly
like the traverse that I've beencomplaining about all the way,
because Nemesis, that I'd alwaysmanaged to climb across but I'd
(35:36):
hated it.
So I was like, oh Jesus.
And Mike turns to me and he'slaughing hysterically and he
said, look, look, I told youyou're practicing for the real
thing.
So we.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
So this is is this like, basically like ninja
warrior, but if you fall you dieyou?
Speaker 2 (35:52):
die.
There is no.
Yeah, you're gonna.
You're gonna fall aboutprobably five or six meters into
that hydrant.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I mean it's certain death if you sleep and then
you're just being shot like arocket out of the worst.
Yeah, water slide in the world.
You're not surviving that?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
I mean, you probably would.
You might have a 50 chance ofsurviving the fall, but the last
few seconds you're going to bemiserable.
So then we get out and there isthis, this other pool, where
we'd rig this high traverse linewhich we'd rig about I don't
know four meters up the wall sothat we could stay dry.
And it was now underwater andyou could swim over to it and
(36:33):
use it to pull yourself across.
And then we got out, yeah, andthen we climbed out into that
big room and we could see thisnew river of water that suddenly
everything makes sense.
And we could see this new riverof water that suddenly
everything makes sense.
Right, all the passagesculpting and everything that we
saw just suddenly made madesense about why it was the way
it was.
But, yeah it, that was the.
(36:57):
I'm pretty sure I have PTSD fromthat, because I've been flooded
in a couple of times since thenand uh, there's a couple of
nights.
I just react very differentlythan everybody else, even if
it's not that particularly badof a flooding event.
So I do think that you knowit's a funny story and I love to
tell it people, especially whenthey've had a couple of beers.
But uh, there is, I thinkthere's.
So I mean, it was.
(37:18):
It was pretty terrifying, yeah,and it was one of those moments
afterwards where it's like, wow, I, I can't believe I made it
through that.
So, yeah, water, water is notfun in caves and you know, you
can tell this story prior to thetype of rescue thing and people
will be like, yeah, yeah, andnow they're like why the hell
are you in there?
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, oh, my god.
So what were you, what wereyour emotions like obviously you
know, before the climb, whenthe rope came down and obviously
, doing that scary ninja warriorsection were you?
What was going through yourmind?
Speaker 2 (37:53):
I think, just to keep one foot going in front of the
other.
I get asked this a lot likebecause there's not a lot of
people that really truly havelike a near love.
People be like I had anear-death experience, there was
a close one.
I had a near-death experience,there was a close one on the
road or something like that.
But for me it was like reallybeing frustrated with my body,
that my body, you know, it's thefight or flight thing and I was
(38:25):
just kind of frustrated with mybody, that I, you know, I
thought you always imagine that,like when the shit hits the fan
, you're, I'm usually prettycalm and collected, like if I'm
the expedition leader andsomething terrible goes wrong, I
just I just immediately fitinto that like team lead role
and just start making decisionsand things like that.
But in this situation, um, Iwas a follower, not the leader.
I wouldn't have been a greatleader in that situation anyway.
(38:45):
It was not my skill set, but Iwas just, I just thought that I
would.
I would be more heroic in themoment than I was and I and I
think at the time I wasdisappointed in myself for not
not being more of a hero Um, butyou can.
You can see why people underyou know terrible situations.
I don't think anyone has anyright to judge anyone when
(39:08):
something goes wrong, about howthey reacted, because a lot of
times it's completely out ofyour control.
It just comes down to hormonesand physiology at that point.
So that was the thing that Ithink.
Afterwards.
It was like, you know, I can'tbelieve I'm alive.
This is a whole new world forme.
I must admit, when I came backto the airport, I came through
(39:31):
Chicago and had my earbuds inand I can't remember.
I got off the plane and I wasjust walking through the airport
in Chicago.
I looked around me.
It was almost like Neo in theMatrix, where you look around
and there are people havingentirely different lives with
entirely different prioritiesand experiences around you and
(39:55):
you're like there's not a lot ofpeople that are.
Well, it was lucky or stupidityto have experienced those kind
of things.
And I'm.
What a life is?
I live stupidity to haveexperienced those kind of things
and and what a life it is I.
I live and I do, I do.
Whenever I get down and thingsaren't as great and I get
frustrations at work and stuff,I do try to step back and I
(40:15):
remember that feeling ofeuphoria, being alive and being
fortunate enough to live thatkind of lifestyle.
And you know, I know it's knowit's a privilege and it's one
that I fought very, very, veryhard to have, especially as a
woman in a male-dominated sport.
But that's getting better.
I think some of the best caversin the world are women now.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
Do you think you're better orworse off after an experience
like that?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Oh, always better, Unless it goes wrong, and then
you're way worse off.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Unless it goes wrong.
Yeah, yeah, but it's almostthat you have to push it to that
point to feel alive, as youjust said.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yeah, but that gets into that whole adrenaline
junkie thing.
I don't know if it's that.
I think that we have to bewilling to take risks, right,
and you know we're talking aboutpeople changing careers and
things like that.
My husband, you know, hechanged careers.
Well, he's a perfumer, he'salways been a perfumer, but you
know, kind of jumped and wentinto a different company and it
(41:20):
was a very, very scary thing todo and he just loves everything
there is.
And so, yeah, I think you know,being risk averse in any form,
it's, it's understandable.
But you know, I think we maybeas a society, that's something
we've we've lost a bit andthat's why people are so focused
on social media and livingvicariously through other people
(41:40):
and maybe there's a little bitof loss of willing, willingness
to go out and do those thingsyeah, it's complicated, yeah,
absolutely real.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Um, well, that's, yeah, absolutely mind-blowing
story.
Um, as you say, very importantto take risks, but, uh, not to
hopefully push it too far.
But, um, um, I want to justwant to sort of bring it back
out again to your career bigpicture kind of stuff.
What are, I guess, the best andworst parts of the job that you
(42:13):
do at the moment?
Speaker 2 (42:16):
As a university professor, gosh, worst parts
administration.
I think that's the thing isthat you know, I, I'm more like
a conductor in an orchestra nowthan a, you know, first, first
row, um, uh, instrument player.
So there is a lot ofadministration.
(42:37):
Um, trying to trying to, I, myjob is to make the role that my
students play more efficient sothey can be more successful,
because ultimately, a lot ofwhat I talk about you know,
these findings and discoveries,you know those are not my hands
in the lab anymore.
I haven't been in there, yeah,an experience for a long time.
So the worst, the worst part,is administration.
(43:00):
Um, it's certainly managed,manageable.
I think I make it worse formyself by putting things off the
best part, gosh, there's a lot.
I enjoy teaching, I enjoyseeing in the classroom and also
(43:21):
in the lab.
It's hard to become a scientist.
You have to change the lab.
You know it's.
It's hard to become a scientist.
You have to.
You have to change the way youview the world.
So people talk a lot aboutlight bulb moments and that
seems like a cliche.
But you, you do really seetransformational events in, in
thinking, in these students,whether that's in the classroom
(43:43):
or in the research lab wherethings suddenly come together
and they make those connectionsand then there's a dramatic
increase in in theirunderstanding, expectations.
So that is pretty amazing.
And then you know, obviouslyyou know the travel, the places
I've been in the world visitingcaves, yeah.
(44:05):
So now I think 37 countries,maybe 38 or 39, both poles, yeah
, all seven continents.
Wow, clovers are just great.
I mean cavers are.
You know, there's a certainmindset to want to go do these
things, to want to take thoserisks, to want to take those
risks, to want to lie in thecold and the mud and the wet,
(44:28):
and and it creates kind of acamaraderie where everybody,
everybody just gets it right.
You don't have to try andexplain yourself.
It's always very difficult toexplain to non-caver.
It's why you want to go do this, especially when you talk about
accidents and incidents, and sothose meeting those people
making those connections ispretty fabulous.
So I I have a very privilegedlife, you know.
(44:51):
I have a lifestyle that was,you know, I came from a working
class family with noexpectations beyond, like you
know, like working as asecretary or something like that
, and I had a fantasticgrandfather that opened up
science to me.
And you know british tv right.
Some of the documentaries I gotyeah, I was a kid even got to
(45:12):
work with david attenboroughthat was.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
That was pretty wild that's cool yeah, he's just
that's a life call right thereso, yeah, it's, and I get paid.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Well, right, the university professor.
It's like there's there's a lotof work, but you get to be your
own boss and you get to think,and that's a real joy.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
I mean, I had this question in mind just about your
particular lab, and I'm surethat going into a lab like yours
, for some of the roles you needto be both a caver and a
scientist.
And I was just wondering do youthink it's harder to be a
scientist that learns to be acaver, or do you think it's
harder to be a caver that learnsto be a scientist?
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Well, how interesting .
I think it's harder to be ascientist that learns to be a
caver for one really easy answer, and I think that's harder to
be a scientist that learns to bea caver for one really easy
answer.
And I think that's that.
Cavers are curious, so I have alot of.
I think everybody in my labright now came in as a caver,
right?
That's why they want to comework for me is that they're
(46:17):
cavers and we want to get intocave science.
But these people areself-motivated, they're, you
know, curious.
They're always asking questions, I mean, all the things that
makes you a classic explorer,right is, basically, there's not
a lot of difference betweenthat and science.
So I don't think it's hard toteach anyone how to be a caver.
(46:38):
You just have to do it right.
It's pretty easy to do.
You know, take a, take a tourin a most showcase, have a wild
cave tour, take it and see ifyou like it, and then, you know,
just find a caving club and go.
But the only reason I say it'seasier to take a caver and turn
them into a scientist is justbecause of the, the way that
(47:01):
their their minds and I thinkthat's Norm had a lot of you
know.
Norm's a super famousmicrobiologist who's won about
every award out there, beennominated for the Nobel Prize
twice, and you know he says hejust he likes hiring cavers
because he just likes the waythe cavers think.
And so maybe I'm a little bitbiased in my response because
(47:23):
I've always had that feeling.
But, yeah, it's curiosity is allthat science is.
The difference between scienceand caving is just location.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Interesting.
I guess they're both forms ofexploration, science and caving
in their own rights and foranyone sort of in that space
explorers and stuff who might bewanting to follow your
footsteps or get into academiaor just listening to you now and
want to do what you do, whatkind of advice would you have
(47:55):
for them?
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Just go caving you can find.
If you go to any country in theworld, we'll have a caving
organization in it.
In America you go to cavesorg,I think.
In the UK it's ucracouk, butevery nation has a caving
(48:18):
organization.
And as far as science, I thinkthe important thing to think
about when you think aboutcareers is not what it is you
want to be, but what it is youwant to do.
And the distinction is, likesome people say I want to be a
doctor, but they don'tnecessarily think about what the
day to day in a doctor's lifeis.
You know, is that really whatyou want to do?
(48:42):
Like, when you get out of bedin the morning, what's the thing
that's going to make you jumpup and and be excited to go do
your job, and that's the thingright.
So you've got to figure outwhat it is you want to do.
And so for science is, whateveris interesting it.
You know, I've been pulled inmultiple directions and now I'm
a geology professor because Ijust kind of followed my nose.
(49:03):
What was most interesting to meat the time and I think that's
the important thing with scienceis to, you know, not let anyone
say, well, you should be anengineer because you're going to
get paid better.
It's like are you passionateabout engineering?
Do you want to?
Are you curious?
Do you want to jump out of bedand go do an engineering thing?
You know and there are manypeople that do and they love it.
But if that's not you, then youneed to figure out what it is
(49:25):
that motivation is well,fantastic, hazel.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Um, just to wrap things up, is there anything
that you would like to plug onyour behalf, or is there
anywhere else that people mightbe able to find out more about
you or follow you on socialmedia?
Anything like that?
No.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Leave me alone.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
No, leave you alone.
That's absolutely fine as well.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Scientists.
Now, if anybody wants to fundour research, I've got tons of
students that would appreciatesome funding to explore some of
this stuff, and you know theycan always find me by Googling
me.
But yeah, no, I don't have anypluggables.
I should, I should have a bookor something, shouldn't I?
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yeah, you should have a book.
Oh, we do.
You've got tons of photos.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
We have a photo book on Lechia.
Do you know this?
Speaker 1 (50:16):
When was that made?
Speaker 2 (50:17):
When did that come out?
I think we published thatBefore or after, that's way
after the trip 2022.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Oh, after yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, it's called Lechia, is it?
I've forgotten what we calledit.
No, I don't even have it on thebookshelf.
That's terrible, isn't it?
It's something like, oh,explorations in a Hidden
Splendor.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Explorations in a Hidden Splendor.
Okay yeah, explorations in aHidden Splendor.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Yeah, you should have thought about having a blog.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Do you have any photos?
Speaker 2 (50:49):
I'm going to be on a podcast.
Does it have?
Sorry?
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Does it have any pictures from our trip or is it
from all your other expeditions?
Speaker 2 (50:56):
No, we didn't have any permissions for your photos,
but it's the other expeditions.
You should check it out, you'dlove it, um yeah, yeah it's uh,
it's nice, um, we it.
It's kind of a coffee table bookof photos, but what we did was
have, um, people talk about whatit is, what it's like to camp
in the cave, what it's like todo exploration in the cave, what
(51:18):
it's like to climb in the cave,what the latest cave science is
.
So it's a little bit more.
There's like 14 chapters orsomething that are, like, you
know, vignettes or 2,000 wordsor something about it.
But a lot of people said it's alot of fun because we try to
write it for a general public.
So a lot of these books tend toget written for cavers, but
(51:40):
this one we try to write for thegeneral public.
So, yeah, I do have a pluggable.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
There you go.
Amazing.
All right, Hazel.
Thank you so much for your time.
It's been fantastic speakingwith you.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yeah, you too.
Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
And that is it for this week's episode.
A huge thanks again to Hazelfor sharing her incredible
stories from a lifetimeunderground, and a big thanks to
you all as well for listening.
For photos, links and moreabout this episode, head to
knowordinarymondaycom and lookfor the episode page.
You'll also find our socialsFacebook, instagram, linkedin
(52:19):
and more.
Next week's episode takes us tothe chaos of a film set.
Next week's episode takes us tothe chaos of a film set.
My guest is david wrigleywilliamson, a good friend of
mine and also a special effectsartist, who has built everything
from exploding buses for jackiechan, giant spaceships for star
wars and or and I may have alsoconvinced him to have his
(52:40):
wisdom tooth extracted underhypnosis or a BBC documentary
once.
So yeah, we'll get into that.
Hit subscribe now so you don'tmiss it.
If you'd like to share your owncareer story with us, we'd love
to hear from you.
Get in touch via our socials oremail hello h-e-l-l-o.
At no ordinary mondaycom, oruse the submit your story page
(53:02):
on our.
And if you enjoyed this episode,please do two really quick
things for us Click five starsand, if you have time, write a
little review for us.
That would be amazing.
And the other thing is tell afriend and that's it.
It really helps us grow theshow and attract more amazing
guests and inspires newlisteners.
This show is produced, hostedand edited by me, chris Barron.
(53:24):
Thank you so much for listeningand have a great Monday,
everyone.
This show is produced, hostedand edited by me, chris Barron.
Speaker 2 (53:28):
Thank you so much for listening and have a great
Monday everyone.
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