I recently did the Nenthead traverse alone and found it alot more enjoyable than standing around in cold deep water waiting for a group to do the pitches would have been.

How long did it take out of interest?

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Guide books are written, generally, for newcomers to the activity and for such an audience "don't go on your own" is decent advice.

Indeedy - as are websites ;)

However it is a personal decision whether or not to go underground alone and it's probably less risky than, for example, solo rock climbing which many people enjoy. I'm perfectly happy underground alone and probably do more trips solo than with company.

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When it comes down to it, it's up to every individual to decide the level of risk they're happy with in their lives and get on with it.

Nail on the head really, although I fear that if there is ever some sort of incident with someone going underground on their own, then no doubt there will be all sorts of recriminations. That said, two is probably not a good number either, while three might not be enough to get someone out of a shaft/stope etc.

Of course, if we were to assess the risks in detail, we'd probably decide that a minimum group size of six is about right and that all of them should have first aid training, carry survival gear for at least 72 hours and... :bored:

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Of course, if we were to assess the risks in detail, we'd probably decide that a minimum group size of six is about right and that all of them should have first aid training, carry survival gear for at least 72 hours and... :bored:

..... some people do go down that sort of road, and that's fine.
My feeling is , the more stuff you carry and the more people you have with you the more likely you are to need it.

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..... some people do go down that sort of road, and that's fine.
My feeling is , the more stuff you carry and the more people you have with you the more likely you are to need it.

Aha yes, I'd thought of that, too!

Six people would increase the possibility of an accident six-fold compared to one person... :lol:

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An interesting point from me is that were I not prepared to go underground on my own, and work on my own, non of my various 'works' would have been done.

Caplecleugh High Level
Talybont Deep Adit
Parc Lead Mine, various digs.
Pantywrach Upper Adit
Henfwlch
Ystrad Einion 'Bridge of death'

plus a few permanent rope traverses and boltings, and another yet to be revealed dig and probably few I have forgotten about.

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Theirs no doubt if it did go wrong the press would have a field day but that is something I'm sure all who do it are well aware of just as much as they are of the potential risks. I personally worried about it before and after a big solo trip, BUT during the trip I felt total in control and moved through the mine efficiently and fast. Unlike how I have felt on some club meets; hanging around for ages with large numbers in an exposed position and on one occasion about to descend the 500 ish feet Thriddle Shaft when a couple of members announced they were not sure how to pass a re-belay! That sort of thing to me is higher in risk and dangers.

As mentioned on this thread it is a personal decision and the feedback I am getting is that the people doing it are responsible people who do it to their individual skill level.

One of my heroes is the mountaineer Rheinold Messner. In 1980 when there was no one else on the mountain he made the first sole ascent of Everest without bottled oxygen, no fixed ropes to the summit, no chance of rescue. If he had made people aware of this attempt I can imagine what they would have said.
That really was a solo event.

Jeff

it isn't a valid comparison.

Reinhold Messner is a professional mountaineer and adventurer, with a large and elaborate organisation supporting him.

a better comparison might be Ranulph Fiennes and Mike Stroud, who were capable of remarkable 'amateurism' at times - read his account of the unsupported antarctic crossing with its episodes such as arriving to find that the thread on the cooker fuel bottles didn't fit, Stroud's watch going flat etc. But they also had a communicator in radio contact, insurance for rescue costs, etc.

Long Way Round broke some interesting ground in the sense of showing how much support and organisation lay behind 'two or three blokes on bikes', which the average travel programme is at pains to conceal.. 'here I stand where no man has trod before, except the sound man, boom operator, VCR Tech etc'

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I've got Messner's book kicking about somewhere and I'm pretty sure that his solo ascent was much as Jeff says.

it isn't a valid comparison.

Reinhold Messner is a professional mountaineer and adventurer, with a large and elaborate organisation supporting him.

Why is it not a valid comparison? In this case he was alone/solo on the mountain with little chance of rescue! Having a large & elaborate organisation supporting him is of little consequence if it all goes t*ts up very similar to being solo underground.

a better comparison might be Ranulph Fiennes and Mike Stroud, who were capable of remarkable 'amateurism' at times

So I take it you think anyone venturing underground on solo trips should be classed as an amateur in your book then 😠

Some of the people who have contributed to this thread are anything but amateur in their underground experience & it is up to the individual as to their exploring preference (solo or group, each has it’s merits) rather than being preached at by so called armchair explorers ;)

Jim

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Messner was always a professional in the purest sense of the word; someone who undertook meticulously planned expeditions including clearly defined levels of risk, for specific financial goals, with the consequences of possible failure planned in advance. If Messner had come to grief on the mountain then anyone likely to be involved would know already what, if anything, was expected of them.

don't forget also that RM would not pack his rucksack on Friday afternoon, hop in his 2CV and pitch up at the foot of the mountain in time for a quick one before the pubs closed. His solo ascent would have required at the very least, a permit obtained well in advance, porterage of his base camp supplies, insurance coverage, media deals, the whole nine yards.

I actually have a lot of respect for anyone who can make a serious amount of money in such an extreme and intensely competitive field. Messner, I am sure, could have been more or less anything he wanted to be; Olympic athlete, fighter pilot, Formula One driver, astronaut, anything at all.



Chris Bonington or Tim Severin come to mind; serious professionals doing genuinely risky things with maximum preparation, for financial and personal reasons but with the possible risks clearly understood by all concerned and no-one but themselves at risk.


Fiennes, to me, appears at times as a latter-day incarnation of the Mallory/Irving school of amateurism in its Corinthian sense. I know he has made money over the years from his expeditions, and good luck to him, but there is often a streak of the wilful disregard of known risks which ultimately destroyed Scott, for example. To write, as he did, that he set out for Antarctica not knowing whether it was physically possible to drag the sledgeloads involved, seems to me to be simply foolish.

I also can't get much excited about the 'first man to cross Antarctica on a pogo stick' school of 'exploring' which Fiennes seems to embrace. Mike Stroud is a medical man who has done some serious research into low-temperature, extreme stress physiology which the Armed Forces have been happy to sponsor, but Fiennes seems to a considerable extent driven by inner demons accessible to very few others.



define 'amateur'... you might say that anyone who goes underground for recreation not money, is an amateur. You might use the term in its Victorian sense, of an enthusiast, from which the term is in fact derived. Sherlock Holmes is more than once referred to as 'the great amateur of crime' in this sense. I would reckon that most people on this board would be 'amateur' by either definition.

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define 'amateur'... you might say that anyone who goes underground for recreation not money, is an amateur. You might use the term in its Victorian sense, of an enthusiast, from which the term is in fact derived. Sherlock Holmes is more than once referred to as 'the great amateur of crime' in this sense. I would reckon that most people on this board would be 'amateur' by either definition.

Amateurism is something I strive for 😉

It is, perhaps, easy to combine a number of different definitions?

There is - I guess - a distinction between 'professional' and 'amateur' but that doesn't mean that someone who is not 'professional' can not do something to 'professional' standards.

Experience is something else altogether and is the crucial bit about underground exploring: it's experience that keeps you alive.

And it's experience that a lot of people on this forum have - be they 'amateur' or not.

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I have to also disagree with Derrickman on his comments about Messner. To say that Messner did his thing for "specific financial goals" way back in 1980 is unfair and a cheap shot. He climbed Everest "alone" from base camp which was off the the mountain for pete's sake! No radio, no support, nothing. He had no big expedition team with him, no climbers at all.
There was no other person on the planet at that time who thought it possible. To say he did it for financial gain is unfair. He did it because "HE COULD", the fact that he made fame and money from it later is irrelevant. I do not believe for one minute he sat down and thought I can make a packet if I climb Everest solo.
I bet Ranulph Fiennes would be the first to agree and salute Messners purity, vision and commitment.
Just opinion
Jeff

ok, let's define 'amateur' and 'professional'

I'm a mining professional, I get paid to do mining-related things and I hold a membership of a relevant Professional Institution.

it means, among other things, that I don't take part in digs; the reason being, that I know from experience that in the event of a serious mishap occuring and the Coroner or other public official becoming involved, I will be dragged into court and asked questions regarding my opinion of the proceedings, in my experienced capacity. Offering the defence ' not my dig, guv' will not avail in this situation.

I either do things to a professional standard, or not at all; this doesn't include scaffold poles holding up loose roof sections, access shafts supported by oil drums with the ends cut out, or a number of other things diggers commonly do. I do actually know what the structural calculations for a timber heading look like, and they aren't pretty.


So, yes, I do think that people who go on solo trips are amateurs, but we aren't necessarily all using the word in the same sense.

realistically, most people do it to some extent, I've done it myself on occasion.



what's wrong with saying Reinhold Messner is a professional who does his trips for money? He is the best there is, an extreme athlete who does big things which don't come cheap, and that effectively means he has devoted his life to them. TV Channels and magazine publishers make money out of him, kit sponsors make money out of him, why shouldn't he be rewarded commensurately?

I had no patience with this discussion when rugby union went professional, and don't have any now. The idea that players should lose money for the 'privilege' of playing I front of a major paying crowd on national and international tv, seemed to me then and now, to be quite wrong. I was once threatened with with a ban from school rugby for racing in a motorcycle meeting for prize money, and I felt then and now that it was none of their business.


so, I don't retract a word about Messner's professionalism, but I do rather resent the accusation that it is a cheap shot of some kind.


as for shining visions, well yes, maybe.... Fiennes' book about the unsupported Antarctic crossing ends by offering various views on the final curtailment of the expedition on the grounds that it had acquired the distinct possibility of ending in death beyond reach of rescue, out on the Barrier. Shackelton made the same decision, but with the critical difference that it meant consciously abandoning the principal aim of his expedition, whereas Fiennes claimed to have achieved his aim in that he had passed beyond the edge of land, being on the Ross Ice Shelf by then. Scott led his men to disaster in pursuit of an abstract aim widely believed to be impossible.

Amundsen, the complete professional, led his men to triumph, and came home safe and early, discarding supplies to save weight as he came - because he could afford to. Yet he was scorned in some quarters for this .. he gets my vote, though.

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I'm perfectly happy to be described as an amateur, I am also quite prepared to be described as a "novice" or as inexperienced. I'm not sure how this relates to the advisability of solo trips beyond the obvious of ensuring you are aware of your own capabilities.

I can't claim to know for sure but I suspect a well prepared solo mine explorer who'd taken reasonable precautions but had some misfortune and required rescue would be viewed similarly by the rescuers to a member of a group? I'm sure I've heard tell of rescues of solo cavers that didn't attract negative comment?

just in passing, Fiennes makes some fairly sniffy comments about both Messner and Erwin Kagge in his various books. I rather disagree about 'saluting shining visions'...

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I'm a mining professional, I get paid to do mining-related things and I hold a membership of a relevant Professional Institution.

That makes your viewpoint rather interesting - because it's from the opposite point of view to most of us!

I can entirely see that if you are well-versed in the correct way of doing things, that you can't necessarily play an obvious part in some activities because - as you say - you run the risk of someone saying: "ah, but you should know better".

I'm particularly disturbed by the concept of using oil drums with the ends cut off as supports - we use them to prop up boats and whilst they're quite strong in the longitudinal plane, they're useless cross-loaded and turn to dust when exposed to water. Remind me to avoid them in mines...

Anyway, back on topic!

As I said above, experience is key: but then again, one only gets experience by doing things when inexperienced - or, more preferably, being shown how to do them by those who are experience.

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Interesting discussion.
I have no qualms about being underground alone, in some ways I prefer it to being in a group.
The only time I made a mistake was when having a kip in Brownley Hill and I neglected to keep my lamp (Oldham, was uncomfortable to sleep on) fastened to me. Those few moments it took to find my lamp seemed like a lifetime.
You have to pay serious attention to your kit when there's nobody around to bail you out but otherwise I don't see any real issues.

I'll never be anything but an amatuer underground, I don't and never have done it for a living. I do generally consider that I have a fair idea what I'm doing (most of the time at least, some people may disagree 🙂 ) and I would like to think I am perfectly capable of assesing risks before I take them.
If I should make a mistake the responsiblity lies only with me which is one of the pleasant things being alone underground, you have no responsiblity for anyone else nor anyone bear any responsiblity for getting myself into trouble.

I am following this discussion with great interest, and so far have no serious difference with any opinions expressed.

So here is a bit more from me:

In my time exploring mines I have been witness to 2 rescues, and in both cases the parties concerned could easily have got themselves out of trouble without having to recourse to a 'call out'. I won’t go into any argument about whether or not their comrades who went running for help could have been better employed helping their friend in trouble.

I have to add that my arrival coincided with a time whereby the call for the rescue people had already been made, so any skill and/ or resources that I could provide were superfluous.

#1 Garlands Pot, Giants Hole, Derbyshire. Many will know where this is going. Chap descended the pot, a mere 15 feet OK but because he was wet and miserable and completely lacking in moral fibre and determination could not get himself back up.
I was OK without a wetsuit, and even found time on the way out to stand chatting to someone for about 20 minutes. So interesting was the discussion that I forgot to feel cold.

#2 Knotlow Mine. More waterfall pitches. Apart from the fact that the pitch of 35 feet could have been rigged clear of the water, it was a repeat of #1

There is a certain type of person who should never go underground alone under any circumstances, or possibly better still, never go underground at all: Full Stop.

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Well put... I can agree with that as one of our lot invited a guy into our little group and every trip we did gradually increasing in grade he whined and in the end it was obvious he was a panicer and likely to cause injury to himself or to us or both... he finally gave up on a pitch in P8 (water raining down on him) on the return.... claiming total fatigue and getting in a panic'd state... that he could not continue.. might need help getting him out etc, exhausted... we dragged him out... even pulling him up Idiots Leap... on emerging he more or less ran to the car and spent the whole journey whinging he needed a drink, he managed to prop up the bar all night tho such was his exhaustion and panic, whilst telling his friends how brave he had been! No moral fibre and no care for his buddies down there... he basically couldn't be bothered to push himself and left us pulling him up pitches I'd dare even try today.

I used to do odd trips on my own and enjoyed trolling around Wapping Mine and that type of thing in Derbys where I felt comfortable and in control... the trick for me was that I knew my skill level underground, so unless in the company of better skilled cavers who could help and advise me (thus advancing my skill level) I would never exceed my abilities. Thus having left detail of where I was going I didn't really feel in danger going solo.

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I'm a mining professional, I get paid to do mining-related things and I hold a membership of a relevant Professional Institution.

That makes your viewpoint rather interesting - because it's from the opposite point of view to most of us!

I can entirely see that if you are well-versed in the correct way of doing things, that you can't necessarily play an obvious part in some activities because - as you say - you run the risk of someone saying: "ah, but you should know better".

I'm particularly disturbed by the concept of using oil drums with the ends cut off as supports - we use them to prop up boats and whilst they're quite strong in the longitudinal plane, they're useless cross-loaded and turn to dust when exposed to water. Remind me to avoid them in mines...

Anyway, back on topic!

As I said above, experience is key: but then again, one only gets experience by doing things when inexperienced - or, more preferably, being shown how to do them by those who are experience.

I was thinking of oil drums used as entrances or shaft liners - as in, say, Kingsdale Master Cave. I've seen more than one dig so outfitted.

I would certainly agree that having a professional perspective gives you a different point of view. I've seen rather more than I wish to, of the sundry consequences ( major and minor ) of temporary support failure ( I dare say there are others on here who can offer similar experiences ) and very unpleasant they can be.

I was a caver before I ever became involved in mining, and my interest in mine exploration and urbex is in part professional and in part, simply because it interests me.

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