Last month I visited a site that needs a surveyor to check on direction & extent of underground tunnels that have been cut & mined.
I went down a tunnel almost 30 deg inclined. Going down was the easy part. When I was in the lateral tunnels looking at the extent of the proposed survey, I felt a bit claustrophobic. I started to sweat but the other mining engineer did not notice due to poor lighting and it was also hot down there.
I felt I was starting to get dizzy so I sat down and pretended to do some sketching, all the while thinking how I will be able to walk up the inclined path leading to the mouth of the tunnel.
It was sheer determination on my part that I got out of the tunnel without fainting. My upper legs were trembling by the time we got out and sat by a nearby rest area to get a drink of water.
I never did submit a quote for that work & I have written off mining/tunnel survey for good.
My hard hat off to those of you who do this type of work!!!
We all aren't geared to handle everything that comes our way. Don't fret about it, just move on.
Most people could not stand at a podium before 2000 of their peers and speak intelligently. Many couldn't do it well if it were only 20 of their peers. It's a stroll in the park for others.
Yes I concur.
And yet as a kid I'd follow the old mines at will and with disregard for anything untoward.
I remember caving once where we squeezed in through a very narrow slit
Couldn't do it now.
Do any if you remember our "http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2012/11/06/3627055.htm&apos ;">Beaconsfield Disaster".
That was tense stuff just from the comfort of our lounge room.
It still stirs me 9 years on.
So no, those places not for me. (Now)
I once went with the spelunking club into a cave that opened into a quarry. We started about 10 am and crawled in through a variety of types of passageway. Sometimes you walked hunched over. Sometimes you crawled. At one point we had to crawl through something just barely big enough for a youthful body. My hard hat kept catching so I took it off and pushed it through ahead of me. I got dirt in my ear with my head turned sideways and it came out a week later with the earwax.
I'm sure I couldn't do that trip now either physically or mentally.
After a couple hours of crawling, stooping, walking, crawling, we reached a place where a shaft had once been opened to the surface for mining lead ore and later filled with dirt, maybe a hundred years ago. Another crew had gone in the other, faster*, way and we wanted to see if we could dig through the fill to connect the mapping efforts from the two sides. We could hear each other group pounding in response to our pounding, but after several hours of awkwardly positioned digging in sticky clay, and scraping it off the folding shovel each time, still couldn't push anything through the fill.
We gave up and crawled back out. I think we were in the cave for 9 or 10 hours at a damp 52 Fahrenheit. The exertion and cold had me so exhausted I had to be led shivering to the car and I couldn't eat the hamburger somebody offered me until I warmed up. I've never been so near my limits, and of course that was when I was much younger.
* "Faster" meant unlocking the cover on a manhole at another of the old mining shafts and rappelling down 50 feet to the cave tunnel level, stopping before you descended into a pit of CO2 at 75 ft.
The other day on TV, I was watching someone crawl into the cave the "new link" was found. I was shivering just watching that person crawl through those tight spaces.
I've been working at a coal mine for a year and a half now, at first it was a bit scary to be going underground knowing there's a thousand feet of dirt above your head and a couple mile drive out of the mine, but after a few weeks you just kind of get used to it. Our tunnels are 18' wide by 9' high so claustrophobia isn't too much of an issue for me.
Used to work in the Salt mine under Lake Erie...5 minute elevator ride down the shaft to the bottom about 2000', then had to go through an air lock because of difference in pressures for moving air through the tunnels...another long ride in the work wagon to get to the working face, was about 4 miles around the exterior of the mined area, and spend all day measuring quantities......see salt, hear salt, feel salt, breathe salt....but was constant 70 degrees no matter the time of year....left equipment down there, because if you brought it up the chain would rust and the transit would seize up when the moisture hit it....that was in the 70's....I am sure the safety rules have changed since then