Extremes Below

Observers of this blog will note that I have included "Blind Descent" in my list of favorite books. I have always followed the extreme tales of the great mountain achievements, but I never realised that adventures below the surface are equally if not more extreme and dangerous

This is a fascinating description of the efforts by a number of teams to find the deepest cave on Earth. It explains the traumas of exploring in absolute total darkness, where the possibility of an accident or fatal tragedy is ever present, and the near impossibility of a rescue or a recovery. from such remote confined locations, thousands of meters underground.

Its on Again soon

Yes its that time to start thinking about the Tour de France.
This year it covers some of the country that we are familiar with - especially stage-18 which goes through a section of the French Alps that we visited in 2015.

For that previous tour we saw stage-17 at Pra Loup near Barcelonnette (near the bottom of this map). The following day we drove north to Briancon, on the same roads that the tour will follow this year in the opposite direction.  The roads around the Lac de Serre-Poncon and over the Cote des Demoiselles Coiffees were quite spectacular.  I just hope that the SBS live telecast will start in time to show the riders traversing those areas.