No Ordinary Monday
The No Ordinary Monday podcast brings you the most incredible tales from people's working lives. Each week, we meet someone whose work is anything but ordinary - they may be clearing landmines, blowing up movie sets, or exploring uncharted caves.
We dive into the how, the why, and a life-defining moment they’ve experienced on the job. Whether it’s spine-tingling, hilarious, or just plain jaw-dropping, their stories will challenge what you thought a “career” could be—and maybe even change the way you think about your own.
No Ordinary Monday
Surviving a Deadly Underground Flood (Cave Microbiologist)
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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/
SUPPORT US - NOM is a 100% independent show. Help us keep the lights on by buying us a coffee (or a beer) - https://buymeacoffee.com/noordinarymonday. We're deeply grateful for any level of support.
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WANT TO BE A GUEST? You can submit your own career story through our website at noordinarymonday.com, email us at hello@noordinarymonday.com.
Imagine being miles underground the air's damp, the rock walls are closing in and the only way out is a narrow passage that you've just spent hours descending down. Then, somewhere in the chambers above, you hear it the unmistakable roar of water.
Speaker 2:Like that's when the fear kicks in. You know all those reflexes you hear about, you know and people realize things are really like my stomach dropped, my legs got weak, like I started breathing fast. I was like this is bad. And the water was coming down it under such force, it was like a fire hydrant, it was like arcing out. You couldn't get anywhere near it. You would have been immediately drowned, basically.
Speaker 1:In that moment, hazel Barton and her team faced a choice Climb into a pitch black alcove to hope and wait, or fight their way out against the flood. What followed was a desperate struggle for survival, with lives hanging by the strength of a single rope and the human anchor holding it. One, two, three, four by the strength of a single rope and the human anchor holding it. Hello and welcome to another episode of no Ordinary Monday. Thank you so much for joining us. I am your host, chris Barron, and each week I sit down with a guest whose job is far from ordinary. We explore how they got there, what it's really like behind the scenes, and then I ask them to relive the single most unforgettable experience of their career. Now, if you're enjoying this show, make sure to hit follow or subscribe, and that way you won't miss any of the incredible guests we have coming up. Our guest this week is someone who's been described as the Lara Croft of microbiology, a scientist whose work has taken her into some of the most remote, unexplored caves on earth, not just to map them, but to uncover the scientific secrets that hide in the darkness. Dr Hazel Barton is a cave explorer, microbiologist and professor who has spent decades balancing science with exploration. Hazel and I first met while filming a documentary series in New Mexico's Lechuguilla Cave, which is one of the most spectacular cave systems in the world. It's absolutely unbelievable. Hazel is an extraordinary presence on the ground. She's not just an amazing caver but, 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 sudden flood turned exploration into a fight for survival. So stay tuned for a gripping behind the scenes. Look at what it takes to explore the world beneath our feet and the risks that come with it.
Speaker 1:On that note, just a quick heads up. Some of the stories in this week's episode do talk about bodily functions and some mildly gross things. Um, it's mostly in the first 10-15 minutes or so, so you can skip ahead and enjoy the rest of the episode if you're sensitive to that kind of stuff. And finally, just a quick technical note. We had some issues with the recording quality on hazel's mic, so I've managed to clean it up quite a bit, but there may be one or two bits where Hazel sounds like she has a cold. But that's just the compression, so rest assured we'll iron out these technical issues for future episodes. And with that you're listening to no Ordinary Monday. Let's get into the show. Okay, hazel Barton, welcome to the podcast. How you doing today to the podcast. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm good. How are you?
Speaker 1:doing. I'm fantastic. I think the last time that we actually saw each other face to face, we were in New Mexico, carlsbad Caverns, lechuguilla Cave, on a filming trip.
Speaker 2:We were filming you doing some amazing work down in Lechuguilla doing some amazing work down in, down in lechuguilla, and I remember you coming out of the cave and we were down there what nine or ten days, something like that.
Speaker 2:I remember you coming out of the cave and you, you did the last big rope drop and you got. You were. That's amazing, that's just amazing. You get the um when you've been underground for a while. I don't know if you got it, but when you've been underground for a long time there's no smells down there, right. The only smell is like other people and it gets pretty foul after a few days. So once you start coming towards the surface, you start to smell like um microbes and soil produces compound called jasmine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it smells like fresh cut grass a little bit, you know, a little bit like soily cut grass, and when you start to come out the cave you start to get whiffs of that, just like the whole, the whole surface just isn't. I don't know.
Speaker 1:It must be like, you know, suddenly becoming a dog and and realizing other smells or something, and you're like everything is super intense it was one of the most, I think, unique experience of my life coming out, because it's been over a week underground and it's musty and there is no smell, apart from other humans, and you just come out. It just, it's just life. It's like everything is just ratcheted up like to 11 in terms of intensity of depth of smell and and sights and sounds.
Speaker 1: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 the um must-haves in a cavers day pack. Do you remember what it was?
Speaker 2:Was it you guys that came up with those?
Speaker 1: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:You brought the biffy bags. Those were the best things in the world. You can poo in those, you can pee in them, you can bark in them.
Speaker 1:I think, yeah, we have to explain it with biffy bags. For I mean, basically, I think it'd probably be good for you to set up, let your Gear quickly, and why you need a biffy bag.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it's an incredibly remote environment and there's no. You know, you're underground and it's a special kind of cave. It's called a hypogenic cave, which means it was formed by water coming from deep in the ground and getting pushed up, and so you force the water to spread out and make this incredibly long, complex cave system. So it's over 150 miles now, but there's not a lot of water in it. There's pools that form where you have stalad mites and staladites and they're dripping into the pools and you can drink that water, but there's no water to wash, there's no water to flush, there's no bathrooms and you can't leave anything behind because obviously that would have a remarkable effect on the ecosystem. Right, the biggest organism down there is, like you know, maybe some fungal spores. So you can't leave anything behind and everything comes out. And we were explaining to you guys how you deal with a number one and a number two, and a number one is pretty easy, but with the number two, and we so what? Until you guys showed up, because you've really transformed exploration in that cave. Guys showed up, because you've really transformed exploration in that cave.
Speaker 2:Until you guys showed up. What you would do is you take a big piece of foil and you create like a target and you use the target of the foil and then you wrap the foil up and then you put it in two ziploc bags. But it's a bit stinky, even though the foil is supposed to stop the smell, but it's a little bit stinky. And then you guys, you were, um, uh, so bougie. You showed up with these things that were called bippy bags and, um, they were made of mylar and so the smell doesn't get out. And they come with a little piece of toilet paper and a wet wipe so you can wash your hands afterwards. And it's got an enormous carrier bag inside with little straps on it so you can open this thing up, open up the straps and tie it around like a diaper and kind of cracks down.
Speaker 2:So you put this you don't have a target, like it doesn't matter what you do, it will get trapped it just falls down yeah, it falls down and then it's got all these polyethylene glycol at the bottom that could absorb like 50 000 times its own volume and moisture. So it just like goes, yeah, and then you close it up. You, you know, throw it, close up the big bag and then you put your um pp in there and everything and close it up and it's sealed um, I mean, I remember it's one of the stories I tell most often.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like you know um you know, as an astronaut, how do you go to toilet in space? It's one of the stories.
Speaker 2:I tell.
Speaker 1:Most often it's kind of like you know, as an astronaut, how do you go to toilet in space? It's kind of that kind of story. You know you've got to in a scenario where you cannot, you know, leave anything in the cave. What do you do about the toilet situation?
Speaker 2:And yeah, I'm sure most people have stopped listening to this now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what a setup to who you are and what you do.
Speaker 2:but I mean, well, it's caving caving I know, I think it's, it is important, right? It's like, um, if you really get into rescue, right? I know we're going to go back to the scatology here, but they always tell people, if you really want to be into rescue but you don't think you could bring yourself to wipe somebody else's butt, then you shouldn't be in rescue. And if you're, if you are interested in doing exploration, depending on the environment you're in, there's always something that you have to do. That's not standard to what society deems appropriate behavior and even what you would discuss appropriately. So, yeah, I?
Speaker 1: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 about that and a microbiologist, but I guess okay. So I've seen you a couple of times just to go into who you are and what you do, and there's a there's a phrase that I've seen batted around some of the articles about you and it says you are the lar you do, and there's a there's a phrase that I've seen batted around some of the articles about you and it says you are the lara croft of microbiology. And I just wanted to ask you how accurate do you find that um description of yourself?
Speaker 2:from the waist up. Terrible um, she would never be an effective caver she would get stuck everywhere, um, proportionally, um, no, I mean, I think so.
Speaker 2:If it's a misogyny thing or not, I mean I I kind of like it. When I was a kid, I wanted to be indiana jones, right. So, yeah, started to age myself, but when the first indiana jones movie came out, all my girlfriends were like, oh god, I want to snog indiana jones. I didn't want to snog indiana jones, I wanted to be indiana jones, right. I wanted to nice, yeah, all of the world, speaking different languages, exploring things and and finding these discoveries. And this is so embarrassing. I even got one of the fedoras right, 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 for christmas, which is funny oh my god, that's so cute yeah, no brand.
Speaker 2:Granddad probably wore a fedora in the 40s. But um, yeah, yeah, um, I just just wanted to be Indiana Jones. And so when I got older, the first time I was in the newspaper, someone called me Diana Jones and I I got. I felt that was kind of fun because it was like I hadn't really even thought that my, it's not like. You know, I wanted to be a fireman and then I spent my whole life working towards being a fireman. You know, I wanted to be a fireman and then I spent my whole life working towards being a fireman. I wanted to be a vet when I was little and I was working yeah, professionally toward becoming a vet.
Speaker 2:So the indiana jones is more of like a fun fantasy, something that is certainly not like I've decided I'm going to be this thing and spend a career working towards it. It's just one day I woke up and people were other people were kind of like um, aligning me with that you know, stereotype.
Speaker 2:But I wanted to be a vet and I read that the best way to become a vet was to volunteer at veterinary practice. So I did it for four years and at the end of four years I was like I would rather die than be a vet, because it's wow it's 90 cats with diarrhea and it's dogs with diarrhea and the thing that was really fun I mean helping with the surgery, like towards the end, I was so experienced, even though I was only like 18 or 19, that I was helping with the surgeries. You know nothing more than like mopping up blood and putting bits and buckets and things. Um, yeah, but this thing that I thought was so cool, and this is after. We just spent the first five minutes talking about poo. Maybe people are going to judge me on this, but I don't care. Yeah, us, us is just so exciting.
Speaker 2:So what yeah, the first time there was a cat that came in and its whole face was swelled up. I'm getting there, is a point to this, I'll get there, but it's all faces filled up. And then the vet said this is the 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 the the cat's head and took a scalpel and just went just really fast and the puss jumped like four feet to the other side and the cat just went. And you know, the cat was super relieved. I was like wow. And then I heard this enormous clang like someone was ringing a bell and we both looked over and the owner had fainted with the pot and it was their head hitting the radiator. And I was like awesome, and so I'm in there. Becoming a medical microbiologist 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 you then?
Speaker 2: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 uk at that point, weren't you?
Speaker 2:yeah, so is it I was doing my o levels, then I was on track to becoming a vet. I discovered boys when I was doing my A-levels so that kind of derailed it, but at that point I wasn't as focused on becoming a vet as I had been. But definitely the microbes. There'd always been a fascination with that, but that was it. I'm going to be a microbiologist Wow, so that was it?
Speaker 1:I'm going to be a microbiologist, wow, so that's when it started and where I mean. You've come a long way since then, obviously, but what would you describe yourself as right now?
Speaker 2:So my PhD is medical microbiology. So I got my PhD back in 1997. And then I went to work for a guy called Norm Pace who was a caver. And then I went to work for a guy called norm pace who was a caver, but he was the guy who figured out that you could use this uh enzyme that tom brock had discovered in yellowstone. Um, another lab had figured out that you could amplify dna with it. And norm figured out that you could use these amplified dna fragments like a barcode to identify organisms in the environment. And norm norm likes to say it blew the door off the microbial world and it did. I mean, you know people, everybody knows about their microbiome.
Speaker 2:Now it's amazing microbes are everywhere, literally everywhere you can think of even like nuclear reactors have microbes yeah, yeah, it's um, and it's good too, because they're, you know, without you know, with macroscopic life you could wipe out all life you could see on the planet and the our biosphere would just keep ticking along. But if you wiped out all microscopic life, um, our biosphere would collapse somewhere between four to seven days and then all life on earth would get wiped out. So they, yeah, they're really small, but they, they're very good at what they do. Anyway, I worked for norm norm and he was a, he was a caver, but I worked with him on tuberculosis, which is a fun project.
Speaker 2:And then I got involved in an imax movie and the? Im was like well, we want you because of your skill set, but we want you to do environmental microbiology. And of course I was in Norm's lab, 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 for it, you know you're, you're, you can do the kind of caving that most people can, and you have a PhD in microbiology, so go figure it out.
Speaker 2:So then I became a cave microbiologist and started my own lab. I did that for almost 20 years and then that was in a biology department, but we were creeping towards geology. So we're looking at microbes in caves and so they interact with rocks and minerals, and most of what we were doing was so geology-based that it was actually hard to get. It was hard for my students to get their PhDs in biology because what they were doing was so geology-orientated. And then I got offered a job at University of Alabama in a geology department. So now I'm in a long story I'm actually a professor of geology, even though that all started out with like pus leaping out of the face of the plant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really cool. That's really cool. I mean just going back. Like you said. You know that sort of seed of inspiration in microbiology was planted in that room when you were 15, seeing the the big pus sprout from the cat but the um, the seed of that right.
Speaker 2:I mean it it that's a cool story. It's pretty visual well, the vial and it was green, and suddenly my life was changed. It's like no.
Speaker 1:This really disgusting thing happened it is yeah, it is funny, but the, the seed of the caving like that, was planted around about the same time, wasn't it when you're in your teenage years?
Speaker 2:yeah. So when I was 12 we did. We got taken on an outward bound course where they take a bunch of city kids. There was a gaggle kid way, way too big of a group for a single adult that was taking us around, right, you know, never, never do that these days, but it should be like 20 kids and one adult. And we had this really sketchy kind of lights and helmets and one of the kids his light went out 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 helmet and we were kind of sharing it to see where we're going, and it didn't faze me at all, whereas everybody else was pretty terrified. So I just, I don't know, I just felt super comfortable in that environment and I think a lot of people who explore caves have the same kind of scenario.
Speaker 2:It's. It's an environment that you either immediately love not necessarily in explainable ways or you hate and you never want to go back. It's old, muddy, it's wet, you can't see. It's climby, you can fall. Some people are like, no, this is not the thing, yeah, very dangerous.
Speaker 2:But other people are like this is just like a 3D jungle gym. I just want to go explore every hole.
Speaker 1:Maybe a lot of people listening to this might be curious. They may have never even been into a cave, let alone a wild cave, what is? Can you visualize or describe the emotions that you experience when you're entering a cave for the first time, or going into a deep part of a cave unexplored, or just being inside these spaces under the ground? What's it like for you?
Speaker 2:I mean, the best feeling in my life is to go into a cave, find a big hole and not know where it goes and then explore and map it.
Speaker 2:You've probably played video games where the video game is like there's a map that as you explore a dungeon, the map gets built over time so you don't know where everything is. But the map gets built over time so you don't know where 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 you find, I mean the incredibly beautiful environments. You, you went to, let you get here. You saw some of the best cave passage in the world. You know.
Speaker 2:Just imagine walking into that. Nobody knew it was there. And then you, you walk into this incredibly decorated room. It's just, it's really beautiful, it's like art. But the the thing is, a lot of times you get skunked right for every time that you find that one amazing passage. You might get skunked 20 times and I think that that if it was easy and you always found great stuff, I don't think caving would be as much fun. It's the trial and error and all that effort and time and building upon knowledge to make those breakthroughs, I think is what is really part of the discovery and the fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just to sort of give listeners an idea of the, I guess, the purpose of the work that you do, like you know what kind of applications or what kind of discoveries are you hoping to uncover?
Speaker 2:And that's the nice thing about so. We call it basic research and I think when you say basic research, a lot of people because that's jargon right, I mean it's a specialist term that means the fundamental underpinnings of how things work. So when we talk about basic science was like, like, what are the fundamentals? And so we're trying to understand the fundamentals of caves and cave forming processes and some people are like, oh, I don't care about that, that's not important to me. But those fundamental processes teach us things about microorganisms that have some really remarkable applications.
Speaker 2:We think we've figured out how to recycle nylon, because we've seen ways that nylon is being broken down in caves by microbes. So we have a novel and you think about you see all those fishing nets and the turtles getting caught in the fishing nets in the ocean. You can't do anything with nylon. 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 and dumped in landfills. We think we can actually break that down and turn it back into a fertilizer again looking at how microbes in caves work.
Speaker 2:Another thing we're doing is understanding how microbes in caves can segregate different kinds of metals, because some metals in rock are toxic, so when they're in the rock doing their thing this came from some work we were doing in Brazil on iron caves in Brazil is that they can actually segregate something called a rare earth element. So these are elements that are in very, very low supply but are incredibly critically important Right now. I think China's just recently prevented sales to North America's rare earth elements. Well, they're used in, you know, batteries and chips, microprocessors, rare earth magnets I mean our entire.
Speaker 1:Most technologies need it yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's again from micros make caves in Brazil. So, yeah, it's all. Yeah, I know it's like people are 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 you care, right, and I think this is why you know like this, this attack on you know, scientists and expertise and everything like you know. Well, I could figure this out. It's like you could, but it would take you a lot longer to do and ai is not going to do that trick for you right? The? The ability of the psc patterns and this is part of the teaching someone to get a phd is like helping them. Like, how do you take complex problems, break them down into testable solutions and then use your knowledge to find those links that build it all back together, and then you end up with novel carbon sequestration technologies, ways of getting rare earth elements out of rock.
Speaker 1:So yeah, Before you jumped on this podcast, I asked you to think of a story across your long career that kind of stood out as significant and sort of you know, for one reason or another stands out as a highlight or something that was scary or exciting or or significant. Um, I wonder if you could share that with us yeah.
Speaker 2:So we talked about a few things and, being a cave explorer, there's been there have been more than one occasions where I thought I was gonna die, and so those definitely stand out. I should say that, um, you know, nobody goes into a cave thinking they're gonna get into trouble. Um, I don't think anybody would do that. You know there are certain people that think it's about adrenaline and it's not. One of the issues we have is is water. A lot of people have lost their lives in caves because of water. You do have to be very, very cognizant of it and aware of what's going on, and so, for us, we were in china and we were exploring, um, a big cave there. It's called chonko and it has a ginormous entrance that was, I don't know, 100 meters high and 40 meters wide, just going right into the mountain.
Speaker 2:So we were exploring that cave over many, many years and it splits. You go, you follow this enormous river into the passage and then it splits about 200 meters in. You go to the left and you go up something called the wet side and that is pretty terrifying. There are waterfalls and strainers and everything you know you can. It looks like a class 5 rapid to get up this thing and then it ends in a sump in the other direction. You go and you traverse a bunch of pools and then you climb up and then you get into this dry passage, this dry borehole, and it is ginormous, some of the biggest cave in the world.
Speaker 2:And so we were. We were working on this dry side and, uh, there was this big pool of water and I don't think we ever, like I don't think we ever sat down. It's like, where did this pool of water come from? But anyway, you could swim across the pool of water or you could do this traverse, and the traverse was really super sketchy. It was, it was super smooth and the footholds there were barely any footholds. There was certainly nothing to grab onto with your hands. You just had to lean into the rock and trust your feet and kind of step around this thing. And I hated it and I said we need a rope on it because someone's going to fall off. It wasn't a big fall, it was like six feet, but you were going to, you know, take a pretty big splash into this pool of water and then it's way across. And my friend Mike would always laugh. He's like come on, hazel, we're practicing for the real thing. I was like who made it this damn perverse?
Speaker 1:So we get up and we're pushing the cave from two different directions at the time. So this is unexplored.
Speaker 2:Just to this is unexplored at this point Unexplored, but we're checking holes in this whole mountain, right? So this is this big kind of pointy mountain in China and you could walk up around this big entrance and it had a big passage that went in for like half a mile and then there was a hole in the floor and you threw a rock down and it took 13 seconds to hit the ground which is ginormous.
Speaker 1:It's like 800 plus feet, so but I mean, yeah, just just to give people a sense of that, like, um, can you have you got a stopwatch or something? I just I can just count it here actually yeah and just throw it through. It put a picture in our head, threw it in for us okay, all right.
Speaker 2:So right, I You're going to do the bang, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, I got the rock. I'm walking up to the side of the pit Ready.
Speaker 1: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 going now. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Boom, boom, wow it's more like yeah, geez, yeah, so what?
Speaker 1:was so. Basically, you threw a rock down and the entire cave just reverberates yeah, after a very long period of time.
Speaker 2:So we, oh man, we knew it was at least 200 meters, um, so it was going where we were going upstream in this big passage. It was right, it was going right towards where that was. So the next trip, somebody went down with a rope and we came up the drive passage from below and we actually connected in that route and it ended up being the third biggest room in the world. So then the ceiling was 400 meters, so 1200 feet high. That pit was 900, 934 feet, I think, something like that. Um, and we connected in the middle. And one of the things we did on route was there was this huge lake that we had to traverse around. So we put we the person we were with, who was a sketcher, didn't want to get cold, so we actually put a rope up against the wall so he could traverse around without getting wet by wading through this lake, and this will come in later.
Speaker 2:So we decided to do this big trip. It's going to be 24 hours and we were going to go in that entrance and then connect up into the main, the big room, and then we basically have found a route 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't that worried because we were in the dry side, so we didn't have to worry about it. So we went in and we started surveying and we were able to connect up to the main passage and we found some other passages heading off to connect it up to the main passage. And we found some other passages heading off and we it's like I said I don't know two o'clock in the morning or something at this point. And then we're like well, we've still got some hours, what? What are we going to do next?
Speaker 2:And uh, somebody said well, you know where that really big lake was. There's a big passage heading off into the wall there that's about 20 feet wide sorry, 20 meters 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 the way down, uh, through the big room, past this big lake, into this passage, and we're surveying it till about six or seven o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2:And they were like yeah, we should probably leave now because the bus is gonna come get us. It's gonna take a couple of hours to get out. We're coming out of this passage and we kind of duck under and go into the big room and then you can hear waterfalls and this is a passage that's been bone dry whenever we've been in there. And we were there with some duncan price and duncan said uh-oh, and that's like like that's when the fear kicked in. You know all those reflexes you hear about, you know when, when people realize things are really like my stomach dropped, my legs got weak, like I started breathing fast. So it's like this is bad that Duncan went, oh, and there's the guy that you, who's like?
Speaker 1:he's like the expert caver If he says oh, you know it's serious.
Speaker 2:Nothing phases this guy right, nothing. It doesn't matter how horrendous the situation is, he's, he's just happy and he's like whoa. And so there was a wall of water coming down the passage towards us and we had like just a few minutes to make a decision. And there was a high. There was a high kind of level passage we could get up to and basically we would have to stay up there until whatever the water was coming through and flush through, or we could try and fight our way out, knowing where we were and knowing that there was this upper entrance through the big room. So we decided to try and fight our way out because we didn't know how high the water was going to come and how long it was going to stay high.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because if you go to that high spot you could be waiting there and the water could just keep climbing, and then you would drown.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was no guarantees, and it turned out that then we suddenly realized what that big pool of water was from. It was that this was an overflow passage. So what would happen is that wet side, with the sump basically, had become so inundated with water that it could no longer drain the river going into the cave. So that river had backed up and was now going into the cave from a completely different direction, and that direction sent it barreling straight down the passage towards us.
Speaker 1:Your exit basically was the overflow.
Speaker 2:Our exit was now like a class three river, a big class free river, and so we were kind of forcing our way up river against the wall, kind of holding like imagine you were if you were in a big river, or getting behind rocks and being in the lee side of the rocks and trying to get out behind that and we get to this one spot where it was an easy climb down when it was dry, but it was like an enormous sluice, uh, and it was. It was about two meters wide and about three meters high and the water was coming down it under such force, it was like a fire hydrant, it was like arcing out for about two meters before it came down right. So you can imagine almost coming horizontal before it starts to bend down and it's like you couldn't get anywhere near it. You would have been immediately drowned. Basically, this thing would have just had the you know so much force. It would have just tumbled you around. So duncan was like let me, let me see if I can find a way around it. And he jumped over the top of this thing and disappeared.
Speaker 2:And then about six or seven minutes later, a rope came down, just a rope, and you could hear duncan say, climb. And so mike climbed up this rope. So we have these mechanical senders we use to climb up. So mike went up the rope and then 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 I saw was a meat anchor, which probably not going to mean anything to anyone unless you're a climber. So there was nothing to rig this rope off of. So so what Duncan had done is tied it around his waist and jammed himself into this alcove and Mikey basically climbed up using him as the anchor. And then, as soon as Mike had climbed to the top, mike had thrown himself on Duncan to give Duncan more support. I came up and saw this yelled down, you know, rope free. And then I piled on top of Mike and we were basically holding.
Speaker 1:Duncan in the area.
Speaker 2:and then we got to the top of this thing and it looks we can just about see a way 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 no handholds, and it looks exactly like the traverse that I've been complaining about all the way, because Nemesis, that I'd always managed to climb across but I'd hated it. So I was like, oh Jesus. And Mike turns to me and he's laughing hysterically and he said, look, look, I told you you're practicing for the real thing. So we.
Speaker 1:So this is is this like, basically like ninja warrior, but if you fall you die you?
Speaker 2:die. There is no. Yeah, you're gonna. You're gonna fall about probably five or six meters into that hydrant.
Speaker 1:I mean it's certain death if you sleep and then you're just being shot like a rocket out of the worst. Yeah, water slide in the world. You're not surviving that?
Speaker 2:I mean, you probably would. You might have a 50 chance of surviving the fall, but the last few seconds you're going to be miserable. So then we get out and there is this, this other pool, where we'd rig this high traverse line which we'd rig about I don't know four meters up the wall so that we could stay dry. And it was now underwater and you could swim over to it and use it to pull yourself across. And then we got out, yeah, and then we climbed out into that big room and we could see this new river of water that suddenly everything makes sense. And we could see this new river of water that suddenly everything makes sense. Right, all the passage sculpting and everything that we saw just suddenly made made sense about why it was the way it was. But, yeah it, that was the.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure I have PTSD from that, because I've been flooded in a couple of times since then and uh, there's a couple of nights. I just react very differently than everybody else, even if it's not that particularly bad of a flooding event. So I do think that you know it's a funny story and I love to tell it people, especially when they've had a couple of beers. But uh, there is, I think there's. So I mean, it was. 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 not fun in caves and you know, you can tell this story prior to the type of rescue thing and people will be like, yeah, yeah, and now they're like why the hell are you in there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, yeah, oh, my god. So what were you, what were your emotions like obviously you know, before the climb, when the rope came down and obviously, doing that scary ninja warrior section were you? What was going through your mind?
Speaker 2:I think, just to keep one foot going in front of the other. I get asked this a lot like because there's not a lot of people that really truly have like a near love. People be like I had a near-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 really being frustrated with my body, that my body, you know, it's the fight or flight thing and I was just kind of frustrated with my body, that I, you know, I thought you always imagine that, like when the shit hits the fan, you're, I'm usually pretty calm and collected, like if I'm the expedition leader and something terrible goes wrong, I just I just immediately fit into that like team lead role and just start making decisions and things like that. But in this situation, um, I was a follower, not the leader. I wouldn't have been a great leader in that situation anyway. It was not my skill set, but I was just, I just thought that I would. I would be more heroic in the moment than I was and I and I think at the time I was disappointed in myself for not not being more of a hero Um, but you can. You can see why people under you know terrible situations. I don't think anyone has any right to judge anyone when something goes wrong, about how they reacted, because a lot of times it's completely out of your control. It just comes down to hormones and physiology at that point. So that was the thing that I think.
Speaker 2:Afterwards. It was like, you know, I can't believe I'm alive. This is a whole new world for me. I must admit, when I came back to the airport, I came through Chicago and had my earbuds in and I can't remember. I got off the plane and I was just walking through the airport in Chicago. I looked around me. It was almost like Neo in the Matrix, where you look around and there are people having entirely different lives with entirely different priorities and experiences around you and you're like there's not a lot of people that are.
Speaker 2:Well, it was lucky or stupidity to have experienced those kind of things. And I'm. What a life is? I live stupidity to have experienced those kind of things and and what a life it is I. I live and I do, I do. Whenever I get down and things aren't as great and I get frustrations at work and stuff, I do try to step back and I remember that feeling of euphoria, being alive and being fortunate enough to live that kind of lifestyle. And you know, I know it's know it's a privilege and it's one that I fought very, very, very hard to have, especially as a woman in a male-dominated sport. But that's getting better. I think some of the best cavers in the world are women now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Do you think you're better or worse off after an experience like that?
Speaker 2:Oh, always better, Unless it goes wrong, and then you're way worse off.
Speaker 1:Unless it goes wrong. Yeah, yeah, but it's almost that you have to push it to that point to feel alive, as you just said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that gets into that whole adrenaline junkie thing. I don't know if it's that. I think that we have to be willing to take risks, right, and you know we're talking about people changing careers and things like that. My husband, you know, he changed careers. Well, he's a perfumer, he's always been a perfumer, but you know, kind of jumped and went into a different company and it was a very, very scary thing to do 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 maybe as a society, that's something we've we've lost a bit and that's why people are so focused on social media and living vicariously through other people and maybe there's a little bit of loss of willing, willingness to go out and do those things yeah, it's complicated, yeah, absolutely real.
Speaker 1:Um, well, that's, yeah, absolutely mind-blowing story. Um, as you say, very important to take risks, but, uh, not to hopefully push it too far. But, um, um, I want to just want to sort of bring it back out again to your career big picture kind of stuff. What are, I guess, the best and worst parts of the job that you do at the moment?
Speaker 2:As a university professor, gosh, worst parts administration. I think that's the thing is that you know, I, I'm more like a conductor in an orchestra now than a, you know, first, first row, um, uh, instrument player. So there is a lot of administration. Um, trying to trying to, I, my job is to make the role that my students play more efficient so they can be more successful, because ultimately, a lot of what 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. Um, it's certainly managed, manageable. I think I make it worse for myself by putting things off the best part, gosh, there's a lot. I enjoy teaching, I enjoy seeing in the classroom and also in the lab.
Speaker 2: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 you view the world. So people talk a lot about light bulb moments and that seems like a cliche. But you, you do really see transformational events in, in thinking, in these students, whether that's in the classroom or in the research lab where things suddenly come together and they make those connections and then there's a dramatic increase in in their understanding, expectations. So that is pretty amazing. And then you know, obviously you know the travel, the places I've been in the world visiting caves, yeah. So now I think 37 countries, maybe 38 or 39, both poles, yeah, all seven continents.
Speaker 2:Wow, clovers are just great. I mean cavers are. You know, there's a certain mindset to want to go do these things, to want to take those risks, to want to take those risks, to want to lie in the cold and the mud and the wet, and and it creates kind of a camaraderie where everybody, everybody just gets it right. You don't have to try and explain yourself. It's always very difficult to explain to non-caver. It's why you want to go do this, especially when you talk about accidents and incidents, and so those meeting those people making those connections is pretty fabulous. So I I have a very privileged life, you know. I have a lifestyle that was, you know, I came from a working class family with no expectations beyond, like you know, like working as a secretary or something like that, and I had a fantastic grandfather that opened up science to me. And you know british tv right. Some of the documentaries I got yeah, I was a kid even got to work with david attenborough that was.
Speaker 1:That was pretty wild that's cool yeah, he's just that's a life call right there so, yeah, it's, and I get paid.
Speaker 2:Well, right, the university professor. It's like there's there's a lot of work, but you get to be your own boss and you get to think, and that's a real joy.
Speaker 1:I mean, I had this question in mind just about your particular lab, and I'm sure that going into a lab like yours, for some of the roles you need to be both a caver and a scientist. And I was just wondering do you think it's harder to be a scientist that learns to be a caver, or do you think it's harder to be a caver that learns to be a scientist?
Speaker 2:Well, how interesting. I think it's harder to be a scientist that learns to be a caver for one really easy answer, and I think that's harder to be a scientist that learns to be a caver for one really easy answer. And I think that's that. Cavers are curious, so I have a lot of. I think everybody in my lab right now came in as a caver, right? That's why they want to come work for me is that they're cavers and we want to get into cave science.
Speaker 2:But these people are self-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 between that and science. So I don't think it's hard to teach anyone how to be a caver. You just have to do it right. It's pretty easy to do. You know, take a, take a tour in a most showcase, have a wild cave tour, take it and see if you like it, and then, you know, just find a caving club and go. But the only reason I say it's easier to take a caver and turn them into a scientist is just because of the, the way that their their minds and I think that's Norm had a lot of you know. Norm's a super famous microbiologist who's won about every award out there, been nominated for the Nobel Prize twice, and you know he says he just he likes hiring cavers because he just likes the way the cavers think. And so maybe I'm a little bit biased in my response because I've always had that feeling.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it's curiosity is all that science is. The difference between science and caving is just location.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I guess they're both forms of exploration, science and caving in their own rights and for anyone sort of in that space explorers and stuff who might be wanting to follow your footsteps or get into academia or just listening to you now and want to do what you do, what kind of advice would you have for them?
Speaker 2:Just go caving you can find. If you go to any country in the world, we'll have a caving organization in it. In America you go to cavesorg, I think. In the UK it's ucracouk, but every nation has a caving organization.
Speaker 2:And as far as science, I think the important thing to think about when you think about careers is not what it is you want to be, but what it is you want to do. And the distinction is, like some people say I want to be a doctor, but they don't necessarily think about what the day to day in a doctor's life is. You know, is that really what you want to do? Like, when you get out of bed in the morning, what's the thing that's going to make you jump up and and be excited to go do your job, and that's the thing right. So you've got to figure out what it is you want to do.
Speaker 2:And so for science is, whatever is interesting it. You know, I've been pulled in multiple directions and now I'm a geology professor because I just kind of followed my nose. What was most interesting to me at the time and I think that's the important thing with science is to, you know, not let anyone say, well, you should be an engineer because you're going to get paid better. It's like are you passionate about engineering? Do you want to? Are you curious? Do you want to jump out of bed and go do an engineering thing? You know and there are many people that do and they love it. But if that's not you, then you need to figure out what it is that motivation is well, fantastic, hazel.
Speaker 1:Um, just to wrap things up, is there anything that you would like to plug on your behalf, or is there anywhere else that people might be able to find out more about you or follow you on social media? Anything like that? No.
Speaker 2:Leave me alone.
Speaker 1:No, leave you alone. That's absolutely fine as well.
Speaker 2:Scientists. Now, if anybody wants to fund our research, I've got tons of students that would appreciate some funding to explore some of this stuff, and you know they can always find me by Googling me. But yeah, no, I don't have any pluggables. I should, I should have a book or something, shouldn't I? Yeah?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you should have a book. Oh, we do. You've got tons of photos.
Speaker 2:We have a photo book on Lechia. Do you know this?
Speaker 1:When was that made?
Speaker 2:When did that come out? I think we published that Before or after, that's way after the trip 2022.
Speaker 1:Oh, after yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's called Lechia, is it? I've forgotten what we called it. No, I don't even have it on the bookshelf. That's terrible, isn't it? It's something like, oh, explorations in a Hidden Splendor.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Explorations in a Hidden Splendor. Okay yeah, explorations in a Hidden Splendor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you should have thought about having a blog.
Speaker 1:Do you have any photos?
Speaker 2:I'm going to be on a podcast. Does it have? Sorry?
Speaker 1:Does it have any pictures from our trip or is it from all your other expeditions?
Speaker 2:No, we didn't have any permissions for your photos, but it's the other expeditions. You should check it out, you'd love it, um yeah, yeah it's uh, it's nice, um, we it.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a coffee table book of photos, but what we did was have, um, people talk about what it is, what it's like to camp in the cave, what it's like to do exploration in the cave, what 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 or something that are, like, you know, vignettes or 2,000 words or something about it. But a lot of people said it's a lot of fun because we try to write it for a general public. So a lot of these books tend to get written for cavers, but this one we try to write for the general public. So, yeah, I do have a pluggable. There you go.
Speaker 1:There you go. Amazing. All right, Hazel. Thank you so much for your time. It's been fantastic speaking with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you too. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1:And that is it for this week's episode. A huge thanks again to Hazel for sharing her incredible stories from a lifetime underground, and a big thanks to you all as well for listening. For photos, links and more about this episode, head to knowordinarymondaycom and look for the episode page. You'll also find our socials Facebook, instagram, linkedin and more. Next week's episode takes us to the chaos of a film set. Next week's episode takes us to the chaos of a film set. My guest is david wrigley williamson, a good friend of mine and also a special effects artist, who has built everything from exploding buses for jackie chan, giant spaceships for star wars and or and I may have also convinced him to have his wisdom tooth extracted under hypnosis or a BBC documentary once. So yeah, we'll get into that. Hit subscribe now so you don't miss it. If you'd like to share your own career story with us, we'd love to hear from you. Get in touch via our socials or email hello h-e-l-l-o. At no ordinary mondaycom, or use the submit your story page on our.
Speaker 1:And if you enjoyed this episode, please do two really quick things for us Click five stars and, if you have time, write a little review for us. That would be amazing. And the other thing is tell a friend and that's it. It really helps us grow the show and attract more amazing guests and inspires new listeners. This show is produced, hosted and edited by me, chris Barron. Thank you so much for listening and have a great Monday, everyone. This show is produced, hosted and edited by me, chris Barron.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening and have a great Monday everyone.
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