FOURTEEN
IN THE SPRING OF 1992, Stone planned to take the core team of divers that would spearhead his 1993 Huautla expedition down to Florida’s Jackson Blue Springs for intensive rebreather training. First, in light of what had happened to Brad Pecel, in February he had the whole group spend two weeks testing and practicing with the rebreathers at simulated depths in a hyperbaric chamber on Long Island. (A hyperbaric chamber is a massive steel vessel that can create, in dry conditions, the extreme pressure divers will experience underwater.) All went well, and in April everyone trekked down to Florida for intensive in-water training.
Testing rebreathers was not the only science to be done at Jackson Blue. At the time, NASA was trying to better understand team dynamics on long space missions. Part of that was determining what personality traits, if any, might be ideal for them. NASA could simulate such missions, of course, locking people away in mocked-up spaceships for months, but the ever-present “pretend factor” made simulated results unsatisfying. Cave expeditions, on the other hand, were real and, other than the fact that they explored inner space rather than outer, were strikingly similar to space missions. As Mars-bound astronauts would, supercavers had to work and live under incredible stress in dangerous, confined spaces, relying on high-tech life-support systems like Stone’s rebreathers, all essentially beyond hope of rescue. To glean as much information as possible, a University of Texas psychiatrist, Dean Faulk, spent several days testing and interviewing the team. Two years later, another University of Texas team would do a much more detailed study of the dynamics of one of Stone’s teams.
Faulk was not the only outsider recording interviews and scrutinizing operations. Outside magazine had assigned the writer Craig Vetter to do a profile of Bill Stone, who invited him to come along and even to do some rebreather diving. Vetter accepted and was on location for about a week of the team’s two-month stay at the springs.
As they had in the dry chamber, both divers and rebreathers passed every test in the incredibly clear, aquifer-filtered water of the famous spring. Stone was reassured by the rebreathers’ flawless performance, and the divers, for their part, felt much better than they had with the MK-II in 1989. People were packing up and ready to go on Easter Sunday, April 19. A close friend of Stone’s, Rolf Adams (the same Aussie who had been with Stone during that marathon push into Cheve), was one of the best dry cavers in the world and a member of the dive team. He had completed both rebreather training sessions without a problem. Though not an experienced cave diver, he also had completed a basic cave-diving certification course during his stay at Jackson Blue.
Adams wanted to explore a few more of Florida’s legendary underwater caves before heading all the way back to Australia. The rebreathers were already packed for transport, but he found another diver and the team doctor, Noel Sloan, the buddy who had kicked Bill Stone awake repeatedly during the FRED test, lounging around in the sun. Sloan had his traditional scuba gear still unpacked. Adams asked to borrow it for a dive in Hole in the Wall, a popular nearby cave.
For a doctor, Noel Sloan had a surprisingly mystical dimension. Right then and there he experienced a frightening premonition, as clear and sharp as a strong radio signal: This man is going to die. It was so powerful, in fact, that this team physician, an honest and straightforward man liked by everyone who met him, told Adams a bald-faced lie. Uncomfortable talking about the premonition, he demurred on the loan, saying that he planned to use the gear himself for a dive a little later. It was a complete falsehood, made up on the spot.
Undeterred, Adams eventually borrowed some gear. He and team member Jim Smith took a half-mile boat ride. They donned their gear, submerged, and entered the cave through a hole in the underwater wall. They swam down a shaft, called a chimney, to a depth of 80 feet, leveled off, and continued, descending gradually as they went. The visibility was typically excellent, more than 40 feet, though a fuzzy, reddish silt covered the walls and ceiling where their lights shone.
They swam on, following the white guideline on the cave floor, passing through sprawling rooms with shining white limestone walls and varicolored ceilings, several tight squeezes, and some nondescript tunnels. Having traveled in 2,000 feet and used one-third of their air, they turned around and started back. That was a standard cave-diving procedure called the Rule of Thirds. You used one-third of your air going in, one-third coming out, and kept one-third in reserve. Starting their return trip, then, both divers still had two-thirds of their original air supply, much more than enough to regain the cave’s entrance.
They had gone back about 1,000 feet and were 100 feet deep in the water when Jim Smith, with the sixth sense veteran divers develop, felt the absence of his buddy. Looking back, he saw Adams pinned to the ceiling of the cave, his buoyancy apparently out of control, fighting to get his backup regulator into his mouth. He did that, settled down, signaled that he was okay, and they went on, Smith still leading. Just seconds later, Adams grabbed Smith from behind and made the signal all divers fear most, pulling a flat hand across his throat as though slitting it with a knife: I’m out of air! Barring equipment failure, it did not seem possible, but that was the frantic signal Adams was giving.
Following prescribed cave-diving protocol, Smith took his primary regulator from his mouth, gave it to Adams, and began breathing from his own backup. That can be tricky in clear, warm, open water. In a tight cave environment, with one diver on the verge of panic, it was devilishly difficult. By the time Adams had the backup regulator in his mouth, both had lost control of their buoyancy and dropped to the cave floor, where clouds of silt enveloped them instantly, reducing the visibility to zero. Overcompensating, they rose too quickly, stirring up even more silt.
Through it all, Adams clutched Smith’s chest harness with both hands in what likely would have become a literal death grip for the two of them. It appeared that he was having trouble getting air from Smith’s regulator, too, which was very strange, because Smith’s primary was working perfectly—he had just been using it himself. Adams’s mouth opened, the regulator floated out, his grip on Smith loosened, and he disappeared into the fog of silt.
Smith, distraught and by then low on air himself, managed to swim out of the cave, emerging with his air gauge reading close to zero. He got into the little boat and headed back to camp. Noel Sloan heard the outboard motor approaching and knew. He knew with such cold certainty that he found Bill Stone and, without preamble, told him that Rolf Adams was dead. In minutes the unnerved Smith arrived to confirm Sloan’s premonition.
A legendary Floridian named Sheck Exley, the father of cave diving (and a good friend of Bill Stone’s as well), came over to recover Adams’s body. Careful examination of his equipment revealed that there was plenty of air in Adams’s tanks and that his regulators were working normally. So were both of Smith’s.
Jim Smith, as brave and steady as they come, was shattered by the experience and subsequently gave up cave diving altogether. To this day, Adams’s death remains something of a mystery. Various explanations have been put forward, including nitrogen narcosis, arterial gas embolism, and simple panic. There are problems with all those theories. Nitrogen narcosis usually occurs at depths greater than 100 feet; it can happen at 75 feet, Adams and Smith’s depth at the time of the accident, but is rare at that depth. Arterial gas embolism, the medical term for bubbles in the bloodstream, can damage the heart, lungs, and brain, but normally results from expansion of respiratory gases during rapid ascents. Smith and Adams were swimming along a nearly level passage. It can also be caused by holding one’s breath during any ascent, but Adams was too well trained to hold his breath during a dive. In addition, victims of arterial gas embolism do not usually feel “out of air.” More common responses are convulsions and almost instant unconsciousness. Sheer panic seems perhaps the most likely explanation of all. The one thing that can be said with absolute certainty is that Stone’s rebreather had nothing to do with Adams’s death.
In the end, “death by drowning” was the finding, official but not clarifying, as it would also be in a subsequent death even more closely related to Bill Stone’s work. Rolf Adams was one of Bill Stone’s closest friends, and the death affected him deeply. He put all his expedition plans on hold and flew to Australia, where he delivered a eulogy at Adams’s funeral. The young man’s father urged Stone not to cancel his 1993 expedition plans—the last thing Rolf would want, he pointed out—but Stone did so anyway.
Returning home, he wandered around for days, distracted, his mission focus lost. Given his response, it was reasonable to expect a different reaction from caving insiders who had earlier accused him of being insensitive to Chris Yeager’s death and who had speculated after the 1989 Pecel incident. Unfortunately—that lightning-rod thing, again—it worked the other way. Stone experienced what he called a “barrage” of attacks from within the caving community, some of which publicly (and wrongly) suggested that he had offered up a friend’s life on the sacrificial altar of his rebreather.
Outside’s article, published in November 1992 under the title “The Deep, Dark Dreams of Bill Stone,” did not say that, exactly; nor did it overtly vilify Bill Stone. The article did capture Stone’s type-A behavior: “Stone strides everywhere, or jogs, as if whoever designed the diurnal rhythm of the universe didn’t put quite enough hours into the mechanism.” It hinted that he might have been less than an ideal family man: “After a full day of designing bridges, he would spend a few minutes getting reacquainted with the family before descending again to the workshop.” And it did call him “obsessive.”
But Vetter, a respected journalist, also described Stone’s contribution to supercave exploration, his persistence and stamina and ingenuity, his far-sighted vision, “his dogged willingness to do whatever it takes.” He asked Stone if he ever became discouraged, and the laughing reply, “About once a week,” gave a nice glimpse of Stone’s humanity and humor. It was, overall, a fair and balanced picture of the man.
Vetter was not present when Adams died, but the accident, described in detail, was the most powerful part of the entire piece. It did make clear that Adams was diving on borrowed, conventional gear, that he was not an experienced cave diver, and that panic probably caused his death. Its final paragraph, though, concerned not Rolf Adams but Bill Stone, who had reached the “point that lies on the way to all unexplored places and demands of explorers a toughness of heart that honors the prize over the price—no matter what.”
“A toughness of heart that honors the prize over the price—no matter what.” What exactly was that supposed to mean? That Stone was admirable for his indomitable will that overcame all obstacles? Or that he was marching to preeminence over the bodies of his comrades? That final paragraph, the most important single grouping of words in the entire article, was like one of those shifting images that appear to be a vase one moment and two women’s profiles the next. The more you looked at it, the harder it became to know just what it was. Unless, looking at it, you were the one on whose watch a close friend had just died. Then it was as sharp as the point of a spear.
STONE WAS NOT, REGARDLESS, A MAN to be undone by tragedy or criticism, no matter how painful. Eventually, the Huautla mission started coming into focus again, and the expedition planning got back on track. Sadly, not so his marriage. Pat Stone had viewed the Florida tragedy from afar, but with considerable alarm. She had been in big caves and knew the many ways they could kill you, and she knew, as well, that cave diving increased the odds of a bad death astronomically. Now that she was no longer at his side on expeditions—had not been for several years, in fact—Bill’s absences and adventures were exhausting rather than exhilarating. A terrible death, such as Adams’s, only added to her stress.
For more than ten years Pat Stone had been standing by her man—and their house, and the kids, and her job—seeing her time with Bill shrink and the debts grow and knowing, despite her hopes, that the clock on their marriage was running down. Rolf Adams’s death was the final straw. Soon after Bill’s return from Australia, Pat let it all out. In her quiet, firm way—Pat was not a screamer—she said that he was wasting his life, abandoning her, and neglecting their children, all for some godforsaken hole in the ground in Mexico. Then she told him she wanted a divorce.