Word: mountainous
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Caves of Adventure, which describes two trips to the bottom of the Pierre Saint-Martin pothole in the Pyrenees, Polish-born Haroun Tazieff gives a speleologist's answer. After dropping into the limestone mountain about as far down as the Empire State Building is up (1,250 ft.), Tazieff had "an astonishing feeling" of accomplishment. The experience made him skeptical of such highfalutin motives for spelunking as the advancement of scientific knowledge and the development of a nation's natural resources by discovering underground rivers for hydroelectric power. Holes and caves, Tazieff concluded, seduce speleologists with that most...
...first expedition to the Pierre Saint-Martin, in 1951, discovered two enormous caves and a river below, the 1,000-ft. perpendicular descent into the mountain chimney. Lured on a second expedition into the hole last year as the official photographer, Tazieff saw French Speleologist Marcel Louberis fall from a snapped cable and break his back on the rocks below. Thirty-six hours later, with reporters and photographers swarming around the entrance to the hole and the world waiting for news, the suspense drama of the year ended tragically as Loubens died (TIME...
...mile from the end of their cable and 2,000 ft. underground,* the explorers felt the intoxicating glow of knowing that "neither paleolithic men, nor the pot-holers of today, had ever been here before us." Having gained the heart of the mountain from the top, they stood triumphant upon its base-a monumental mass of carboniferous schist. It was a moment speleologists dream about...
...conquerors of Everest came down from the mountain last week to find a world avidly curious. This was their story...
...four days and four nights, it had rained in Kyushu. A swirling, kingdom-come downpour streamed down the mountain spine to the narrow coastal plain, spilling out the tiny rivers into a torrent of yellow foam; it took the huts and the houses, the roads and the railroads, the bridges and the viaducts; it brought down landslides to crush the upland villages. Countless thousands were marooned on islands of high ground, perched in quivering treetops, watching and fearful as the mud-churning waters flowed past. Rubbing her prayer beads, an old lady said: "I have lived a long time...