Finally getting around to processing some of my pics from my last days in Paris.
I think I still have the taste of limestone dust in my mouth after this one.
Some friends decided that it was time to finally teach me how to learn to use a rope and harness (e.g. kill myself), and off we went, into the forests of a Parisian bedroom community whose parking spaces cost more than you and I will ever spend on a house. It's one of those awesome places that are probably thoroughly banal to the local crews, but still pretty magical, cheesy as that sounds, once you finally build up the network of people who show you their subterranean playgrounds.
I know nothing about this place, I don't even remember the exact location, except that it's a lot further down than the "5 meters" one of our crew claimed. Hah, French maths and measurements. I bet it's that keen sense of numerical understatement that led some hung over border guard in 1940 to report "a few lost German tanks, no problem, it's under control".
We ended up down (?) a more than 30 meter narrow limestone shaft, dropping into a huge vaulted set of tunnels once used to store wine in giant barrels. Many of them had collapsed due to rot, but there wasn't a single tag in sight. The only evidence that we weren't the first, by far, was a forlorn cata tract one of our guys found wedged in a rust-encrusted bit of electrical gear.
Because of the dust and crap, the photo conditions were abysmal, and we kept tripping over rusted hoops from the massive barrels littering the place. So we spent a lot of the time just goofing off with color flashes.
Plus, we got to frog-climb all the way back up. Whee.
Not my pic, but at this point I couldn't hold a camera anymore:
I think I still have the taste of limestone dust in my mouth after this one.
Some friends decided that it was time to finally teach me how to learn to use a rope and harness (e.g. kill myself), and off we went, into the forests of a Parisian bedroom community whose parking spaces cost more than you and I will ever spend on a house. It's one of those awesome places that are probably thoroughly banal to the local crews, but still pretty magical, cheesy as that sounds, once you finally build up the network of people who show you their subterranean playgrounds.
I know nothing about this place, I don't even remember the exact location, except that it's a lot further down than the "5 meters" one of our crew claimed. Hah, French maths and measurements. I bet it's that keen sense of numerical understatement that led some hung over border guard in 1940 to report "a few lost German tanks, no problem, it's under control".
We ended up down (?) a more than 30 meter narrow limestone shaft, dropping into a huge vaulted set of tunnels once used to store wine in giant barrels. Many of them had collapsed due to rot, but there wasn't a single tag in sight. The only evidence that we weren't the first, by far, was a forlorn cata tract one of our guys found wedged in a rust-encrusted bit of electrical gear.
Because of the dust and crap, the photo conditions were abysmal, and we kept tripping over rusted hoops from the massive barrels littering the place. So we spent a lot of the time just goofing off with color flashes.
Plus, we got to frog-climb all the way back up. Whee.
Not my pic, but at this point I couldn't hold a camera anymore:
More, as usual, at kosmograd.net
