Caving on the History Channel

[jumar]

From the NSS forum. This looks pretty cool! One of the guys in the rescue is Brandon Kowallis from Utah.
http://www.brandonkowallis.com/

All,

Last summer, Paul Burger and myself, along with climber John Climaco, hosted a TV show for the History Channel with the dubious title of "Journey to the Center of the Earth". We didn't get anywhere near the center of the Earth, but we did go to Naj Tunich Cave in Guatemala, which was a sacred cave for the ancient Maya.

The producers of the show were very conscientious and worked hard with us to make sure that a good caving ethic and safety message was given - they had a real desire to see a good product that cavers would be supportive of.

Unfortunately, during filming we had a significant incident and self-rescue. One of the members of the team failed to let the others know that they suffered from a medical problem that basically left them incapacitated ~420 feet down a 600 foot deep pit. With much help from Brandon Kowalis, John Climaco, Benjy and Dawn von Cramon and many of the film crew, we succeeded in pulling the injured caver out in ~21 hours.

The final TV show looks great, however the History Channel decided not to film any more because they said that NO ONE IS INTERESTED IN CAVES!!

Anyway, here is the trailer for it on Youtube - it's an unofficial version that was put up anonymously, so it has an unedited cuss word (be warned) and there was an issue figuring out how deep 420 feet was in floors. But you'll get the feel for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQWeVUB0MYM

The show will air June 25th at 10 PM on the History Channel. If you'd like to tell the History Channel whether you liked it and are interested in caves, maybe they'll make more. If you didn't - that'd be good to know as well!!

Enjoy,

Hazel