I just read in Descent that British caver Jim Eyre has died. A bit of
Googling turned up the facts that he died on September 17 at the age
of 82. Jim was the author of a number of very nice caving books, the
most recent two being his caving biography. I strongly recommend both
of them, although they are not cheap. Speleobooks.com has them. Austin
cavers can borrow my copies. My reviews were published in the NSS
News, but I'm repeating them below.
It’s Only a Game. Jim Eyre. Wild Places, Cardiff, UK; 2004. ISBN
0-9526701-6-X.17 by 24 cm, 255 pp, softbound. £18.95 (about $35).
I had not had more fun reading a caving book since I read Jim Eyre’s
The Cave Explorers (1981), so I eagerly ordered this new book, though
not without noticing that I could have gotten a new five-hundred-page
hardbound novel by a best-selling author for considerably less money.
These are Jim’s stories from his life up to 1966, starting with his
first introduction to caving when he was sixteen. The book is
illustrated by a number of old photographs and many cartoons in Jim’s
unmistakable style.
About half of the book is devoted to Eyre’s service in the Royal Navy
during the Second World War and tales about weird customers he met in
his occupation as painter and paper-hanger. This material is no less
entertaining than the caving tales, as it appears that Jim spent much
of his time in the navy, when he wasn’t actually in jail, doing extra
punishment duty for assorted escapades either at sea, such as the
incident of the sheep in the officers’ wardroom, or ashore on leave.
The reader of this part of the book will have to be able to either
decipher or ignore a lot of period English slang terms, of which
“French letter” is perhaps the least mysterious. But my main question
about the language is what word could be so unprintable that it had to
be rendered “####” in a sentence that also contains the f word, fully
spelled out. Rated R.
After the war, Jim returned to caving in England, at a time and place
where caving transportation meant a friend with a motorcycle and high-
tech caving meant using straight-grained ash for the rungs on your
rope ladders. Included are stories about the early exploration of
Lancaster Hole and Ease Gill Caverns, to which Lancaster was connected
in the process of making Ease Gill 72 kilometers long. He was on the
first trip to use wire ladders in the 365-foot main shaft of Gaping
Gill, where his whistled commands to the belayers were misunderstood
and he climbed much of the way down with his belay rope, payed out
much too quickly, piled on his back. The adventures with breaking
ropes, collapsing scaling ladders, and flooding streams are hilarious,
and apparently they were to the participants, too, once they got to
the pub for the mandatory after-caving beer. Jim was also involved in
the beginnings of organized cave rescue, and he writes here about some
rescues from caves that flood at the least provocation. Also included
are some adventures while caving in France, and the book winds up with
visits to Slovenia in 1964 and 1966.
While I’m sure Jim Eyre must have been on many safe, boring trips, it
nevertheless appears that he and we are lucky he survived through the
period he covers here. He must be about 80 years old now, and I
certainly hope he survives to write the promised sequel. I can’t vouch
for the typically hyperbolic back-cover statement about sides aching
from laughing, but if you don’t chuckle out loud a few times, you must
be dead.—Bill Mixon
The Game Goes On. Jim Eyre. Wild Places, Abergavenny, United Kingdom;
2007. ISBN 978-0-9526701-7-9. 6.5 by 9.5 inches, 320 pages, softbound.
£22.50.
I bought a dozen books at the 2007 NSS convention, and this is the
first one I read when I got home. It is the second half of Jim Eyre’s
story of his adventurous life, the sequel to It’s Only a Game,
published in 2004 (see review in March 2005 NSS News). More hilarious
tales, mostly about caving, illustrated by many of Jim’s inimitable
cartoons of cavers with fat bums and knobby knees, as well as some
tiny photographs. The nineteen chapters include caving visits to
Greece, where he nearly bottomed on cable ladders the virgin Abyss of
Provatina, a 1326-foot shaft broken by a single snow-covered ledge,
and later did explore to the bottom of Epos Chasm, 1500 feet deep, of
which 1350 feet required the use of ladders. His visit to Mexico
included doing Golondrinas on rope and being stymied by a “hissing and
snarling” knot in El Sótano, where he concluded that Louise Hose is an
extraterrestrial after she did the pit twice. Also caving in Spain,
Iran, Turkey, and Bulgaria, which he reached by driving through
Czechoslovakia on roads strangely empty because the Russian army was
invading. And of course Great Britain, where he was involved in a lot
of scary digging and rescues. He wraps up with trekking in cold rain
in Himachal Pradesh state, northwestern India, at age seventy. Some of
the material is repeated from his 1981 book The Cave Explorers
(reviewed in the October 1981 News), but much is new, and anyway that
earlier book is now rare.
I remember drinking beer with Eyre one evening during the 1981
International Congress in Kentucky. The place was nearly deserted, as
most people had gone on a special trip to Mammoth cave that (the trip)
Eyre couldn’t go on because he hadn’t actually registered for the
congress and which (the cave) I’d seen plenty of before.
Unfortunately, few American cavers have met Jim, and that, combined
with the price of over $45, will mean that too few of us will read
this book. “The timeless caverns of the earth can never be fully
explored, but successive generations have and will continue to enjoy
plenty of fun and excitement pitting their wits against the cold black
spider that chuckles its watery laugh while waiting patiently for the
unwary to make a wrong move. So far, I have escaped.” And it’s a good
thing, too, for he lived to tell his tales.—Bill Mixon
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