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Welcome to the Caving Stories Podcast. Episode two: Caught in the Squeeze. Three real cavers, held fast by the rock. Every story in this episode comes from Caving Stories on YouTube, where these stories are animated. Find the channel at youtube dot com, slash, at caving underscore stories.

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Ask cavers what frightens them most, and many won't say falling, or flooding. They'll say this.

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She went in headfirst, flat on her elbows, in the kind of crawl where there's no room to bring a knee up underneath you.

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The walls were limestone, polished smooth by hundreds of thousands of years of running water. It was narrow, but her shoulders fit, and so far, everything was going well.

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The first thing the passage asked of her was a climb. It came sooner than she expected, and the only way up was to roll onto her side and dig her boots into the lower wall for something to push against.

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Her helmet scraped the ceiling the whole way round. The chill of the rock soaked straight through her coveralls.

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Then the passage curved left. Not a corner you step around. A bend you pour your whole body through, like a pen tracing the curl of a question mark.

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Her right shoulder pressed one wall, her left hip pressed the other, and the way back was getting harder to see.

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Beyond the bend, the floor sloped down. Going downhill headfirst sounds easier. It isn't. With her chest flat on the stone, her own weight was doing the moving now, and that meant the passage set the pace, not her.

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Her breaths grew shorter. She could still hear her friends behind her, but their voices had gone faint and dull.

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And then the passage turned right.

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Every bend so far had set her body up for the next one. This one wanted the exact opposite. The slope had her tilted downward, the last bend had left her hips twisted to the left, and now she had to swing to the right.

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There wasn't room. Her right shoulder jammed against one wall, her left hip locked against the other, and her legs, still coiled into the shape of the last two turns, had nothing to push against, forward or back.

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The rock had fixed her in a position she could never have found on purpose, and could not now undo.

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Then the fear hit, all at once. Her heart raced, and the sums added themselves up. There was no move she could make that would get her out. Every attempt made it worse, because every direction open to her drove her deeper in.

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Walls that had been merely snug a minute ago now seemed to be closing. Her breath came in short bursts. Her headlamp beam trembled with her, and past its edge, the darkness seemed to creep closer.

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The cave holds at about fifty degrees Fahrenheit, all year round. She was sweating anyway.

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She tried to shout. But with her chest pressed into the floor, there was no air behind it, and the thin sound that came out was swallowed by the passage.

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Her friends were only about thirty feet back, and they had no idea. What they noticed was the time. She had been gone too long.

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They began calling her name, and their voices reached her long before hers could reach them. When she finally answered, it was faint, and what came back wasn't comfort. It was the sound of people realizing how serious this was.

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She had been in that passage a few minutes. She would be in it for four hours.

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Her friend waited at the entrance and watched her lie flat on the rock and ease herself into the gap.

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Within the first few feet, it went wrong.

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From outside, it had looked like a straight tunnel. It wasn't. A short way in, the crack swung hard to the right, ninety degrees, out of sight of the others.

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Kudo had to wrench her body around to follow the bend. She got her upper body round the corner, but her legs were left stretched out behind her in the old direction, twisting her into a painful angle.

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Then it got worse. Just past the bend, the crack closed in even tighter, right where her ribs met the rough rock. It took her only a moment to understand. She wasn't going anywhere.

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She couldn't move forward, and she couldn't move back. The limestone bit into her sides, and the squeeze on her chest made every breath hard work.

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She called out to her friends, trying to stay calm as the fear crept in.

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Kevin Shaw and another friend hurried over and tried everything they could think of. They talked her through small shifts in position, pulled gently on her feet, even pushed against her shoulders.

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Nothing worked. The bend had her, locked in a shape there was almost no backing out of.

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After several failed attempts, they knew they needed help from outside. And the cave, which sits at a steady fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit, had become a new threat.

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Pinned and unable to move, Kudo could lose body heat dangerously fast. That meant hypothermia.

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Shaw volunteered to go for help while the others stayed with her. He worked his way back through the winding cave as fast as he could, and called emergency services, explaining exactly what had happened and where Kudo was trapped.

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Rescuers were alerted quickly, including specialist cave rescue teams and medical crews trained for exactly this kind of emergency.

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Meanwhile, deep in the dark chamber, Kudo was getting worse by the minute. The rock had her ribs, and every breath was a fight. Her arm and hip were going numb where the cold stone pressed into her side.

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But the hardest part may have been in her head. The crushing dark, the tiny space, and the growing fear that she might never get out.

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At a quarter past two in the afternoon, the first rescuers reached the cave entrance. They split into teams and made their way toward the chamber where Kudo was still trapped.

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By three o'clock, the first team was at her side, and a paramedic checked her vital signs. She had been in the crack for close to two hours, and it showed, in her body and in her mind.

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The rescuers tried what her friends had tried. Pulling from different angles, using lubricant to ease the friction, gently rocking her body to work her loose.

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But twisted as she was, her ribs crushed against the narrowing rock, every technique gave back nothing.

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One at a time, the group turned sideways and slid through the gap, bending their bodies to fit between the tight stone walls. There were quiet groans as cold rock pressed on ribs and backs, but every one of them made it.

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All twelve ended up in the tunnel beyond, crawling ahead on hands and knees. Richard could watch them through the crack, moving about, with no idea what was coming.

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Then Richard turned sideways and squeezed into the gap himself. At once, the stone felt tighter than he remembered. His chest pressed against one wall, his back against the other.

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He kept going, stomach pulled in, an inch at a time. Then, halfway through, he stopped.

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The gap narrowed, only slightly, barely enough to notice. But it was enough. His hips, a few inches wider than his chest, would not go through.

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He tried to back out, but the angle had changed. Now he could go neither forward nor back. The stone held him like a vise. His chest was tight, and breathing was getting harder.

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Then it hit him, sharp and terrifying. He was stuck. Truly stuck. And on the far side of the crack, twelve people were cut off, deeper in the cave.

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Panic took him instantly. He could feel his heart pounding against the cold rock, each breath short and shallow.

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And then the worst truth of all. This was his fault. He had brought them here, and now his own body was the wall between them and safety.

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On the other side of the crack, the excitement vanished. A moment earlier they had been full of wonder. Now their faces froze as they understood their guide was stuck.

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Some couldn't move at all. Others shook. Two stayed calm enough to crawl back to the gap and check on him. Through the narrow crack they saw him, clamped in the stone, unable to move either way.

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The only person who knew the way out was trapped, and any feeling of safety was gone. If Richard couldn't free himself, who could help them?

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Up on the surface, Melissa Jones checked her watch. The group wasn't due back until three o'clock, more than three hours away. She sat in the spring sunshine with no idea of what was happening deep beneath her feet, glancing now and then at the entrance, expecting nothing unusual.

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But underground, time was starting to blur. The first thirty minutes were a frantic struggle. Richard twisted, pushed, and pulled, and every move made it worse. The rock squeezed tighter with each try, until his hips were anchored in the narrowest part of the gap.

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An hour went by. The panic began to ease, but something more dangerous was closing in. The cold. Inside the cave, the temperature never changes, and without movement to keep them warm, the group began to shiver.

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Even trapped and weakening, Richard tried to stay calm. He told them to huddle close to keep warm. But his own condition was getting worse. His legs hung limp beneath him, the pressure cutting off his circulation. And then came the tingling.

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Thanks for listening to the Caving Stories Podcast. If you want to see these stories animated, subscribe to Caving Stories on YouTube. Search for Caving Stories, or go to youtube dot com, slash, at caving underscore stories. See you underground.