Stayed Underground For Two Months

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29931, 19 September 1962, Page 9

Stayed Underground For Two Months

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright)

NICE. September 17. Pale and emaciated, Michel Siffre. aged 23, his eyes hooded from the sunlight, came out of the ground today after a world's record for underground endurance. The slightly-built Siffre emerged cold, wet and dirty from 1500 hours alone 420 feet down in the French Alps “It is good to see the sky again.” he said with emotion “Alone there at the bottom I cried and sometimes wept uncontrollably.” Siffre entered the Scarasson Cave in the Massif du Marguareis. on the FrenchItalian border on July 16. He took with him a tent, a chemical heater, books on cave exploration and a tape recorder, and camped out on an underground glacier in temperatures of 23deg Fahrenheit and humidity of 100 per cent. His only link with the outside world was a one-way telephone, which enabled him to speak to colleagues, but could not be used to reach him. During the last few days of his ordeal. Siffre suffered dizzy spells and lost all notion of time. On Saturday, when a team arrived to take him out, he still believed it was only the middle of August.

He was so weak that the rescue team bringing him up had to stop from time to time to let him rest. A doctor who examined Siffre found he was physically weak, but otherwise 1 satisfactory. He was flown to Paris late today for tests by doctors and psychologists to see what effects his stay underground had had on him. The glacier is hundreds of thousands of years old and the only known prehistoric glacier underground. The previous underground endurance record was set by a team of Italians who Stayed below 700 hours—just under 30 days.