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My nephew "livin' it up" with Uncle Adam's carbide lamp

I will never cave with a carbide lamp again, it is just not safe for me. I burned myself the first time I used one. I was holding a rope, looked down to check my footing and EXTINGUISHED the flame with my wrist. OUCH never again. Does anyone have any good, bad or funny stories about their carbide lamp?

I'm sure you fell off your bike as a kid... Right? And got right back on the next day. Don't let one bad experience ruin carbide caving for you. Just remember not to stick your arm in the flame And by the way...

Adam U are right about the carbide caving rocks.. And way to get the young ones started off right.... with carbide.. Its the only way

tallgirl wrote:I will never cave with a carbide lamp again, it is just not safe for me. I burned myself the first time I used one. I was holding a rope, looked down to check my footing and EXTINGUISHED the flame with my wrist. OUCH never again. Does anyone have any good, bad or funny stories about their carbide lamp?

Just think about it this way, better to burn your arm than melt the rope.

Seriously, I'm almost exclusively electric these days, but there is something nice about the warm yellow glow of a carbide lamp.

I don't mind the smell of a carbide lantern and yes the glow is nice but I don't want one on my head or on the head of the person behind me. Sometimes I get the feeling people wear them to insure their place as leader of the pack because no one wants a flame near their bum in a crawl space.

And nor do I want someone's bum that close to my lamp... Unless of course they have an internal flash arrester

Love the flash arrestor idea!! Although I've been reworking my light system to all LED, (Sten + Fenix), I love my carbide and will continue to use it on occasion.
On the funny incident side..was pushing my helmet in front of me in a crawl (Pancake at PJ) and all of a sudden smelled burning hair....just part of the excitement of carbide.

If people have difficulty controling their body, then caves are not a place to be for them. Carbide lamps are evil and dangerous. Just like forks and other similar malefic objects. The only safe place to be is a bed. And that's also kinda dangerous: what to do not to fall off of it???:doh:

Seriously now, carbide lamps are the best way to get started and to fall in love with caves and the wonders that lie under our feet. Warm and diffuse light will surround things in an aura of mistery and make people a lot more comfortable with caving.

BUT: pollution is a...

dont let that stop u we all have done the same thing

ahh the pros and cons... Something about hanging on nylon a couple hundred feet above the floor with an open flame always seems ludicrous to me. Other then that the warm light is very nice. There is the hassle factor which is not so bad if the lamp is in good shape. I keep a few around... even have some carbide. I have been electric 8 years and just went L.E.D. One could always acquire some stage lighting filters and trim a piece of yellow to fit! Maybe I will take one of my carbide lamps into Buckner's next weekend just for old times sake! Oh, I guess I will use an old helmet too!

tallgirl wrote:Does anyone have any good, bad or funny stories about their carbide lamp?

You mean like having your cave pack "explode" in a "wooosh" when you get the flame too close to the pack full of carbide gas leaking from spent canisters in the pack?

My funniest story is using the lamp again after I became nearsighted and I was reading a cave map by looking over the top of my glasses so I could make out the small print. It was very close to my face. Then my daughter Margaret yelled, "Dad! The map's on fire!"

I forgot about the flame on my head and had ignited the top of the map.

I loved my carbide lamp but didn't like fussing with it all the time (it was a Premier I bought near from Donald Davis). I still enjoy smelling carbide. It reminds me of the "good old days."

Seen this twice. Back in the early eighties a guy was caving with two carbide lamps on a hockey helmet. One lamp flared up and was actually burning the gasket. He panicked and threw the helmet. When it landed one of the lamps must have broke open just right and it all caught on fire. I don't recall if he was able to salvage anything after the flames died down. Another time a lamp flared up almost the same way. This time however the person simply pulled the lamp off the helmet, set it down until the flame went out. Too much water too fast and dirty / cracked gaskets no doubt.

The hassle factor isn't a big deal to me. I've often used Justrite Streamlined lamps, but lately I've been sticking to my Mike Lite. After I figured out the lamp's personality, I've not had an issue.

As far as funny stories go, I read a dozen of them when I was doing the research for my carbide website. But I think my favorite was one I heard at NCRC. This was back in the day when all you had were carbides. These three newbies decided that they wouldn't carry individual dump bags, and instead they would all dump their carbide into a single plastic bag... an air tight plastic bag. Well... since they were new, they also were dumping their carbide early. The result was a huge buildup of gas in their bag.

Well, the trip leader had just come out of a crawling passage and was waiting for the newbies. Apparently, the guy with the dump bag got a very unwelcome carbide assist, as the open flame touched the bag, melted through it, and ignited the gas. The trip leader heard a huge *BOOM*, and the three guys staggered out.

The trip leader said to one of the guys, "Can you hear?" And the guy said, "YEAH, I'M HERE."

I may have told this story before, but back in 1978 Chuck Pease and I were with a Swiss team of 4 cavers in a winter expedition in Holloch in Switzerland. Our bivouac was 2 km from the entrance and about 500m below the mountains surface. Temperature was about 2-4C. In those days we all used carbide as we would be spending 4-6 days underground. The spent carbide was dumped in a pile at the bottom of a small canyon also used for a latrine. I know, I know, but that's how the European cavers did it back then. The theory being the spent carbide would chemically reduce the smell of the human waste.

Anyway, at the top of the canyon was the ledge where you stoop with your butt over the side and do your business. Hanging from the ceiling was a line with a stick at the end to hold a roll of toilet tissue. You also held onto this line while you were squatting for safety.

Well, I walked the 100m or so over to the latrine and noticed the line was no longer attached to the cave roof. Hmmmmmm...I looked down into the canyon (about 2m deep) and saw the white spent carbide had a pattern in it like someone had made a snow angel. Get the picture? The line was down there, too. Can you imagine the panic of the guy as he realized he was falling backwards into a pile of crap and spent carbide?

I went back to the bivouac where everyone was seated around a table drinking hot tea and asked who had fallen. No one would admit to and to this day the guilty party has not come forward.

We all had a good laugh about it, tho.