SHOW / EPISODE

Black Hills, South Dakota: Eighteen Hours at the Bend

Season 1 | Episode 10
4m | Oct 17, 2026

A cave on private land in the Black Hills of South Dakota, 7 and 8 October 2022: a young caver squeezes around a 90-degree bend in a passage nine inches high, and cannot come back through it. Cavers of the Paha Sapa Grotto bring wired field phones, hammer drills and webbing, forty minutes of crawling from the entrance. Eighteen hours later, he crawls out on his own. Told from the press accounts of the rescue.

The case: A cave on private land in the Black Hills, South Dakota, 7-8 October 2022.

On 7 and 8 October 2022, a young caver exploring a cave on private property in the Black Hills of South Dakota became stuck at a 90-degree bend, in a space about nine inches high, some forty minutes of crawling from the entrance. Cavers of the Paha Sapa Grotto and rescuers from Custer and Pennington counties worked through the night with hammer drills. After eighteen hours, he pulled himself free with webbing and crawled out under his own power.

Chapters

0:00 Nine inches

0:34 Private land

1:13 The call

1:54 A wire to the surface

2:21 The drills

2:53 The webbing

3:38 What the record says

Sources

Jason Ferguson, "Between a rock and a hard place", Custer County Chronicle, 20 October 2022 (Hill City Prevailer News)

Patrick Springer, "Cave explorer rescued after 18 hours stuck underground in Black Hills", InForum, 13 October 2022

KOTA Territory News, "Paha Sapa Grotto team rescues man from cave", 12 October 2022

Full transcript:

https://pub-413c1fc5107e439dbec7a1f1c322ed45.r2.dev/transcripts/ep10.vtt

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