The Cave Explorer Who Never Panicked

Chris Nicola didn’t exactly know what the artifacts meant.

But when he stumbled upon cups, shoes and medicine bottles while cave exploring in western Ukraine more than three decades ago, he quickly realized they had to be part of a bigger story.

“Those objects were someone's life," he said. "They looked 60 or 70 years old."

Nicola discovered that the items belonged to more than three dozen Ukrainians who had hidden underground for a year-and-a-half during the Holocaust.

He made it his mission to track down the survivors — and ultimately turned his interviews into a National Geographic photo essay and the book "The Secrets of Priest's Grotto: A Holocaust Survival Story."

“The one thing I could never say was, 'I get it. I understand,'" Nicola said. "We had to earn their confidence and earn their trust."

Best of 7 spoke to Nicola about the overlap between his law enforcement background and cave exploration, making quick decisions without all of the facts, and the critical difference between fear and panic.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Chris, I know you mostly grew up in New York. How did a city kid get into cave exploration?

I had a drive as a teenager to get out of the city. I felt captive growing up. The country life had been snatched away from me, and I ended up living vicariously through TV shows like “Flipper” and “Sea Hunt” and reading Tom Sawyer. I longed for the outdoors.

I dropped out of college at 18. I moved down to Washington and became a police officer and a scuba diver and started diving the wrecks off of North Carolina. Twice a year, my cave club would have campouts in inland Florida. That's where I was introduced to underwater caves.

I'm curious — is there any overlap between the mindset required for law enforcement and the mindset necessary for cave diving?

You must entrust your life to another person in dangerous situations. You learn to delegate authority. You have to have faith in the people you work with. You protect each other. You’re in control, but you’re risk takers.

But there’s a key difference. If you’re working in a major metropolitan area, though there may not be an officer right next to you, you can get one to you in a few minutes. You know you can get a backup. In caving, you had to realize a situation may come where there’s nobody around. If you move the wrong way or make a wrong turn, you might as well be on the moon.

I would also imagine in both, you have to make split-second decisions without perfect information.

There are situations that call for quick responses and then situations that are mentally fatiguing. The quick reactions are tough, but training and practice can help you overcome those.

We used to go to Quantico to the FBI range, and quite often, they intentionally had sirens going. They’ve got flashing lights and they’ve got strobes because they don't want you to have tunnel vision in a situation. You have to learn to stay focused on your target but also be aware of what's going on around you.

How do you get your mind to revert to training when you may be panicking?

People have died in caving. People have died in scuba diving. People have died in mountain climbing. But I’m convinced that if someone did a statistical analysis of extreme sport activities, the fatalities are going to be greatest either in the first year, when novices overextend themselves, or the remaining few years when experts start doing things without thinking.

One technique I learned is when you’re exhausted and you’re in doubt, talk out what you’re doing. Your brain may want you to see something that isn’t there. But you touch and feel. You have to intentionally slow down.

What’s healthy fear in your eyes?

One particular category of people has always scared me. It's the guys who have been married for like 20 or 30 years and all of a sudden they're 55 or 60, and they want to do what they did as a teenager, where they felt immortal. My goodness, that's a scary situation.

I try to slow them down and explain to them fear isn't necessarily bad. Fear is your body's way of saying, “Hey, I'm valuable. Let's take a minute and think about how you can keep me alive and safe.” It’s not normal for someone who’s never gone in a cave, for example, to show up in a pit that's 300 or 400 feet deep.

You should be concerned about your life and the lives of others around you. That's healthy fear. Panic is when the fear goes to a certain extreme and you can't think clearly. That will get you, and sometimes the people around you, hurt.

What are the hallmarks of effective training in your eyes — whether in cave exploration or law enforcement?

You try to think of every situation that could occur, which is almost impossible, but you try to set it up where you're practicing in an environment that’s the closest thing.

I’ve led many caving trips, and people will say, “Chris is an expert with this cave.” But they don’t know how many times I got lost earlier. There’s a fine line between being an expert and a fool. An expert will make the mistake once and remember not to do it again. A fool continues to make the same mistake. They look at me like an expert.

Well, I've been lost in that cave dozens of times. But that’s how I know the cave.

Did finding the survivors and hearing their stories change your outlook on life in any way?

When I first made contact with the family members, there were 15 in 2002. Today, we're down to one. So now I’ve got another thing I'm dealing with: I'm grieving the absence of my friends.

But I’ve learned a number of things.

Life is nice. It’s valuable. I have a necklace I wear… I have on one side, “I am a part of all that I have met.” It's a quote from Tennyson from his poem Ulysses. I've added on to that. “And by us going on with our lives, those who helped make us who we are continue to live…”

I try to keep all these things in mind as I go forward.

What I learned…

Nicola’s point about knowing the intricacies of the cave because he’d been lost in it many times before reminded me of what boxer Ed Latimore said about “looking stupid” and “getting our egos dragged through the mud” before achieving something worthwhile.

“Before you know it, people are like, ‘How did you do that?’” Latimore said.

Accomplishing a daunting task typically requires a series of micro failures. The ability to maintain enthusiasm despite these is ultimately a critical differentiator.

Additionally, I think Nicola’s point about perceived invincibility being a major warning sign applies far beyond cave exploration.

Superior decision-making usually entails a recognition of risks and potential hazards. Refusing to acknowledge these can have dire consequences.

Whether in cave diving or coaching, self-awareness is a skill.