Beneath the Cloud Forests

A History of Cave Exploration in Papua New Guinea

Introducing Howard Beck's historical account of adventure and exploration in one of the world's last remaining wild places: the primordial jungles of Papua New Guinea and the strange realm of the caverns that lay hidden beneath them.

Beck's account is the only one of its kind in the English language, and the most complete record of speleological explorations in Papua New Guinea published to date. It recounts over three decades of exploration into New Guinea's remote, jungle-laden interior, where some of the longest and deepest underground systems in the Southern Hemisphere were to be discovered by some of the late Twentieth Century's most accomplished speleologists.

"Since 1965, over 30 international caving expeditions have been fielded throughout New Guinea...
The story unfolds like a drama, a compelling narrative of survival both above and below ground. The fortunes of its principal characters - the speleologists, their native guides and porters, and the pilots who risked their necks in the cloud-shrouded mountains - are punctuated with a bittersweet mixture of success, disappointment, elation and disaster at the frontier of the known world."
- Howard M. Beck