OUCC Proceedings 12 (1986)

Speleostatistics

OUCC Proceedings 12 contents

OUCC Proceedings Index

OUCC Home Page

by Gerhard Niklasch

The average '85 expedition member spent 700 hours away from home, viz. 140 hours as a female and 560 hours as a male. This first classification is not particularly illuminating, so let's be a bit more specific. A total of 140 hours went into travelling there and back, which leaves 560 hours in and around the expedition area. These can be classified as follows:

The time underground can be subdivided further according to the type of trip (where I've counted abortions as what they were intended for - the same applies to the "carrying" and "moving" entries above):

and "scientific work" splits up into:

Add it up and (surprise, surprise) no less than 63 hours remain unaccounted for. Most of these probably come under the heading "festering". The precise use each person made of them is so varied that you'd better pick your own selection from the following list of suggestions (delete when not applicable and tick when substantial - due to possibility of overlap you may end up with more than 63 hours):

Notes.

  1. These statistics are reliable 'cos I faked them myself.
  2. To simplify calculations, I've assumed 30 members and active guests, e.g. by including Steve D. and John S. but omitting Lesley, or (equivalently) counting each of them as 2/3.
  3. Total manhours are thus obtained by multiplying the above figures with 30, e.g. 1800 manhours caving in total. To obtain manhours per day per member, divide by 23.3, e.g. 2 hours 42 minutes festering per person per day.
  4. A total of 7.5 mandays for dye detecting may seem absurdly low. But bear in mind that each Culiembro-trip also induces large contributions to shopping, eating, tourist caving, bathing, admiring, taking pictures, dozing and occasionally even sleeping....