Using 16mm motion picture (colour and BAV) and 35mm stills, Navidson for the first time begins to capture the size and sense of that place. Author Denise Lowery writes the following evocative impression of how Navidson photographs the Anteroom:

The hot red flame spits out light, catching on Tom, entwining in the spokes of Reston's wheelchair, casting Shape Changers and Dragons on a nearby wall. But even this watery dance succeeds in only illuminating a tiny portion of a corner. Navidson, Tom and Reston continue forward beneath those gables of gloom and walls buttressed with shadow, lighting more flares, penetrating this world with their halogen lamps, until finally what seemed undefinable comes forth out of the shimmering blank, implacable and now nothing less than obvious and undeniable—as if there never could have been a question about the shape, there never could have been a moment when only the imagination succeeded in prodding those inky folds, coming up with its own sense, something far more perverse and contorted and heavy with things much stranger and colder than even this brief shadow play performed in the irregular burn of sulfur—mythic and inhuman, flickering, shifting, and finally dying around the men's continuous progress. ¹⁹⁹

Of course, the Great Hall dwarfs even this chamber. As Holloway reported in Exploration #2, its span approaches one mile, making it practically impossible to illuminate. Instead the trio slips straight through the black, carefully marking their way with ample fishing line, until the way ahead suddenly reveals an even greater darkness, pitted in the centre of that immense, incomprehensible space.

In one photograph of the Great Hall, we find Reston in the foreground holding a flare, the light barely licking an ashen wall rising above him into inky oblivion, while in the background Tom stands surrounded by flares which just as ineffectually confront the impenetrable wall of nothingness looming around the Spiral Staircase.

As Chris Thayil remarks: "The Great Hall feels like the inside of some preternatural hull designed to travel vast seas never before observed in this world." [79]

Since rescuing Holloway's team is the prime objective, Navidson takes very few photographs. Luckily for us, however, the beginning of this sequence relies almost entirely on these scarce but breathtaking stills instead of the far more abundant but vastly inferior video tapes, which are used here mainly to provide sound.

Eventually when they realize Holloway and his team are nowhere near the Great Hall, the plan becomes for Reston to set up camp at the top of the stairway while Navidson and Tom continue on below.

Switching to Hi 8, we follow Navidson and Reston as they react to Tom's announcement.

"Bullshit," Navidson barks at his brother.

"Navy, I can't go down there," Tom stammers.

"What's that supposed to mean? You're just giving up on them?"

Fortunately, by barely touching his friend's arm, Billy Reston forces Navidson to take a good hard look at his brother. As we can see for ourselves, he is pale, out of breath, and in spite of the cold, sweating profusely. Clearly in no condition to go any further let alone tackle the profound depths of that staircase.