Bluegrass Underground 2012 is actually a series of concerts held underground in Cumberland Caverns. It uses the huge chamber called Volcano Room, where stage and stairs are erected. The events are broadcast on Bluegrass Underground TV and on the web.
For more info see their website or search YouTube.
At the moment there is an exhibition at the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (Museum of Natural History of Vienna), organized by the Cave and Karst Department. It is called Höhlen – Landschaften ohne Licht (Caves-Landscapes Without Light) and show the cave images of the most famous cave photographers. The exhibition shows stalactites and stalagmites, interactive installations, short presentatiosn of current research projects, an audiovisual room, an introduction into the drinking water system of Vienna, and an overview of the 28 show caves of Austria.
The exhibition was opened 29-SEP-2010 and will end in summer 2012.
In May a 3D photo exhibition with the name Underground of Enchantment will open at the Carlsbad Museum and Art Center. It shows 3d pictures of Lechuguilla Cave, located in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Many of the photographs are from David De Roest, a Belgian photographer who specializes in 3D images. But there are also pictures of microbiologists working on discoveries from the cave as well as photographs from other caves.
Underground of Enchantment will open Saturday 07-MAY-2011, at the Carlsbad Museum and Art Center and will run through the summer. In autumn the exhibit will travel around New Mexico, Colorado and West Texas for 10 months. During summer 2012 the exhibit will be shown in the Visitor Center of Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
The newest novel in the Ayla series of author and archaeologist Jean M. Auel is named The Land of Painted Caves. The book is intended as the final novel of the series, the sixth and last installment, and tries to fix all the open ends.
The Earth’s Children series started with The Clan of the Cave Bear more than 30 years ago. It tells the story of the Cro Magnon girl Ayla which looses his parents in an earthquake and is adopted by a clan of neanderthals. But soon Ayla discovers that she is different and she has to leave the clan. Living in exile she makes friend with a horse and a dog, then she meets a Cro Magnon man from France, and travels with him across Europe meeting different cultures until they finally reach the Vezere river in France with its high population and culture. The newest book tells about her family life, the culture and believes of the people 20,000 years ago in the Dordogne.
What Auel does is simple: she uses the archaeologic knowledge to construct the background, then she tells all the details in a stirring story. As a result the readers learn a lot about the Palaeolithic while reading a novel. This strategy is actually not new, it was used by British historians in books about the Middle Ages, like Ivanhoe or books on the King Arthur legend. Inspired by such historic novels, the first novel of a stone age story was Rulaman by David Friedrich Weinland.
Much of the details in such books are speculation, we actually do not know about the religious belief of that time, we just interpret the findings with the knowledge from anthropologic examinations of still existing stone age cultures. So the book is actually a speculation. And as it is a vehicle to explain archaeologic knowledge, Ayla the heroine is the one who makes all the new inventions of the era, inventing the needle with a hole, domestication of animals, hunting techniques, and much more. Probably a drawback to the story, but a great way to speculate how important inventions were made.
Caves are popular in movies, generally as creepy places and home of monsters, or ideal to tell a lost and found story. But very few movies have caves as main topic. This year two great movies appear, both with a cave as the main topic. And both are filmed in 3D.
The first is Cave of Forgotten Dreams, made by Werner Herzog. It is actually a documentary, but its a full size movie. Herzog does not believe in 3D, but he thought it was the only way to document the placstic paintings and reliefs of the Cave Chauvet in the Ardeche Valley in France. This cave is one of the most famous art caves and not open to the public, so this movie is the best was to have a look.
The second movie is totally different, the cave diving action movie Sanctum by James Cameron. The story is based on a dive by an Australian cave diver and friend of Cameron. But the result is a simple story about deadly cave with extraordinary 3d pictures of caves.
We could not find info on Floyd Collins, a movie about the death of the cave explorer Floyd Collins, who got trapped in Sand Cave in Kentucky during the Cave Wars. The movie is produced by Billy Bob Thornton, and is still listed as “in development” on imdb.com. Will probably be released later this year.
The Dinosaur Caves Park is located at Pismo Beach, California. It is a sea cave which was once operated as a show cave. Today it may be visited freely by kayak.
The cliff and the cave is a result of the erosion by the sea. This causes frequent collapses, a process which keeps the walls of the cliff steep. But as result the cliff line “moves” back. At Dinosaur Caves Park it has now reached the walkway on top of the cliff, so about 35m of the walkway had to be closed.
The public attention and the idea to protect the cliff by installing sea walls is actually a bad idea, as the erosion is the process which produces the cliff and the beach and cave below. We recommend to move the trail and benches instead.
The show mine Soudan Underground Mine in Soudan, Minnesota, U.S.A., is temporarily closed after a fire on 13-MAR-2011. It is not clear what actually happened, but it seems the wooden frames of an elevator shaft catched fire. As a result the electricity failed and the pumps went out. The mine and the physics lab were inaccessible and are now closed indefinitely.
The lowest level, level 27 of the mine, is used by a physics lab. This laboratory contains equipment with a value of some 100,000,000 USD. So the first goal was to reestablish electricity for the pumps, which was done 23-MAR-2011. The laboratory is now save from water, but foam from the firefighting has reached the lab and it is unclear if it damaged the equipment.
Both the show mine and the lab tour are closed indefinitely. It seems there is a lot of work to do, to restore the mine. Also officials told they want to investigate the reason of the fire before they reopen the mine.
That’s pretty rare: a show cave which is evacuated.
A burning car in Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks caused a small vegetation fire on Friday 02-JUL-2010 around 13:30. The fire was reported immediately and four National Park Service fire engines and 13 firefighters responded to the fire. Law enforcement officers closed the Generals Highway through the park for about three hours. The fire was extinguished pretty soon and the burned car was removed around 17:00.
The evacuation of Crystal Cave was a precaution, a part of the park service procedure for fires.
Norwich is said to have the UK’s largest amount of subterranea, mostly medieval, vaulted cellars. Norwich Heritage Economic and Regeneration Trust (Heart) has commissioned a researcher to explore them. The goal is obviously to make them available to the public. This may include both, an underground sight open to the public, and online documentation of closed cellars. During the annual Heritage Open Days there were tours through a small section of the cellar, which were very popular. However, it seems the extend of the cellars is almost unknown, and there are a lot of rumors, for example one telling of a tunnel from the Cathedral to St Andrew’s Hall, which monks are supposed to have used to go and do inappropriate things with women. Such stories are fun, but they are rarely true…
We are pretty much astonished. This cave was closed to the public years ago, then opened on a very limited basis and finally a replica was built and inaugurated by the Spanish King. Then the cave was closed completely.
Now the Spanish ministry of culture had news for all tourists and art lovers: the original Altamira cave will be reopened! It seems it recovered too god from the further damages to keep it closed. Unlike Lascaux, which is probably already destroyed, Altamira has no problems with fungi or other threads. They did not give exact numbers but it sounded that the cave will be reopened on the limited basis it was before: a maximum of 160 visitors per day and a maximum time inside the cave per visitor. And we guess there will again be a reservation required, three years in advance…