ShowCaveBlog

Smoke Hole Caverns is located in West Virginia, U.S.A.. Lately it has been the target of an arsonist. The first fire burned on the evening of 10-NOV-2009 and destroyed the apartment area above the restaurant. The second fire on 11-NOV-2009 at 5:00 in the morning destroyed the building housing the restaurant and gift shop. Items found in a trash can, which was also set on fire, are evidence that the fires were set deliberately.
The cave itself remains open, although there is no restaurant and gift shop any more.
Fires at W.Va. cave attraction ruled arson

Not long ago we made a page about a new cave in the U.S.A. which was developed as a show cave and promised to become a great cave. We added comments about the difficulties to book a tour during the first years. And now it celebrates its tenth anniversary.
We were impressed how long ago this cave was opened, and started to check how old showcaves.com is. We will post a blog entry about this soon.
However, our congratulations to Kartchner Cavern which seems to be not only an impressive cave, but also a successful example of nature awareness and careful cave management.

Actually there are lots of comics with various topics. And there are even a few which include caves. Pretty funny is the Little Asshole comic of German Walter Moers, with one story telling about a guided tour through a show cave. The little asshole is able to annoy the guide in no time.
Now there is a new comic about caves, from a different genre. UNDERGROUND is a five issue color series about Park Ranger Wesley Fischer as she tries to save Stillwater Cave. Its a sort of crime story or thriller.
The comic is written by Jeff Parker, drawn by Steve Lieber, and colored by Ron Chan. It is not published yet, but as a preview the first issue may be downloaded in black and white as a pdf file from their website.

Oregon Cave will celebrate its 100th anniversary as a National Monument on 09-MAY-2009. Park guides will lead free cave tours all day.

The bats in the eastern States of the U.S.A. have a disease, which kills them by the thousands. It spreads across the States rapidly and its origin or modus operandi is unknown. The infected bats have a white nose, which is actually caused by a fungus growing in their face. It is unknown if the fungus is the cause or a result of the disease. But the disease was named White Nose Syndrome because of this. As a result of the epidemic spread of the disease, the wild caves in the whole area were now closed to the public and to cavers. The idea is to prevent the spreading by cavers who carry whatever causes the disease in their clothes or probably shoe soles.
This is actually a biologic topic, nevertheless there are some important points which are be important to any cave tourist:

1. At the moment show caves in the area are open to the public. Visitors do not get in direct contact with bats in such caves. However, this may change if the origin if the disease is further investigated.
2. All wild caves are closed, which includes all caves listed on showcaves.com for this area. Please respect the closure and do not enter those caves as long as they remain closed.
3. Spelunking tours will most likely be stopped too, but if you have booked or plan to book such trips you should contact the operator on this topic. If they take place we recommend to clean all equipment afterwards very careful before you visit another cave.
4. Foreign cave tourists, spelunkers and cavers who visit caves in the western United States should clean their clothes/equiment very careful before they return, do not spread the disease to your own country.

Obviously this are simple and basic precautions which are in effect as long as nothing is known about the disease.
For more info on the topic we recommend the Wikipedia page: White nose syndrome – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CSI is a hype at the moment, there seems to be a spin of off the popular tv series mothly. But this is not a spin off, not even a tv series. CSI is the abbreviation of Cave Science Investigators.
This is an educational program at Fantastic Caverns. A group of investigators probes a cave vandalism incident. The evidence is an empty soda can, a can of spray paint, a muddy footprint, a smear of blood and smashed cave formations.
This is the latest of a series of science education sessions which is offered by the cave administration for twelve years now. It is intended for schoolkids. The programs change every three years, so there is time left to attend the interesting and educational program.

On 24-SEP-2008 a cruise ship of Carnival Cruise Lines dropped anchor at the Belize coast. Their contracted tour operator, Bel-Cruise, offered day trips including a trip with cave tubing on Cave’s Branch River. The river was rather high this day, so the Institute of Archaeology (which is licensing the operators) issued a warning, but did not prohibit the tours. Most local tour companies canceled their trips due to the poor conditions, but not Bel-Cruise. So under the difficult conditions over 300 cruise ship passengers were participating the cave tubing. Almost at the end of the tour, strong currents pushed one tube toward the cave walls and a couple was sucked beneath the water. The man was rescued, his wife could not be reached in time and drowned. The guides attempted CPR but were not able to rescue her.

There are numerous tour operators at Caves’s Branch River. They are all licensed by the Institute of Archaeology, which is responsible for the area. The caves are important archaeologic sites, and the goal of the IOA is the protection of the site, not the enforcement of security regulations. However, they could have stopped the tours but did not. The responsible operators stopped their tours. We have listed only one operator, Cave’s Branch River Lodge on showcaves.com. We can’t actually tell if they are responsible, but we guess so.

Many people on discussion boards on the web tell about safety issues on the Bel-Cruise tours. There are people telling about groups without guides, lost in the cave and crying for help. Actually it is hard to tell if those stories are true.

Cave tubing is probably the most important day trip for Belize, so it is of enormous economic importance for the country. Members of the Belize Tourism Board (BTB), the Ministry of Tourism and Belize’s National Institute of Culture and History (NICH) met to improve safety precautions. The established mandatory protective policies, which are effective 15-OCT-2008, include:

1. The guide to guest ratio of 1 guide to 8 guests, as prescribed by law, will be enforced as a policy for use of the caves.
2. The Institute of Archaeology will install signs regarding policies that must be adhered to when using the cave system for tours.
3. The BTB will work in collaboration with NICH to increase the presence of Tourism Police in the area.
4. Staggered entrance to the caves will be implemented by the IOA.
5. All tour guides will have to complete a mandatory training course given by the IOA and the BTB before November 2009.

Most important is obviously the last point. The trainings include a 2-3 day theory course which will cover Caves and the Ancient Maya, Cave Safety, Cave Ethics, Cave Geology and Regulations for operating in caves and the penalties that will be levied if policies are not adhered to. A five day course will cover Swift Water Rescue, Advanced First Aid and Cave Rescue. For security reasons the second one is much more important, hopefully this is the mandatory part.

As a matter of fact river caves are always dangerous, cavers know this. Most of the spectacular accidents of the last years happened in connection with flooding caves. So we are not really sure why all this regulations, which are somewhat basic, were not in effect before. On the other hand, they will not prevent further accidents, although they will make them less likely and hopefully optimize the rescue efforts if something happens.

We have listed many dangerous cave trips on showcaves.com, we try our best to warn and we hope our visitors have some common sense to decide what they do. We actually recommend dry trips, which are offered too in Belize. Such tubing experiences are only for physically fit people, which are good swimmers, not for couples from Orlando, Florida, in their fifties, who think it was as comfortable as a boat cruise down the Mississippi on a steamer. At the end, everyone is responsible for his own life, and white water rafting of any kind is definitely a recreational activity where accidents happen, above and below ground.

There is a website operated by the New7Wonders Foundation which is actually a huge poll. More than one hundred million people have already voted for a ranking of world wonders. Now there is a new vote for seven wonders of nature, which means a sort of ranking for biotopes, geotopes and so forth.

We do not know if this is an altruistic initiative or just a way to collect millions of addresses. Please decide yourself if you want to vote.

However, we were astonished today as we learned that many of the top ten ranks are actually karst related. There is Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park currently on rank 1, a river cave located on the Philippines, then there is Ha Long Bay in Vietnam, which is actually a flooded tower karst with abundant caves, the Chocolate Hills on the Philippines is also a tower karst area with many caves, Ali Sadr Cave is a show cave in the Iran. This means four of the first ten on the list are karst related. Not too bad….

This is only a snapshot of 01-OCT-2008. For an actual list look at:
 The top 77 candidates of the New7Wonders of Nature Nominees

The glossy book has 32 pages and was written by four men. Chris George is the manager of the caves, Mike Augee is biologist and fossil enthusiast, Bruce Welch is caver, and George Dewar the photographer who made the pictures. The book, simply named Wellington Caves, was officially launched at the Wellington Library last Saturday. It is now available for $4.95 at the caves kiosk.

 Magura is located in Bulgaria near the town of Belogradchik. The municipality has now won a fund for a renovation project from the EEA, an organization which is backed by the EU plus Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. The 400,000 Euros of the fund will finance archeological excavations around and inside the cave and the restoration of some of the prehistoric drawings dating back to 8000 BC. The project also includes the construction of six platforms inside the cave which will allow a view on the excavations and will also have an exhibition of ancient artifacts found in the cave. The works will start in 2009 and will take 18 months.

The municipality is also submitting the cave to be inscribed into the UNESCO World Heritage List.

More at Bulgaria’s Cave “Magurata” Renovated with EUR 400 000 from EEA