ShowCaveBlog

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.

• Underground of Enchantment – Lechuguilla Cave
  (visited: 27-MAR-2011)
• States of the United States of America: Carlsbad Caverns National Park
  (visited: 27-MAR-2011)
• Caves of the United States of America: Lechuguilla
  (visited: 27-MAR-2011)

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.

• Where I write: Jean M. Auel works late in her Southwest Portland condo | OregonLive.com
  (visited: 27-MAR-2011)

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.

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

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.

Okay, this might not be an option for tourists in the next decades: visiting a show cave on Mars. Nevertheless its a fascinating thing. Many scientists now believe in the existence of caves on Mars, some years ago this was a new idea, first postulated by the great Herbert W. Franke.

After some years the NASA has officially accepted the idea and lately they created a 10-member team spending one month in Chile’s Atacama desert to develop techniques for discovering and studying caves on Mars. They will visit lava tubes and salt caves similar to those expected on Mars. The caves will be mapped and sensors planted, to develop techniques for discovering and studying caves on Mars. (Probably they should ask a caver…)
 Planetarium official to take part in NASA cave project | www.rgj.com | Reno Gazette-Journal

I guess cave news have to be dramatic, to be published by newspapers outside the speleologic scene. A fatalty helps. But I am astonished that during the last months various cave accidents were reported (there was a post on this blog in December…). This included the death of a woman, who visited the UNESCO WHL site St Paul Subterranean River and was killed by a rock falling from the cliff face of the cave entrance. There was the dramatic death of a whole spelunking tour group including guides, except for one British woman who climbed up a shaft. They were trapped by a flood caused by monsoon rains. Stupid to visit a river cave during monsoon.
But there was also the story about four Texan cavers who went to a bar and forgot to report back, so while they drank beer the cave rescue went into the cave to search for them. A small boy of the age of 8 rescued a calf from a cave, which was too narrow for adults. And four cavers were missing for a day and then found without a scratch, but exhausted and unable to climb out the entrance pit. The resue took a day. My general impression with all those news is: more caving news are published than in the last years. Probably there is a lack of other news?

As a caver I am not sure if I like this. There is always the possibility that spectacular rescues will cause a higher frequency of wild cave tours, because of the publicity. This causes more accidents and cave destruction. On the other hand the work of the cavers, including scientific work and cave conservation, works better if people already know a little about caves.

However, I decided not to publish any further post where I simply rewrite cave accident stories. If you are interested, I can warmly recommend the Norbert Casteret book, where he collected caving accidents from prehistoric days to the 1950s. A good read is also the U.S.A. Cave Acident Report, which was published with the last volume of the NSS News. Mine was stiched in upside down, but after I managed this it was a pleasant read.

This week seems to be a bad week for cavers, dozens of articles in the world news about cave rescues:

• 30-NOV-2007: 4 explorers were trapped on the Phillipines, in a cave near the town Balamban, 63km northwest of Cebu City (Explorers trapped in Balamban cave)
• Seven persons in Jammu, India, were rescued by army and police after they were missing for five days (7 civilians rescued from Rajouri cave)

The first accident became rather prominent as one of the team members died in the vertical cave, only a few meters from the exit. Now officials halucinate about strict regulations for cave exploring. Unfortunately such blind actionism generally results in massive restrictions for cavers without any impact on general security. Lets hope they stay cool, for the sake of all true cavers.

Kubla Khan cave – located at Mole Creek – is one of Australia’s most pristine caves. To protect the formations and the cave biota visits are restricted to cave scientists doing research, and of those only 12 groups each year are allowed. And they are accompanied by a guide who makes shure the cave is not damaged.

Some days ago, probably during the last week of September, the cave gate was opened and removed with heavy machinery. The destruction was discovered on Sunday 30th September 2007. This must have been pretty strenuous, as the cave is more than half an hour walk from the next road, through thick shrubs and uphill.

As the gate was stolen, but the cave was fortunately not vandalized, it was probably for the metal. But despite the currently high commodity prices, we guess the revenue for the thieves is pretty low, and it will be significantly more expensive to build a new door.

The local police asks for informations concerning the vandalizm.

Nine tourists and two guides were missing in Geofizicheskaya Cave, Altai Territory, Siberia. It seems they entered the cave but did not return in time. After some time they managed to leave the cave on their own. They had problems to return, after the cave was partially flooded due to heavy rains in the area.
Geofizicheskaya Cave (Geophysics Cave) is one of the deepest caves of the Altai regions, up to 130m deep. This is not much compared to the deepest cave on Earth, which is located nearby in Georgia. This cave is famous for the two meter high hollow gypsum stalagmites, which are found in Sinilga Passage. And there is one of the biggest chambers in the area. We are a little astonished, this cave is called a show cave. We guess there are organized spelunking tours for tourists.