ShowCaveBlog

Showcaves.com is now 15 years online. The first descriptions of caves and the collection of useful information was made around 1990 by Jochen Duckeck, first for the new show caves in eastern Germany, which became accessible after the border was opend in November 1989.
The first idea to publish a guidebook was never realized: printing books was expensive and impossible to finance by a student. The first online version was created in 1994 with the tool latex2html from the original LaTeX book. So actually showcaves.com went online 15 years ago.
In this early times it was hosted on the webserver of the FORWISS in Erlangen, the company where Jochen Duckeck worked at this time. It listed 55 show caves in Germany and started with the first caves in other countries.
In 1995 the site was hosted by the new company of Jochen Duckeck, the small internet company mediatec. Finally in 1998 the website was moved to bubis.com, and 2002 it got its own domain showcaves.com, hosted by domainfactory. And that is where it is hosted until today.
Today showcaves.com lists almost 3,500 underground tourist sites or subterranea, including show caves, show mines, cellars, bunkers, tunnels and much more.

After our last blog some minutes ago, we mentioned that there was no entry since July, almost half a year without show cave news. Actually we are not dead, the site is still maintained and the blog still lives. However there was not a single story which fit into this blog all this time.

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.

The underground power plant of a gunpowder factory was opened in 1927, between the World Wars. It was built underground in the fear of another war, which was obviously realistic. And gunpowder is an important good during war times. Underground the plant was both: covered up and hidden from the enemy, and protected against air strikes.
The plant was closed in 1972 and replaced by a oil fueled plant on the surface. The equipment was sold as waste metal in the late 1990s. Now the current owner, chemicals firm Nitrokemia Zrt, tries to sell the underground structure.
The underground power plant is located near Balatonfuzfo, at central Europe’s biggest lake, the Balaton, 110km west of the capital Budapest.
It consists of three huge halls with concrete walls, in two storeys. Four coal furnaces the size of a small bus fed two power generators. This place was so hoot, the worke only wore their underpants.
The entrance into the plant is an unassuming office block. First a spiral staicase, then a steep concrete tunnel, lead down to the iron gallery high on the wall of the first hall. The power plant burned up to 275,000 tonnes of coal a year.

For Sale: Vintage underground Hungarian power plant | Lifestyle | Reuters

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.

Scientists in Alaska discovered moonmilk in a cave. Sounded weird to us, as moonmilk is a rather common speleothem found in many caves. However, the article Southeast cave life chews through rock tells this.
We thought a while about this and what we guess is, the news interpretation shows simply that the writer did not understand the scientists.
Moonmilk is a white dripstone which contains a lot of tiny blisters, as a result it is light, full of water and rather soft. It seems the scientists found out that microorganisms are essential for its formation, and actually there are various theories how moonmilk is formed, and none is very good. The connection with microorganisms has been guessed before, but as far as we know there have been no successful examinations which support this theory so far. We will have an eye on future publications, actually this is an interesting topic.

The site of the abandoned Toburn Mine in Kirkland Lake in Canada will be transformed into a tourist site. The idea is to rent out some of the buildings to earn some money, which then will be spent to create a sort of information center for tourists and to clean the site.
As far as we understand it will not become a classical show mine with underground tours. It will be a passive site with signs and plates and probably trails. There will be no personnel or guides on site.