Going Caving Tomorrow

[Lord Nepenthean]

Tomorrow (Saturday the 11th) Eddie and I are going caving in Rockcastle County, Kentucky.  It should be a fun trip.  I've been going caving since I was six or seven, but haven't gone as often the last few years as I used to.

My dad has been a member of the Cincinnati Cave Grotto for years, so when he renews his membership I'm finally going to join as well.  It's something I should have done a long time ago.

So do we have any other cavers here?  Since that's doubtful, anybody else who has gone caving even once before?  (Mammoth cave and electric-lit tours do not come close to counting.

I'm going to take my camera down tomorrow, but I'm not sure if it will go in the cave with me....  it depends if we end up going in a wet or dry cave, really.  Talk to you kids late Saturday night, maybe with photos.  Ciao.

[St0rmTK421]

Yup, getting up bright and early tomorrow at 5:30 to start the trip.  I'll be bringing my camera as well, so hopefully we'll have some interesting photos to post when we get back.

[den68]

caving? I thought it was called spelunking.

[Arrrhalomynn]

Isn't that a surprise, only one reply in the topic and Den already starts with a homosexual reference. *sigh*

What kind of caves are you going to see? I remember being in a cave in France once, when I was very little. There aren't many caves in the Netherlands, it's basically all mud.

[den68]

excuse me?

spelunker  n.
One who explores caves chiefly as a hobby; a caver.

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[From obsolete spelunk, cave, from Middle English, from Old French spelunque, from Latin splunca, from Greek splunx.]
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spelunking n.

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

I was gonna say that^.

[St0rmTK421]

As promised, pictures from the trip can be found here:

http://www.venturecrew42.org/id4.html

Just click on the Cave Trip link.  Sorry I'm too lazy to repost them on the board

[Lord Nepenthean]

Me


Me on the right


Me in the middle with the map


I'm in the middle with the blue helmet (the only one not smiling). Eddie is below me in the gray and red shirt.


The trip was pretty fun overall.  It was a really easy cave, which was good for the group we were with since there were some beginners with us.  Unfortunately, the cave has been trashed over time.  Some of the people in our group didn't make things better since I saw them touching the rimstone dams and flowstone, but that's partially because the trip "leader" obviously had no idea himself.  Thankfully, most of the pristine caves are still kept good secrets and are on private land.  Mostly, the owners only allow people who they know they can trust go into them.  I hope it stays this way, since with an inexperienced group who has little knowledge of the process of cave formation, millions of years of geological formation can be stunted permanently in an instant.

Caving is awesome, though.  Most areas in the U.S. have grottoes that you can join if you're interested in getting involved in it.  The closer to Kentucky you are, the better.  There are probably thousands of caves in the state, and at least hundreds in the single county we visited.  All of the caves in Kentucky are limestone caves formed by the movement of water through the rocks over millions of years.  There are also a lot of sinkholes in the area.  This is typically called a "carst" geological zone or system.  As the water table rises and drops, different "levels" of the caves form.  Once you have a "dry" level, water still drips down through it from the surface and/or streams.  Where this happens, limestone particles in the water are deposited on the rock and form stalactites, stalagmites, "bacon," flowstone, rimstone dams, columns, and other formations.    Blah, blah, blah boring cave talk.  If you want more info, I can talk about this stuff for hours and hours.

There are also a lot of caves in Mexico, some in the southwest, and some scattered all over the world.  There are a few in Ohio, too.  If you're in the South Dakota area, I highly recommend taking a trip to Wind Cave and Jewel cave.  They are both near each other, and though they haven't finished mapping either one, they expect both will dwarf Mammoth Cave in terms of total length of underground passages.  Jewel Cave in particular has some very unique "box" formations, which if I remember correctly are only known to exist in one other cave in the world.  That one might be in France somewhere, though I really don't know.  Florida also has a lot of caves, but most of these are underwater caves.  Underwater caving is literally the most dangerous "sport" in the world.  A higher percentage of people die doing it than any other sport.  So, I don't recommend doing it.  (I never have and probably never will.)  All of the caves around the country I've been to were really cool, but Kentucky is one of the best places to be.  The carst geology of the area is perfect for a RIDICULOUS concentration of caves.  Every year, people go "ridge walking," which basically means walking along mountain ridges looking for caves.  It seems like they find a few new ones every year.

I need to do this more often....  a lot more often.

[Izret101]

That looked like alot of fun. Sucks about the graffitti in there though.
Also was this just a huge pit in the cave?

[Lord Nepenthean]

I'm guessing that was just a regular passageway/tunnel.  Eddie took the photo, but that's my guess.  One of the problems with cave photography is that unless you take a bunch of lighting equipment in with you, you're left with having to use a flash most of the time.  Of course, the max distance on most flashes is about fifteen feet, which is a lot less than the length of many passages.  That's probably why that photo is so dark towards the back.

I didn't take my camera or tripod into this cave because it was wet and I was nervous about taking a $500 digital camera into a cave on a very wet day.  The camera would have been fine and I regret not taking it in.  Hopefully I'll be back down there at another cave within a month or two and can get some cool photos then.

[St0rmTK421]

That picture is just of a passageway. You're looking horizontally so you can basically just walk or crawl straight ahead, which we probably did.

[Sauza12]

We don't have too many caves around here.  I've always kind of wanted to do that, but I don't want to drive far.


btw, when I first saw this topic I started laughing my ass off because the only other time I've heard of someone refering to "going caving", it was code for banging the bar slut.  |D

[Lord Nepenthean]

Yeeeeeah, that's not quite what I mean.  I assume you deducted that already though.  As for the lack of caves in MI (and most of Ohio), I too dislike it.  Fuck glaciers.

[Hydrobond]

Fuck glaciers.

Well, they did give Cincinnati its hills, so I like them.

[Lord Nepenthean]

Kind of.  We would have had mountains instead.