Caving

Dave Shepard

Dave Shepard

Square peg, round world.
Joined
Oct 28, 2007
Messages
6,641
Location
Alford, MA
There's been a pack of cavers in the area lately. They stopped here to ask if they could poke around our sink holes. There are a lot of areas where a small stream will go under ground and come out somewhere else, often a several hundred yards away. There is limestone ledge in most of my valley, with occasional deposits of marble. There is a large cave Called Devil's Den about a mile to the north of me. I guess they went down in and poked around and found a rock that they could shift and added another 150' of accessible cave to the map. I'll see if I can take a pic of the original map. It's pretty cool stuff, but, alas, I can't go subterranean.:lol:
 

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  • #3
I'd like to know if the cave was named before, or after, the survey drawing. Looks pretty cool.
 
Dave Shepard said:
I'd like to know if the cave was named before, or after, the survey drawing. Looks pretty cool.
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Spooky. :evil:

I'll go into the tourist-ee kind of caves, but those others scare me to death. When I was in highschool we would sneak out and go to the caves under the Mandota bridge. They kept cementing them in, but kids would always break through. Lotsa rumours and myths....always dark....indoor cliffs....rapes...death...the list went on. Always the rumbling from the trucks above.
 
I have been watching Planet Earth on DVD, the one on caves is pretty cool. I'd do it all except the squeezes.
 
Caving sounds like it would kick ass. Chuck a rope down a hole and rap in Rambo style. I'd take a couple good lights and a gun. Don't forget the Rambo knife.
 
i would like to rappel into a hole but then not go any deeper into the cave. ON Trails you get lost you are still outside light and bright, in a cave you get lost IT IS DARK and Scary. I do not like elevators. No caves thank you.
 
I like those people that don't just go into caves, they take their scuba diving gear into them and go under the rocks that way. :\:
 
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  • #17
I read an article in Nat Geo about two years ago about a cave in Georgia (not USA). It went down over 6000 feet. The went down into these little tiny "sinks" with their scuba gear. I could hardly finish the article. The thought of not only being stuck in a cave, but having a limited air supply was totally freaking me out.
 
A couple of brits I took a rockclimbing course from as a youth were underwater cavers. Not for me thanks, wrapping into a sinkhole with scuba rigging, uh uh. I'm with Darin, the tight squeezes would do me in.
 
I know a couple of scuba divers who are just as freaked by the thought of working in the treetops.
 
About four years, I took the kids on a road trip around the southeast US. While we were in Arkansas, my 12 year old daughter and I went on a "Wild Cave Tour", a guided tour of an "undeveloped" cave. There was one other couple and the guide and we spent almost 5 hours underground. It was awesome! Lots of tight squeezes, some scary, muddy slides, and serious dropoffs to watch out for. It was a lot more fun than those lighted, paved tourist attraction type caves.
 
I was lost in a cave for about six hours once... after we'd already spent about six hours climbing and crawling from one entrance to a different one. Of course, we were waaay too confident to tell anyone where we were going.

Haven't been caving since. Don't particularly want to go.
 
It's been a long while since I've been caving, but I used to go somewhat regularly back in the day.

While sliding through a fairly long (100' fairly tight (maybe an average of 14x18") I remember thinking, "WTF am I doing X hundred feet under the surface sliding through spots tight enough I have to exhale to get through??"
 
Back in college I had a buddy that was into spelunking. So, one weekend I went with him to a cave out in West Texas. Started out as a crack in the ground that we had to rappel down a few hundred feet. At the bottom were a bunch of bones from the animals that had fallen in. Then we started walking back - had to wear a wet suit becasue there was a creek that we were walking through. The scariest part was a place where you had to put your back against one wall and your feet against the other and inch over a spot where the floor fell away. After a few more rappels we got to the end where the creek disappeared into a sinkhole. THe trip was great, but I sure was glad to have some experienced guys there.

Later, we went to a couple small caves, including one where I stuck my foot into a small hole. Immediately, I was surrounded by hundreds of bats; wings brushing my face.

I don't think I'd ever have the nerve to do an exploration where they were tryng to open up a new cave.
 
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  • #25
They are poking around in one of our fields. It doesn't look like there is an opening, but they seem determined.:/:
 
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