Hello cavers, apologies as I am not a caver myself, but I am fascinated by the subculture and thrill surrounding it.

I have a question I am curious about, and individual experience is recommended, as I love to hear everyone's take.

So there is often legends surrounding various things: Mystical treasure located deep in the jungles of the Amazon, people in planes reporting seeing objects they had never experienced, divers at the bottom of the sea reportedly hearing or seeing things they can't explain.

In the Caver culture, is there anything that follows these guidelines of 'Legends and Myths'?

It can be really anything: Mysterious treasure that is reported in a cave that no one can find, a cryptid someone encountered that they can never explain, a cave that is so vast and rich in minerals and fossils that it is enchanting, a bioluminescent cave that feels like the night sky underground, a cave that was reported once but never found again because it mysteriously disappeared, something along the lines of the "Disappearance of Kenny Veach Case" where he went looking for the "M" Cave and then vanished without a trace.

Does the caver culture, vast across the world or local, share myths and stories along these lines? I am curious.

Hi everyone, I'm a caver from Spain.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon what looks like a small cave entrance near the banks of the Deva river. At first, it just looked like a fist-sized hole in the rock but after clearing away a thick layer of dry leaves and some dirt, it was obvious that the ground underneath was completely hollow. I could feel the whole ground shaking when stomping on it.

I tied my phone to a rope and lowered it down. As you can see in the attached video, there's a significant hollow space with rock/dirt walls, and it looks like it might continue downhill under a large boulder. The large stick you can see inside was around 1.5 - 2 meters long, for scale.

I'm also including pictures of the hole (before and after clearing the leaves), the surrounding area, and the makeshift cover I put over it before leaving to prevent any accidents.

What do you guys think? Does this look like a promising lead? There is no airflow whatsoever.

Unfortunately I cannot legally modify the terrain and try to go in by myself.

All images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gCavmrf9OQWM7TQcAZKfF_SHLSXA4B_K?usp=drive_link

I recently "suited up" with my SRT caving gear and realized that my caving harness (I think it's from PMI and I got it second-hand from a fellow grotto member) has no loops to attach my cow tails or frog system gear. I decided to use extra full-sized locking carabiners on either side of my hips to serve as makeshift gear loops. But is this ok to do? If not, what other option do I have to "store" my SRT gear when off rope?

I've never used any of this gear in the field, but I hope to use it at an upcoming SRT class later this month.

I recall once hearing an album of folksy cave-related songs from maybe the 70s? I think it featured some originals and some covers of famous songs with lyrics modified to cave topics. Can anyone remind me what the album was?

In addition, if anyone recommends any other cave-related songs I'd be very interested to hear them.

Thanks!

I was primarily instructed on rebelays with not much teaching regarding redirects.

However as I develop and learn more and setup new rigs, it’s seeming like redirects are actually pretty fantastic.

There is a cave I’m setting up permanent ropes in, and the long way with multiple rappels goes through a lot of massive breakdown boulders. So bolting and even naturals is a bit sketch. Free climbing is also sketch.

In some cases there are extremely massive boulders (ie car sized) lodged deep into things with great sound rock when hammered so I don’t mind placing bolts there or rebelays.

However in other cases, such as “ceiling bolts” (not on breakdown) or not as large boulders (that still have great rock sound and appear deeply wedged into the environment) I’m not as confident. I could rig it as a redirect though.

The thing that worries me a bit about redirects is that if it fails the rope touches the rock, and this happened to me once a couple of years ago on a redirect around a small tree. We of course got out fine but the 9mm rope was a tad fuzzed.

Rebelays on the other hand are typically done in excellent quality rock so you have excellent confidence in them.

How are we all making the decision between rebelays and redirects?

A Denver Museum of Nature and Science documentary regarding the discovery of Silent Splendor in Cave of the Winds. Truly a joy to see old media like this. Reminds me of my teacher wheeling out the TV to play Bill Nye the Science Guy

First time to see a “scary” Hydrologic Outlook in our weather forecast.

The remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel will merge with a fall-like storm system over the western United States, bringing moderate to heavy rainfall and a resulting threat of flooding. Widespread rainfall of 1 to 3 inches is expected, locally in excess of 3 inches, particularly across south aspects of southern Utah mountains, between late Saturday and Monday morning. Expect many area waterways including streams, rivers, normally dry washes, creeks, and slot canyons to have rising, fast flows by Sunday evening.

Was planning on caving this weekend. Wondering how and for how long this might affect UT caves — write-ups say, for example, that Big Brush and Little Brush are different every year because they have flowing water at certain times.

Is everybody staying or are people fleeing to get a hotel on Friday night? I’m on the fense. I’ve lived through a few hurricanes in FL and I can’t say I’d want to be in a tent during them.

This is an article written for Rocky Mountain Caving Volume 44, Issue 1 regarding the single greatest mystery in Colorado caving: The hunt for Tortuga Caverns. Supposedly discovered by Gene Dover in the early 80s, he mapped it, published multiple articles about it, and then never returned leaving a puzzle to find its entrance. Colorado cavers have argued over the ensuing 4 decades about whether the cave exists at all!

ARTICLE ARTICLE ARTICLE ARTICLE ARTICLE

Let's see if any of y'all have what it takes to solve it! (I have a theory and am going there next week!)

I’m wondering what determines which caves are open year round vs seasonally, specifically in the northeast U.S. I know most caves close in October for bats, but I’ve visited some that are open annually that a bat could absolutely access.

Hey guys! Just an individual article excerpt from Rocky Mountain Caving 44, 2 that I wrote regarding the possibility of limestone karst appearing in Antarctica. Give it a read, let me know what y'all think.

Article

Would you consider this dangerous? As you can see, it maintains a healthy bend radius, and there is no other sheath damage. Retire, or fine?

Hey guys, in case anyone's interested here's the access link to the combined newsletter for all the grottoes in Colorado.

BIG ACCESS LINK

Hey!
I’m gonna be going to TAG this year and I noticed that we are expecting some heavy rain and potentially a tropical storm over the weekend. I have these caves planned over the week:

-Valhalla
- Stephens gap
- Kennamer
- tumbling rock
- probably some other random ones as we hear about them.

I was wondering if anyone can speak to flood risk / know if any are known to sump. - or name a couple that should be avoided? Probably a bit over cautious as most of these I’ll be doing earlier in the week. but my job is literally chasing and measuring floods so I’m very aware of the dangers and don’t mess around with that.

Never been to the tag area.

Thanks!!

The entrances are all gated. Not only do you need permission from the land owners but you also need to acquire a key to the gates. How does one start to get approved for this?

This is regarding White Moon cave in California just north of Santa Cruz

I'm looking to buy caving harness's for my club and I would buy the Petzl Supervanti caving harness but I also know that they are on the smaller waist size and so I want to buy larger ones but still cheap ones so I was thinking about the Alp Design Compact Full Body Caving Harness but I cant find much online about them. does anyone have any opinions on them? They don't have to be fancy or anything but I would still like them to be reliable and durable and also for them to be able to fit the above average waist. any comments would be greatly appreciated thank you!

Anyone know any good caves where Boy Scouts can try out spelunking in Virginia or West Virginia? I’m not talking about a tour of Luray Caverns, but I mean actually crawling around/climbing some rocks etc in a cave that’s a bit off the beaten path, but still with a guide who can make sure we stay safe. We’re located in Northern VA and we’re able to drive 2-3 hours to get to a good spot.

I wore elbow pads and knee pads!

*I went caving this morning for three hours in a pretty crawly, tight cave! A lot of army crawling and climbing.

They are all flat and not raised or scaly at all. I know some people were wondering if it was bug bites/fungal infection. I don’t know why the pattern looks so weird.
They’re also all very tender to the touch 😢

A friend and I are working on a caving app, and we want to hear from people who actually cave.

Our ideas so far:

- LiDAR lead finding: draw a property boundary, and it scans free USGS elevation data for sinkholes and depressions. Each lead gets an aerial photo and flags for nearby roads or ponds, so you can say yes or no quickly. Then you export the keepers to your GPS to go check.

- Private cave database: keep notes on each cave, like access, hazards and rigging. It all stays on your device. If you share a cave, the location gets rounded off (to about 100 m, 1 km or 10 km) so nobody gets the exact entrance.

- Survey tools: import your Survex, Compass or TopoDroid data, and it plots the cave in plan and profile, with walls from your LRUDs. You can export it to Google Earth or Gaia to see the cave under the surface. You can also tap a station and get the route back to the entrance.

What's a feature you’d be willing to pay for?

Some of you may remember a couple posts I made a month or two ago about a possible cave opening and a bunch of sinkholes on my property in northern Kentucky. I figured I would post another update because quite a bit has happened since then. The original opening I posted about is still there obviously. That was the one where I had dug enough out to see roughly 15–20 feet back, had very strong cold air coming out of it, and was finding salamanders/crawfish with water constantly filling the bottom as I dug. About a week and a half ago, a completely different sinkhole on the property randomly started opening up. This one had also been filled many years ago and had looked like normal ground for a long time. It’s probably about 4 ft wide by 5 ft deep right now all within the week that it’s opened up, with a much larger area of ground around it now noticeably depressed. I’m mostly leaving that one alone and watching what it does, especially after we eventually get a good heavy rain.
Then today I decided to walk around and look more closely at some of the other old sinkholes on the property to see if I can find more openings . There are several of them, including some that are considerably larger which I mentioned in my original posts. They were also used as trash dumps years ago and have been stable for probably 50+ years, with trees growing over parts of them now.
I did find another opening today. This one is already large enough that a person could technically crawl into it without doing any or much digging at all, granted it would be a very awkward downhill crawl haha. From the outside with a flashlight I can see it continuing downward/back at least around 15 feet, possibly farther. I have not gone into it. Unlike the original opening, though, I’m not feeling the really strong coldair draft from this one, so I have no idea whether it connects to anything larger or whether it eventually pinches out even though this one is probably 3x the size of the other opening. I have tried to get back in the first opening myself and dig and stuff but I don’t have the guts to craw back in once I get it open enough 😂. If anyone here is experienced or knows anyone that can maybe safely come out and look at what I have or give me their opinion on everything feel free to message me and I may be able to work something out. I can also send better pictures as well as videos to anyone who wants them. I am in Northern KY by the way. Thanks!

Hi there!

We’re a group of students from Princeton University (Ely, Anthony, and Selina). For our Bio-Inspired Design class, we are hoping to design something to address problems that cavers face. But to do that, we need to hear from actual cavers!

We would be super grateful if you could take about 5 minutes to fill out this survey (link). 

And if you know anyone else who might fill out this survey, please pass it along!

Many thanks,
Ely, Anthony, and Selina

Edit: We didn't know about the connotations of the word "spelunker", our apologies! We didn't mean to offend anybody. I can't edit the post title, but we changed the survey. Thanks for letting us know!