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Mexico's Sistema Huaulta cave is bigger than previously thought
- archgoon 8y agoI'm going to give kudos to people who, trapped unexpectedly underground by flood waters, with limited food, for three days managed not to completely freak out and just kept doing the original exploration they set out to do.
- robohoe 8y agoI can only imagine the sort of terror most people would feel being trapped hundreds of feet under ground. This reminds me of the miners and especially the Chilean minders who were trapped underground for 69 days. There is something to say about people who willingly spend hours or days in caves and mine shafts. It's certainly not for the faint.
- Mister_X 8y agoThat's the calm Caver mentality, without it one could perish during unanticipated events. Years ago, 8 of my friends had just entered a cave for a multi hour exploration/survey trip when an accidentally kicked boulder fell, blocking all of them inside, leaving myself and two Park Service seasonal employees outside. I told them to go on with their survey and I'd have the passage dug open within the 5 hours we allotted. They calmly went off to do their survey, I set to work digging them out and just about 5 hours later I had the passage open and they arrived on scheduled quite happy I'd dug them out. They all told me they knew I'd have them dug out by the time they returned. In July we're meeting in Sequoia National Park for the 30th anny of the discovery of that cave.
- majos 8y agoFun read. As far as I can tell, deep cave systems are the last places on earth that are 1. truly unknown and uncharted and 2. explorable by certain people with certain skills and attitudes, without huge funding demands (by comparison, the deep sea is even more poorly understood, but deep sea exploration is not something you can do without massive institutional support). In fact a look through this caving expedition team [1] suggests that many cavers doing valuable new work are hobbyists with pretty unrelated day jobs. [1] http://www.usdct.org/cheve_personnel_2017.php http://www.usdct.org/cheve_personnel_2017.php
- planteen 8y ago> explorable by certain people with certain skills and attitudes, without huge funding demands Absolutely true. I'm friends with several people on that list. Everyone I know has a "normal" job. Caving is quite inexpensive. I've gone on a couple of expedition exploration trips to Peru. You need some caving gear (helmet, lights, vertical gear, cave suit) which could all be had for probably around $1000. The expedition will need a couple hammer drills. One-time use gear isn't bad - some bolts and rope. Other than that, you are looking at a plane ticket, bus ride, food, and a mule skinner. The hardest part is getting the time off of work for a month. :-) There are plenty of opportunities that don't involve international travel as well. I go up a couple weekends a year to caves in South Dakota and get to "virgin passage". If you are interested in caving in the US, visit a local grotto (branch of the National Speleological Society). http://caves.org http://caves.org
- Mister_X 8y agoFor hard core Cavers, caving isn't a "hobby", far from it, it's a PASSION!
- javiramos 8y agoThis seems like a potentially great use case for robots. I wonder if any cave exploration teams have used robots to map and survey cave systems.
- fractallyte 8y agoCaving expeditions in pristine environments go to great lengths not to leave any trace of their passage. While robot probes seem a good idea, if anything goes wrong with the device, someone's going to have to recover it...
- et2o 8y agoThey could send another drone ;)
- chrisseaton 8y ago> Caving expeditions in pristine environments go to great lengths not to leave any trace of their passage. They're literally drilling holes into the wall in one of the photos. Not exactly 'leave nothing but footprints' is it? The same as climbers who drill bolts - I'm not sure why they excuse themselves from the most basic of the outdoor codes.
- fractallyte 8y agoWow, this is just like the plot for Sanctum, even down to particular scenes (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0881320/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0881320/) - minus the movie drama, of course: "An underwater cave diving team experiences a life-threatening crisis during an expedition to the unexplored and least accessible cave system in the world." And I've always loved the tagline: "The only way out is down"
- robohoe 8y agoThe Descent (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435625/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435625/) is another film one that comes to mind.