March 23, 2005

• I'd like to think I could do this, but at the first sign of having to crawl through a gap no bigger than my hand, I'm sure I'd get the screaming ab-dabs...
• That's awesome. I never got hard-core into caving, but it is soooooo much fun.
• I thought I would enjoy caving, until I actually got IN one and, as kitfisto points out, realized that getting trapped in a cave would be either a fast horrible death (say, if the cave filled up with floodwater, as happened to some unfortunate boy scouts not far from here a few years back) or a slow horrible death (buried alive, waiting in the dark for my O2 to run out). Not to mention the claustrophobic squeezes on both mind and body. And the sightless mutant insects and reptiles that have grown up, alien and feral, in their pitchblack world. Augh!
• The very idea makes me break out into a nervous sweat. I once saw an oubliette in a (Welsh, I think?) castle - basically a small, shallow hole in the ground down a tunnel, not big enough to stand up in or even crawl effectively. They shoved people in and just left them there. No (other) torture, no food, water. Argh.
• yes spelunking is indeed creepy. literally.
• If nobody has been in the cave system before, what if the lucky winner gets about 50 feet before finding dead ends?
• The scariest part is when you turn your headlamps off to let your eyes adjust. I'm not the least bit claustrophobic, and it never failed to freak me out. It is a gorgeous, fascinating world down there, though. Hours of fun. I used to have a link to a really cool US hotel actually built in a cave, sort of like spelunking with room service, but I'll be damned if I can find it now.
• monkeyfilter: spelunking with room service
• These people claim to be the world's only underground international hotel. These more modest folk only claim to be one of the best cave hotels in Cappadocia. The Spanish only claim to be in a cave. I wouldn't book here.
• Caving? No, after one caving trip I vowed that I'd never do that again. It was beautiful, but I was scared shitless. Not because of the birth canal we went through but because I'm way more claustrophobic than I thought I was. (Writing this brings back all the anxiety; I misspelled about every word in this comment...)
• I stayed overnight in Desoto Caverns when I was a teenager. We camped out on sleeping bags in a giant chamber, and they left a couple of lights on for us. I woke up midway through the night, saw all the stalactites high above me and became convinced the world had turned upside down. Truly the creepiest (and at the same time, the coolest) sensation ever. I'm not sure I'd do it again, though. It felt dangerous to be underground like that.
• For the claustrophobic, there are some very cool show caves you can visit that are positively huge, big enough to walk or even drive through. (YMMV depending on location, of course.) Missouri, where I'm originally from, is positively peppered with them. Many were speakeasies during prohibition. You won't see quite as much of the cool animal life or geology, but some of them are quite breathtaking.
• I had a friend in college that spent every weekend spelunking. He was very outspoken on the subject, and managed to get several friends to give it a try. I was all for it until I heard first-hand accounts of one unfortunate person who got stuck in a macaroni bend for hours during their first venture into spelunking. Apparently at one point in this particularly narrow crevice, you are required to contort your body in just the proper way to make it through. Needless to say, I didn't join the group the following weekend (or anytime after for that matter)
• I use to crawl the caves in Missouri. There was one, It was on private property, as most are down there, called Macs Cave.(Macs Creek arm of the lake) You could walk into it on one side, but to finally get through it, you had to belly down a sandy creek bank. As we were crawling on our stomachs we were suddenly enveloped in hundreds of bats flying out the narrow opening. That was even freakier than almost getting stuck in a little room that I was the only one skinniest to get into while searching for an exit out of the cave. The entrances to those caves were a treasure trove of arrowheads and indian relics. Uh,,bat guano anyone?
• But what if one finds some greys? I've snorkeled in several cenotes (natural and man-made ponds and wells) in Yucatán and once in a subterranean one. The feeling of weightlessness plus the absence of light can be quite daunting... I had to really get a grip on myself so as not to freak out. Trekked on foot a long cave with a group and it was breathtaking, but it helped that the narrowest parts were quite ample (still, I saw a lady bang her head really hard on a stalactite; good thing we were donning helmets). I can't really imagine crawling in a long, dark, narrow tube with rock all around me... *shudder*
• I used to regularly go caving at a place called Cave Stream. It's a relatively wussy cave and well-known by all and sundry, but just enough for me to feel adventurous. It's very open but you get to climb a small waterfall and the only way out is up some iron staples in the side of one wall. Lots of fun in summer, but only an idiot would walk it in the winter when the chances of flash flooding is very high.