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Hi, This is my second attempt at blogging. My first, I dont know what happened, I suppose I need a purpose. To me this is the means to an end. Where is the end you ask?, its underground, we are all headed there but I hope to have a preview.
I need a spot to ramble, to voice my excitement, possibly to correspond with others. The crux of the matter is, Ontario, the province in which I live, though it had initially appeared as tame and simple has over the last twenty years or so revealed itself as an increasingly compex and multi leveled landscape. As an interest I explore the caves, tunnels, drains, mines, gemstone deposits, waterfalls, paths and geography of this amazing place. I am so interested in everything around that I am disappointed in the knowledge that I wont have enough time to see it all. I am a polymath if that is the right word, a polymath of all things earth related.
Where to start? Caving of course! I understand that there are but a feeble few of us spread over the landscape. We grow fewer by the years and this concerns me. I love the excitement of underground exploration, it is a passion of mine. There are no more than about 200 of us out of the nine or ten million clustered around the Canadian side of the great lakes. Most of us are approaching middle age, youth has long ago faded from our ranks. I suppose the sport/ lifestyle is not all that glamerous from the fashion perspective. I mean slithering through muddy stone tubes beneath the earth’s skin will seldom attract a mate unless of course you are a salamander. Rubber boots, a wet suit and caving helmet are not all that flattering either. Add mud, bone numbing cold and sometimes claustrophobic panic and what do you have? – A typical Sunday afternoon for me.
This past winter has seen my dear friends, Greg Warchol, Marcus Buck and Doug hynes all engaged in the rather anticlimactic task of opening “XS Wired Cave” It is a short tunnel that Doug had found by examining ariel photos on the plateau above Hamilton. In minus 18 surface temperatures we wallowed in a near freezing underground stream hoping to follow it to “going cave tunnel.” This adventure and many other crackpot schemes are soon to follow. Doug has just e-mailed me and we are headed for a new cave on the escarpment discovered by Dan. It sounds promising, Rob Laidlaw, a well known local caver has already been there and he says it is reminiscent of West Virginian caves. This I have to see. Mick
