Very Atmospheric

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IMG_0340, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

This is in the Bonnechere Cave. It is a small tourist cave but the place is kind of neat. It reminds me of some wierd little turn of the century tourist attraction. The lights look like lanterns on a stage coach and the boards upon which you walk are all hemlock. I am told that they dont rot during the annual winter flood. Fifty years ago, when the cave could still be considered to be a wild cave Tom Woodward is said to have slithered down a rope from a window up above. He had intended to raft through the water-filled tunnels. I guess he tipped over just past this spot in a chamber known as “The Parlour”. He lost his light but was still able to pull him self out as he had not let go of his rope.

This area of karst is what is known as a Paleozoic outlier. There is just a small patch of sedimentary rock isolated in the metmorphic rock of the Canadian Shield. Glaciers of the preceeding ice ages had scoured the rest of the limestone away. The caves cut into the clifface at the fourth chute on the Bonnechere River. Here the water drops 50 feet over a distance of 300 yards. The location is quite predictable as many of Ontario’s caves form in similar circumstances. Derek Ford, a world renown karst expert at McMaster University referrs to the formative process as “lateral penetration”. This occurs where water under increased hydralic pressure penetrates inward along bedding planes.

There is plenty of potential for wild caving in the area though as seems to be the case in Ontario, most ignore the country around when a cave is discovered. People assume that the known cave is the only one. A good example of this unusual phenomenon is the discovery of ATR Cave so close to other well known caves.