Abandoned Mine near Niagara Falls – Ontario mine

Abandoned Mine near Niagara Falls – Ontario mine, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

As you might guess by my post I did not go to P-Lake today. I woke up At around 03:30 with a terrible headache (I always get one when the clouds are moving in and I hear we are in for a severe rainstorm tonight) and I thought  – “I’m on holiday, why do I want to do this to myself.” It’s a 5 hour drive either way, lots of hacking through the bush and then I’m not even sure of where the cave is. Last time almost killed me. So instead I switched the alarm off and slept in till about 10 and then I went south for 2 hours instead of north for 5 – to the Queenstone Sandstone Mine. It was relatively easy to find and just as big and mazy as I remembered from that trip with Dan about 10 years ago. Only thing that has changes was the path to get there.

See that pillar in the middle of the room – go ahead kick it – I dare you.

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nuit Blanche Toronto 2011 – Rave at the Heart Machine

nuit Blanche Toronto 2011 – Rave at the burning heart, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

With the arrival of Toronto’s good citizens it really started heating up in the square around the Heart Machine.

I understand the mobile rave had nothing to do with the official Nuit Blanche, the mobile rave was a grass roots event, not for profit loosely organized and with a number that prospective ravers could call to see where exactly the rave is at any time through the night. As for one of my favorite activities – people watching, it was a very colorful crowd and a mega sound system that literally shook windows in surrounding buildings.

Rave organizers advised ravers to not “be that guy”, keep it legal, keep from blocking traffic etc. The actual rave would not be illegal, it would be the activities that were taking place by rave participants that might push the boundaries. Well from what I saw, they pushed the boundaries a lot.

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Nuit Blanche Toronto 2011 – Pot fest, rave, mobile party crew

nuit Blanche Toronto 2011 – Pot fest, rave, mobile party crew, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

So I’d meant to visit the Heart Machine. It seemed to be a nifty concept, the idea of taking control of your city, instead of passively waiting for the city to happen and you just being an observer. As the artist had written, the interaction between citizen and city was meant to be symbiotic.

long before you saw the exhibit you could see the orange flicker of the Heart Machine on the upper walls of nearby buildings. I was especially interested as the Heart Machine had been featured last year at the counter-cultural Burning Man Festival in Nevada. the whole idea is that these 4 big severed arteries or maybe it was the Vena Cava would belch huge roiling puffs of flame into the sky when triggered to do so by some good citizen who was beating at the heart. Well it certainly was a spectacle and it drew a crowd of citizens who chose to interact with the exhibit.

Carl, Jeff, Maggie and I were standing around the Heart Machine somewhat passively watching this fire twirling girl toss a flaming stick around when this Mohawk’d  fellow climbed up onto a reddish mound that I took to be the heart. Imediatly the heart seemed to be picking up the pace. The pulse was increasing and the night above was lit by great roars and exhalations of fire and then the citizens arrived – planned or not they certainly added to the atmosphere and if it had not been for the chill in the air I could well have imagined that I was at the Burning man Festival myself.

I felt it first – this primitive vibration in my gut, a pounding beat explained as “step-Dub” by Jeff who is familiar with the raving scene. The street was packed and a mob was moving toward us – the smell of weed (cannabis) preceding their arrival. It was a mobile rave where the police were conspicuous in their absence, several hundred youths in varying degrees of stonedness, one fellow near me puffing a joint so large it lit the crowd up all around him. There was this guy who looked like Renfield from Dracula, faries, various pseudo Manga characters, kids in masks, costumes, fancy gowns and tons of neon glow sticks. And of course a couple of rave queens in a pickup and another vehicle behind that was kind of like a float. “Water, anybody got water?” a young fellow cried out to nobody in particular.

The music was pounding out so loud that I could barely hear Maggie saying “lets get out of here, this is getting out of control”. As though in reaction to the new arrivals the heart was now spewing flame as though it had just ruptured. A fire engine was caught up in the mess and its siren added to the chaos.

You might say that these citizens of Toronto had come to interact with the heart, and interact they did!!! It was a symbiosis that seemed symbolic of recent interactions – read into it what you will.

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Soil pipe in Ontario – it speaks of buried karst

IMGP1675, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

Might this be the hole down which the white rabbit disappeared?

JC and I found this in a valley. Two deep gullies lead up to this spot and there is some obvious overflow where the valley fills up under flood conditions and flows out across the land. The landowner said that he’d heard of this feature, but he’d never really looked.

I believe if I dived down here I might get at least 8 feet before the hole got too narrow and then I’d lie there wedged until my eyeballs popped out or the rabbit set me free. A point on that story (Alice in Wonderland), my mother used to work for the Dean of Christchurch (where Lewis Caroll was a Don) and there was a constant flow of people wanting chestnuts from the Cheshire Cat tree which was right outside her office window – sorry I diverge from caving in Ontario.

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flowstone – Wasteland Waterway

Flow stone in new Ontario Cave – Wasteland Waterway

We went further yesterday than in the past and ended up passing a spot that JC called the Aerofoil – a plate of rock that sticks way out into the passage. I wiggled underneath this aerofoil and got a glimpse of passages on beyond. It’s more of the same, the tunnels are still dropping down deeper and I anticipate that they must soon reach the level of the Rochester shale. This shale layer is often undercut so either the passages will flatten out and become pheratic at that point, or we will be up against a pit.

It was an exhausting crawl and the claustrophobia of inward pressing rock. Everything is really jagged so my cave suit is pretty well shredded. I doubt that the best of Maggie’s stitching will bring it back to health.

This is caving in Ontario

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Ontario Sinkhole – and the possibility of it connecting to a cave system

An Ontario sinkhole

Greg, Jeff and I have been considering the possibilities of a cave dig here. A tunnel leads off and with some small amount of persuasion we can probably break the boulder at its entrance and then we’re into cave. We’re just in the process of consulting with the landowner. We popped this grill off from above the hole and in the accompanying video you can see something of what was beneath.

Ontario sinkhole – see Ontario sinkhole here

More on this sink in my upcoming book on Caving in Ontario. You will be able to order it from the Edgehill press website in about 2 or 3 months.

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Caving in Ontario – A tube up which I crawled

Exploring an Ontario Cave - Canada

Here are 2 links to video that I took this weekend. Both these short clips are of Pilgrim’s Crawl, an Ontario cave that is yet to be followed to it’s end. I’d say the biggest problem are the tunnel’s scallops, it’s like crawling against a cheese grater and my cave suit shows it after doing so.

Check these videos out – my first attempt with video of Ontario caving …

Pilgrim’s Crawl 1  - Caving in Ontario 1

Pilgrim’s crawl 2 – Caving in Ontario 2

At this time I’m still getting the hang of this video thing, I like it and see it’s potential for documenting our explorations in the newly discovered “Wasteland Waterway Cave”. One point is that I need to increase the lighting – especially as Wasteland  Waterway has much larger tunnels. Some are well above your head. More on that in the following weeks and hopefully I’ll have my new caving book in about 2 – 3 months. It’s taking a while because I’m trying to get it right.

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2011 Bancroft Gemboree – Rubellite tourmaline

IMGP1080, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

I picked up some beautiful red Rubellite tourmaline at the 2011 Bancroft Gemboree yesterday. This fellow had 2 grades, the lesser grade he was selling at $40/carat and by weight the specimen that I picked out amounted to $64. Admittedly the color was not quite on a par with the higher grade, but there was less in the way of inclusion and the cut was of good symetry and deep so no light was spilling out a window.

I initially decided to go hardball and said that if he wanted to go $40 for the specimen it was sold, but he did not so I went away for a few hours, thought about it and came back and gave him his price. I suppose the value was what I was willing to pay for it and I really love red tourmaline.

You can see the gem that I bought on the tray to the left of the picture.

All in all, some of my favorite vendors were missing from this year’s venue – in particular Alpine gems and a couple of the cut stone dealers that I have so enjoyed in the past, also the better gem vendors seemed more evenly distributed between the upper and lower venues with what seemed a bigger focus on fossils than in the past. I was pleased to see the CGA presence and I had a discussion with my former tutor who advised me that the likelyhood of finding a natural alexanderite of the size that I mention was very slim indeed (with reference to a specimen that I had recently viewed but was unable to clearly see inside because I was in a rush and was yet to clean it).

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Wasteland Waterway Cave – this is what we crawled through

IMGP0810, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

This is JC as he and I wiggled our way on deeper into this unexplored Ontario cave system.

We have a mapping planned. Some time soon we should be able to provide more definite dimensions.

We finished the day’s exploration with (For me) a difficult crawl from our excavation hole. With a narrow tube such as the one down which we dropped down into the main tunnel, it does not make for an easy exit. Down below there is nothing to put your feet on, and higher up, the surface is just at that spot where you are unable to lift yourself. I struggled for some time with JC offering to help pull. Anyway I am now suffering from a multitude of delayed injuries including weird rashes, tiredness and bruises that I don’t remember getting. I was sitting at my desk yesterday and discovered a chafing on my belly – not entirely explained by the friction of rubbing against the keyboard. I had 11 hours sleep last night and I seem to be on the mend. Caving gives me both a mental and physical thrashing. This exploration of virgin tunnel keeps me on this mental overdrive that I suspect is costly for several days after.

Is that weird?

Check out JC’s pictures of Wasteland Waterway here – in particular the flowstone that looks very much like melted cheese.

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Wasteland Waterway – an Ontario cave that just keeps on getting bigger

Wasteland Waterway - an Ontario cave that just keeps on getting bigger

Our aim today had been to reach the underside of a sink some 200 surface meters as the crow flies from the “Blue Barrel sink”.

The initial squeeze beyond the blue barrel sink seemed tighter than I remembered it last visit, but beyond that, as expected, the tunnels opened up well beyond our most hopeful expectations. The above picture was at the squeeze just beyond “Blue Barrel Sink”.

JC and I followed into a vadose trench where the roof was soon well above our heads. We left a decorated upper level behind (with it’s own exploration possibilities) and found ourselves following a zig zag course downward through sheets of rock and layers deeply pitted with scallops.

Today’s exploration ended in a shallow pool with 3 choices of tunnel moving forward. I suspect that a rightward leading tunnel could well underlie the sink for which we had been heading – but then it’s just purely speculation (well not entirely). We must already be quite deep beneath the surface and confirmation as to this passage’s eventual termination would require a stoop walk along the said passage which at first glance looks very jagged – though to it’s credit it is a little above the trunk passage in height so possibly a feeder passage leading from the suspected sink.

As an Ontario cave this one ranks up there with other more impressive local caves – who knows how big it will eventually get, it certainly blows a healthy draft. So far the formations have not quite matched those of Spanky’s Paradise, but they come a close second. This cave is certainly deeper than most Ontario caves (and I have been in most Ontario caves that are known to the caving community). As a straight line tunnel – thus far only branching now, it is definitely impressive for Ontario.

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