Beaver Valley – Fall leaves in Ontario

Beaver Valley, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

I was out scouting for a possible cave dig location today. Caving in Ontario can sometimes involve a little digging. Beaver Valley has a few promising possibilities. Investigations from a past trip revealed the likelihood of a bedding plane tunnel, there was no remarkable amount of solution taking place. Again I was drawn back here. There is too much sinking and all the signs that would suggest that something very active is taking place beneath the surface – huge sinkholes all lined up, elevation, exposed rock (the right kind of rock) and plenty of serious corrosion on the surface.

There has to be more to this place than beautiful colored leaves.

Check this out – it was under the search term of a “sink”, but it’s really a washout, but still worth seeing. I gotta ask myself what the odds of catching this on video was. Here

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Main chamber – Rover’s Cave

Main chamber – Rover’s Cave, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

This is JC in the initial entry chamber of Rover’s Cave. You will notice the texture of the walls and what appears to be icing or molten candle wax running down over small hollow indentations that are known as scallops. The scallops are indicative of water action and are generally steeper on one direction than another.

Though this cave was cut by waves blasting in along a joint or bedding plane, it now sits high above the water line as the lake levels have dropped significantly over the last several thousand years.

This cave is what I would term a novice cave. The main passage is an easy walk, the only difficulty is in getting there. There are many interesting speleogens (features that have either been dissolved or worn into the rock by water action and the scenery is spectacular.

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Pool at the End of Dead Mouse

Pool in Dead Mouse Cave

IMG_7892, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

I suppose it would not be unreasonable to assume that I have managed to fit in a significant amount of study since the last post went up, but unfortunatly I was again distracted and ended up visiting my good Friend Jeff (SNAFU).

Jeff M. is a techie, I am not. I’ve been trying to figure out how to record a fire alarm sound and then play it at work for the betterment of those who do not understand our two-tone system. It had seemed like an impossible task. Fortunately, my frustration was soon aleviated by Jeff who said that I had the wrong connections at the back of my boom box. You see the peole at Futureshop had sold me the wrong connection, or maybe I had bought the wrong connection – either way, I’ve been feeling pretty frustrated. Problem solved, SNFU knew the solution right away and now everything is good.

Now an explanation of the cave picture.

This is what lies at the furthest extent of where I was willing to crawl in “Dead Mouse”. It is a strange little dam that holds back a crystal-clear pool of water behind(not the muddy one you can see in front) and Jeff C. who I was with at the time said that he might have been able to push the passage further as it is wide and curves sharply off to the left beyond this picture. For me, this is as far as I will be going in dead mouse. There are better options in the area of which I was then aware and I will explain that morning’s big success in my next set of posts – I just wanted to finish off on the “Dead Mouse story before diverging off onto more exciting news.

Oh, one kind of interesting thing. You might have noticed that rock in the middle of the dam, its kind of like a cork in a dyke. It had forced its way into the hole from behind.

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Checking out the Caves in Winter

Ontario in the Winter – Canadian caving trips

 

Got to watch for polar bears and sasquatch – I heard a caver just got eaten.

Here I am in one of my favorite Ontario caving spots looking for more tunnels. Winter is often a good time to look for caves as you can see the breathing holes and with few leaves and brambles – holes can be more visible.

This particular spot is at the edge of a resurging valley somewhere near the Crowe River. I am climbing up a slippery embankment that is one of several ridges that soon progress to an escarpment that I am absolutely sure is underlain by caves. In this area there are 3 distinctive joint directions and I can see a length of straight-line collapse beneath the soil in one spot on the nearby escarpment. There are undoubtably tunnels under there – its just gonna take some digging.

Sometimes its esy to get depressed about Ontario’s caving possibilities, but the caves are there, they just need digging and as cavers we just need to get together and do some serious work. We lack unity thats our problem!

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