Using tape in Caves (was Agen Allwedd Trashed ?)

[mrodoc]

Here's one unfortunate example (photo by Lisa Wootton), though it's difficult to tell whether the tape was actually leaching dye or the photo was just overrexposed. But it's certainly not coming out

I have seen this phenomenon as well.

 

[cap n chris]

This (excellent) topic crops up now and again and IIRC the last time it did there was a BCA proposal for guidance/leaflet regarding all the pros/cons to be put together so there was a single source of info - ultimately taping is down to whomsoever can be arsed with doing it (not many is the answer), the funding is easy peasy, it's not rocket science to do and whatever you do will be complained about (default) but that shouldn't stop you from doing it. Conservation is probably waaay less important to people than their ability to go caving so ultimately all caves are doomed to attrition, it's just the pace of attrition which can be modified by such measures.

 

[Ian Ball]

I nominate the OP to replace the tape with the solution they prefer and apply to BCA for the funding. 

 

[Stuart France]

The first port of call for [taping] should normally be the regional councils ... However, in this case I _believe_ the Mynydd Llangatwg Cave Management Advisory Committee are the relevant access controlling body. Perhaps the multiple layers of separation between cave management and the BCA are hindering the BCA's good work funding conservation and access through the regional councils?

There's a bit of a misunderstanding in the above.

The MLCMAC until very recently was a government committee belonging to Natural Resources Wales who inherited it from Countryside Council for Wales who inherited it from the Nature Conservancy Council who inherited it from the Nature Conservancy.  Each of these public bodies convened its meetings, chaired them, and generally paid the bills especially under the conservation and access heading.  Cambrian Caving Council has paid for some things too over the years, and usually it would have reclaimed that from BCA (or NCA prior).

The mistake is to think MLCMAC was a caving body run by cavers for cavers to which the government were invited to send observers.  Quite the opposite - until recently.  It was a government body run by the government to manage cavers, and done ever so cordially.  Cave access permits were issued on NRW letterhead although through a caver who acted as their permit administrator.  Now that NRW is so cash strapped and understaffed, they've decided to rid themselves of their two cave management committees.

So MLCMAC has now become a private members club, so to speak, run by cavers who express an interest in joining it and contributing whatever skill and effort they can.  The government has simply walked away, handed over its spare padlocks and cave keys to the cavers, nothing was documented, one final meeting in NRW's offices in Abergavenny with the usual Waitrose biscuits/coffees and that was that.

The OFD cave management committee has become a subcommittee of SWCC to all intents and purposes - perhaps it always was one except in the legal sense while the government convened and chaired its meetings and funded it.  There is some paperwork to document this handover of control in the form of a memoradum of agreement made between NRW and SWCC.

As to fixed aids (which got a mention right at the start of this thread) it was the government that was on the liability hook until they walked off the job.  Certainly as far as the MLCMAC territory is concerned, the official policy then was not to admit to having any fixed aids.  Hence the prominent disclaimer notice at the entrance of Aggy that Old Ruminator should have passed and noted on his way to the scaff bars that he so strongly objects to.

MLCMAC didn't put them there.  I don't know who did.  But they've been there for many years and I think the reason involved an accident when someone fell into the lower passage below where the bars are now.

If people are anti-fixed aids, then there's plenty of scope:  the 4 scaff poles in OFD1 which are there to spare visitors from getting water in their wellies, Lowe's Chain which is now a knotted rope, the chain on the Letterbox, the handline on the Divers Pitch, the Bolt Traverse wire, the Airy Fairy traverse wire, the cabled traverse into Waterfall series, the chain from the streamway up into the Bolt Traverse, the metal I-beam and then the rigid ladder at the end of the Bolt Traverse ... and that's only one cave!

I'm not singling out OFD1 here - all the major caves of South Wales have fixed installations which serve a variety of purposes including making access more efficient, practical and safe than it otherwise would be.

 

[andrewmcleod]

There's a bit of a misunderstanding in the above.

The MLCMAC until very recently was[...]

Thanks for the explanation - they used to have a website but that has now disappeared into the abyss so hard to get information on!

I think my statement was incorrect in another way - I don't believe the MLCMAC is an access controlling body (in the 'registered with the BCA' sense) - again I could be wrong. Which leaves the question of what they are, assuming they still exist?

 

[The Old Ruminator]

I nominate the OP to replace the tape with the solution they prefer and apply to BCA for the funding. 

I am 75 next year so will start a fund for hand rails and steps on all the difficult bits of AA entrance series.

 

[Stuart France]

There's a bit of a misunderstanding in the above.

The MLCMAC until very recently was[...]

... I don't believe the MLCMAC is an access controlling body (in the 'registered with the BCA' sense) - again I could be wrong. Which leaves the question of what they are, assuming they still exist?

I thought I'd covered all that.  MLCMAC was a government committee, most recently controlled and chaired by NRW.  There was clearly a goodbye meeting with NRW in NRW's offices in Abergavenny but there has been no paperwork or other agreement emerging over the management of the Llangattock caves.  NRW has a lease from the Beaufort Estate on the Craig y Cilau NNR which includes Aggy and Eglwys Faen but not Daren Cilau or Craig a Ffynnon which are also on Beaufort land.  The NNR lease makes NRW responsible for managing cave access within it and they've abrogated their responsibility by informally winding up MLCMAC and not leaving anything in its place other than  the suggestion that the cavers previously involved with the committee should run it themselves.  Basically NRW wants to keep control at least in theory (the lease) but not have any responsibility or involvement at one and the same time (having done away with the Old MLCMAC but not put that in writing nor really figured out what the future should look like before NRW left the room).

The New MLCMAC (i.e. the usual cavers minus NRW personnel) could approach the estate to set up a new written access agreement running in parallel to the one that NRW is no longer operating but has not revoked.

However, in meetings I had with the estate longer ago concerning the wider area and issues, it emerged that its position is that cave access and appropriate conduct when caving is a matter for cavers to organise for themselves.  By that the estate might possibly mean that you can do what you like so long as you can justify it to yourselves as responsible behaviour and don't involve the estate in micro-management of activities at one extreme or general purpose written agreements at the other.

So informality is pretty much what's happened and we'll just have to see how this works out.  You can get a key for Aggy or OCAF or the Ogof Cnwc entrance to Daren Cilau from Malcolm Reid or from Adrian Fawcett or get it from Whitewalls by prior arrangement (see http://chelseaspelaeo.org/index_htm_files/contact.htm)

 

[andrewmcleod]

I thought I'd covered all that.  MLCMAC was a government committee, most recently controlled and chaired by NRW.  There was clearly a goodbye meeting with NRW in NRW's offices in Abergavenny but there has been no paperwork or other agreement emerging over the management of the Llangattock caves.  NRW has a lease from the Beaufort Estate on the Craig y Cilau NNR which includes Aggy and Eglwys Faen but not Daren Cilau or Craig a Ffynnon which are also on Beaufort land.  The NNR lease makes NRW responsible for managing cave access within it and they've abrogated their responsibility by informally winding up MLCMAC and not leaving anything in its place other than  the suggestion that the cavers previously involved with the committee should run it themselves.  Basically NRW wants to keep control at least in theory (the lease) but not have any responsibility or involvement at one and the same time (having done away with the Old MLCMAC but not put that in writing nor really figured out what the future should look like before NRW left the room).

The New MLCMAC (i.e. the usual cavers minus NRW personnel) could approach the estate to set up a new written access agreement running in parallel to the one that NRW is no longer operating but has not revoked.

However, in meetings I had with the estate longer ago concerning the wider area and issues, it emerged that its position is that cave access and appropriate conduct when caving is a matter for cavers to organise for themselves.  By that the estate might possibly mean that you can do what you like so long as you can justify it to yourselves as responsible behaviour and don't involve the estate in micro-management of activities at one extreme or general purpose written agreements at the other.

So informality is pretty much what's happened and we'll just have to see how this works out.  You can get a key for Aggy or OCAF or the Ogof Cnwc entrance to Daren Cilau from Malcolm Reid or from Adrian Fawcett or get it from Whitewalls by prior arrangement (see http://chelseaspelaeo.org/index_htm_files/contact.htm)

So... for the time being at least, the MLCMAC does not formally exist? Which means that as a cave within their area that no other formal BCA member body controls, CCC is the 'relevant' caving body?

Half of me feels this is off topic, and the other half feels it is _on_ topic because the point of the BCA/regional councils is to represent caves and cavers, and if you can't work out who has the responsibility for that representation for a cave then the system isn't working...

 

[Graigwen]

Here are a couple of photos from the end of the 1960s of Selenite needles in Main Passage.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/11409438@N06/4906786237/in/album-72157620557572135/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/11409438@N06/4907375276/in/album-72157620557572135/

 

[Huge]

Bringing the discussion back to the merits of taping and other conservation methods :-

I was going to say that I consider taping as the lesser of two evils but thinking about it, I don't see it as an evil at all. I even don't mind the red and white road marking tape! Maybe it's because I've been caving at Llangattock for 30+ years and I'm used to it! I'm fine with seeing tape in photographs so don't see what all the fuss is about? Maybe if the photos are intended for publication or a competition but even then, the tape just shows that the cave is being cared for.

Sometimes when I come to a section of passage with no tape, I think it is nice to see without tape but then I start to think about what's been lost. With tape, the floor wouldn't be wall to wall, featureless uniform brown. There'd be textures, a variety of sediments and perhaps differently coloured gravels and possibly even crystals lying around. Again, the walls wouldn't have had crystals brushed off and features smothered under mud from cavers oversuits.

I've been involved in placing raised tapes on pegs and they have their place in certain environments - wet, muddy areas and on active formations. They are not needed in other places, where tape laid along the floor does the job and is more minimalist - coming back to causing as little change from the natural as possible. Raised tapes have been over used in some places. I find them very artificial and give these places the feel of a lightly developed show cave, whereas tape laid on the floor gives the impression of a wild cave, that conscientious cavers have given minimal but very adequate protection to. I don't like having to drill lots and lots of holes to support the pins and producing the associated rock powder, which is almost impossible to completely clean up.

I've heard the view that all that's needed is good education for the last 30 years but have still witnessed avoidable and completely unnecessary destruction so I'm not convinced. Maybe if we could get the simple message through that moving through caves carefully and with thought and not touching anything that does not need to be touched, would go a long way to helping? The conservation and access balance is maybe cyclical? Originally it seems there was not much thought given to looking after our caves. Then, having seen the destruction that had been caused over the years and realising what had been lost, cavers started to think about conservation in the 70s and it was in full swing in the 80s and 90s. Certainly when I started caving in the late 80s/early 90s, conservation was being talked about all the time. Things have swung around now, it's all about access and conservation seems a dirty word with people who promote conservation through access control being vilified. Give it another 10 years and maybe it'll swing around again, with people not willing to put up with what's being lost again.

Explanatory signs can help but like tape, can be ignored and some people take offence. I'm reminded of an incident that occurred shortly after the breakthrough into Draenen. A passage was found that had a pool with a superb calcite raft at it's start. The raft was about 1m X 2m, certainly the largest I've ever seen. The passage beyond was explored by a single group, who carefully traversed over the pool on ledges. A small amount of damage was done to the raft from crystals falling from the ledges and creating tiny holes in it. The passage beyond was a dead end and while it did have other formations, there was nothing special. It was felt that if cavers continued to cross the pool, more damage to the raft was inevitable and so it was decided to place tape across the passage at the pool explaining this and that the best thing to see was the raft and the best place to view it from was where people were stood, reading the note. Withing two weeks the tape and note were found lying on the floor and the raft was gone, just a muddy pool left in its place! I hope someone took photographs of it because there's no evidence of the raft starting to reform.

 

[kay]

it was decided to place tape across the passage at the pool explaining this and that the best thing to see was the raft and the best place to view it from was where people were stood, reading the note. Withing two weeks the tape and note were found lying on the floor and the raft was gone, just a muddy pool left in its place!

You seem to be saying that the presence of tape/explanatory note actually annoyed someone enough for them to remove it and deliberately? accidentally? trash the raft. Are you suggesting it might have survived longer without the notice/tape?

 

[Huge]

What I'm saying is that the tape and note were not enough to save the calcite raft. Who knows how many eons it had been there but within a few weeks of cavers entering the cave, it was gone. The pulling down of the tape and note and them being left on the floor, could not have been anything other than deliberate. But whether the raft was destroyed accidentally, when someone slipped when trying to traverse over it or it was a deliberate act of vandalism (let's hope not!) or through ignorance (maybe someone just didn't recognise what it was, although the note did point it out), can only be known to the people who were present. As to whether the raft would have survived longer without the note, it's impossible to tell. I've certainly heard complaints over the years about closed off passages, there are a couple in Otter Hole, for example. "I should be able to go wherever I want." "What are they trying to hide from us? Are they keeping the best formations to themselves." etc.

 

[Ian Ball]

That's an awful tale Huge.

 

[droid]

That's an awful tale Huge.

It's rather typical of the 'entitled' attitude some access zealots project.

 

[Jenny P]

Many years ago I was chatting to Tom Sykes (at that time CNCC Secretary) about the damage to Easter Grotto in Easegill.  Not only had straws been broken off by people passing through but some had left sweet wrappers on the floor and even left spent flashbulbs after they'd taken their fancy photos. 

Tom said that there were areas in Easegill that they had found on the first explorations and deliberately left off the survey and closed the passage off so that no-one else would find it and it would stay pristine.  The explorers had seen it themselves and were happy to have done so but never showed any photos of what they'd found and were content never to see the area again as long as it stayed intact and undamaged.

People who know OFD II will remember the occasion when the tip of the Trident was broken off.  The floor area around the triple stalactite had been taped off so that no-one could accidentally walk into it as it hung down to just about head height.  But someone crossed the tape and broke off about 15 cm of the tip of the longest of the 3 stals and then left the broken piece lying on the foor - it could not have happened accidentally!  The broken piece was found not long afterwards and re-attached by SWCC but the culprit was never found.  Yet visitors to OFD are supposed to be members of established clubs who book a key in advance and collect it from SWCC HQ - so what were the rest of this group of cavers doing and how did they allow it to happen?

Taping is never going to stop this kind of deliberate damage by people who should know better.  So what is the answer?

 

[Oceanrower]

so what were the rest of this group of cavers doing and how did they allow it to happen?

Why would it have to be someone in a group?

 

[Jenny P]

Normally cavers from visiting clubs have an OFD II key for a group of a maximum of up to 6 cavers in the party.  There is always a note on the tally board at SWCC HQ to list the names of everyone who is underground, including members of a visiting club, and a rough idea of their route.  (This is for use in case of a callout or someone overdue.)  Although there are members of SWCC who do solo trips, I would think it extremely unusual for a visiting club to have just one single member applying for a key.  I can't think that an SWCC member would have been responsible for this vandalism.  Both visiting groups and SWCC members are usually very quick to report back on any unexpected damage they come across because most of them care about conservation of the cave.

However, there have been just a very few occasions when a member of a visiting party has behaved in an inappropriate way and this has usually been picked up almost immediately by other members of their party or by an SWCC member who spotted some damage and checked on the tally board to see who had been down.  In the case of the damage to the Trident, it wasn't spotted by another group or an SWCC member in time to check the tally board and the broken off piece was found on the floor later.  Maybe the damage was done by one member of a group whose mates didn't realise what had happened and so didn't report it. 

The point is that only cavers from recognised clubs are normally down OFD II and it could only have been one of these people who did the damage.  That is what is so depressing!  And that's what Huge was implying - that it's the cavers from established clubs who ought to know better who are responsible for at least some of the damage in caves.

 

[BradW]

Sorry, Jenny, SWCC are no different from other clubs. When I was a member, there were a number of, let's call them "individuals", who certainly did not behave as you might think an upright honourable caver should. As far as I know, they were effectively "removed" or not encouraged to remain members, but all big clubs have rogue members from time to time. You cannot dismiss the possibility that a "lone SWCC agent" didn't cause the damage you refer to. It is just as likely as a non-SWCC caver. The greatest risk to the conservation of caves is individuals who think that spoiling things is the best way to express their resentment over some stupid grudge they hold. It's human nature, and we all have a duty to guard our precious environment and sanity from their craziness. Suggesting clubs other than SWCC are the only places where idiots lurk is just unrealistic.

 

[Stuart France]

So... for the time being at least, the MLCMAC does not formally exist? Which means that as a cave within their area that no other formal BCA member body controls, CCC is the 'relevant' caving body?

Half of me feels this is off topic, and the other half feels it is _on_ topic because the point of the BCA/regional councils is to represent caves and cavers, and if you can't work out who has the responsibility for that representation for a cave then the system isn't working...

Well I suppose Cambrian as the Regional Caving Council (RCC) could take it all over (Aggy, Daren, OCAF, Capel etc) but it would need a discussion with all the Old MLCMAC members rather than just barging in.  Let's wait and see if the New MLCMAC develops into something clearer than it currently is, and if not then discuss it at the next CCC AGM where people at regional scale can have a voice.

The only caves in the 'Cambrian Access Portfolio' at the moment are Ogof Capel and Ogof Gofan.  Historically there has been a reluctance to turn our RCC into an Access Control Body.  Its constitution only refers to assisting ACBs and it does not envisage the situation where an ACB defaults or when one is clearly needed and it does not exist leading to a situation where the RCC needs to take the initiative itself until a suitable ACB forms.

Capel and Gofan are examples of an ACB being needed but didn't exist.  The NRW mines access scheme is an example of direct action by the RCC to set something up, followed up by formation of a new and independent ACB in the shape of Cave Access Ltd (CAL) to take over and administer it.

 

[Huge]

I wasn't 'implying' anything, sorry Jenny. I mentioned that in response to an earlier post which said that extensive taping was somehow old fashioned and that education and signs were what's needed. We don't know if the damage mentioned in OFD and Draenen was deliberate (I've heard it said a couple of times that The Trident was damaged when someone tried to climb behind it, up to a high level passage and fell). What was definitely deliberate in both cases, was the crossing/ignoring of tapes and getting too close to the formations, with the consequences that we've seen, disastrous in the case of the calcite raft. There's nothing that can be done to prevent deliberate vandalism but thankfully it does seem to be extremely rare.

We need to use all types of measures to minimise the change cavers make to caves and tape is a very important part of that. Taping is a change in itself but it's better than the general degradation that occurs without it. Reflectors may be appropriate in some places but my experience is that the worn path tends to be wider as people don't tend to stick  closely to a direct route between each reflector. So tape, reflectors,signs, education and even access control all have their place.