Obscure or Obsolete Caving Terms

Subpopulus Hibernia

Active member
I've been reading a lot of old caving literature during the lockdown and I've come across a lot of obscure terms that I find quite intriguing.

A lot of these are the result of words being translated from French and not really sticking.

Boulder Ruckle
- Older term for a boulder choke. Seems to have fallen out of use in the 60s? It?s quite a friendly, open term, a lot less definite than choke.

Flattener
- I came across this great term in Australia, where it?s widely used for a low, wide squeeze. I was surprised to find it in Pierre Chevalier?s Subterranean Climbers, so it possibly came into English in the 50s via a French translation. I must try and use it a bit myself...

Cat-run
- This is used a fair bit in the classic old French caving books, and implies some sort of narrow, crawly passage.

Gut
- Used a bit in Subterranean Climbers, seems to mean a narrow twisting meandering passage.

Gallery
- A world you see a lot in the old literature, used a lot by Martel - the definition I found in Guy de Lavaur?s Caves and Cave Diving is that a gallery is a high-level passage above a streamway, but Martel seems to have used it for any fine broad, passage, dry or not.

Siphon
- A sump. Or sometimes a duck. Used a lot by Martel, seemingly obsolete in English by the 60s.

Any other odd or outdated terms that you?ve noticed over the years?
 

mikem

Well-known member
Although not caving, there is the boulder ruckle at Swanage. Cat gut is a passage in St Cuthbert's, NHASA gallery in Manor Farm, & you can still siphon a sump - so that just leaves flatteners (although it also made it into US glossary of karst terminology)...
 

wellyjen

Well-known member
Subpopulus Hibernia said:
Gallery
- A world you see a lot in the old literature, used a lot by Martel - the definition I found in Guy de Lavaur?s Caves and Cave Diving is that a gallery is a high-level passage above a streamway, but Martel seems to have used it for any fine broad, passage, dry or not.
Upper Gallery in Peak Cavern certainly matches that definition. A fine, broad, (mostly) dry passage above a streamway.

Boulder Ruckle I've heard used and used the term myself in recent decades.
 

Fishes

New member
I've specifically heard the term boulder ruckle used many times to describe the route down to the streamway in Jug Holes upper system. Not really a choke in this case but describing a complex series of routes through roof breakdown.

I've also heard syphon and gallery used quite a bit but I have spent a lot of time with older cavers.
 

AlexR

Active member
Gallery and Siphon are also still standard terms in German caving.

Boulder Ruckle may have been in use amongst climbers as well, given the crag of the same name at Swanage.

Edit: Completely missed mikem's answer who beat me to it on the boulder ruckle front.
 

langcliffe

Well-known member
andrewmc said:
Sleets Gill has its 'Main Gallery'; I suspect there are other similarly-named places?

Cellar Gallery and Gandalf's Gallery (Ingleborough Cave), and Tate Galleries (Lost John's) spring readily to mind.
 

Subpopulus Hibernia

Active member
andrewmc said:
Sleets Gill has its 'Main Gallery'; I suspect there are other similarly-named places?

I don't doubt that there's many passage names with the word Gallery in them, just whenever I see it I assume that the passage was explored in the first half of the twentieth century. I don't know of anyone using it to name a passage in recent decades.
 

langcliffe

Well-known member
Subpopulus Hibernia said:
I don't doubt that there's many passage names with the word Gallery in them, just whenever I see it I assume that the passage was explored in the first half of the twentieth century. I don't know of anyone using it to name a passage in recent decades.

Gandalf's Gallery (Ingleborough Cave), Tate Galleries (Lost John's), and Grand Gallery (Marble Pot) spring to mind.
 

Ouan

Member
mikem said:
But what were the words in the original French, as someone else did the translations?

I'm doing this from memory, so there will be errors...
'cat run' was probably translated, by a non-caver, from 'chatiere' which (from Google) appears to be a cat-flap, but in our context is a narrow squeeze.
'gallery' translated from 'galerie', still used for a dry, horizontal passage
'siphon' from 'siphon', French for sump
'gut' is possibly a translation for 'meandre', a tall rift
 

Laurie

Active member
Oh dear! Does make me feel old.
No feline passages but everything else was in common use.  :cautious:
 

Pitlamp

Well-known member
mikem said:
That just leaves reptation & flattener.

Doesn't the word "reptation" have a biological origin, describing the particular sequence of muscle movements used by worms? I have vague memories of reading that in a caving book (can't remember which) when I was just starting out as a teenager.

I also thought boulder "ruckle" is more of a southern expression. (I was surprised by mention of its use as far north as Jug Holes). I don't think we've got many boulder "ruckles" in the Dales. They're normally just called boulder "chokes".

I always thought "gallery" was simply a literal translation from the French "galerie" (as already mentioned above) but there are many of those in the Dales. Garm's Gallery is another example, named fairly recently (2014, if I remember rightly).

Weren't a lot of the classic French caving books (Casteret, Chevalier, etc) translated into English by non cavers? If so they'd perhaps use literal translation of words rather than searching out existing British terms. This might explain why some of the words popular among cavers of the 1960s and 1970s crept in to mainstream British caving, where previous generations hadn't used them.
 

langcliffe

Well-known member
Pitlamp said:
Doesn't the word "reptation" have a biological origin, describing the particular sequence of muscle movements used by worms? I have vague memories of reading that in a caving book (can't remember which) when I was just starting out as a teenager.

It's a term used by Casteret when describing crawling techniques in Mes Caverns, Chapter 3.

"...montrons comment vaincre ces obstacles et comment pratiquer cet exercise aussi p?nible que passionnant de la reptation souterraine."

He goes onto compare it with the movement of worms: "etirement vermiculaires".

I have only come across the term in Casteret's books.
 

Roger W

Well-known member
Reptation - whatever its origins - seems to have crept into the scientific vocabulary, being used to describe the thermal motion of very long linear, entangled macromolecules in polymer melts.

Have a look in Wikipedia: there are some interesting formulae there which might be used to estimate the speeds of cavers of varying height making their way through narrow convoluted passages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptation
 
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