Alright folks
just wondering if anyone knows of any work on conduit development in glacial clays such as this example near appletreewick:



cos im having a hard time finding any. Does it count as epikarst?!
there seems to me to be quite a few questions that arnt easily answered....
I should think that inorder for conduits to form there must be a very low porosity most likley due in most cases to a high clay content as there was in the above case and the material would also need to be able to support a conduit which would again be aided by a high clay content.

There would then need to be some sort of cracking or fracturing to guide the development but as soloution isnt likley to help much with development (though i never tested the clay for carbonate content so perhaps it is lime rich...) there is then a question of how is kinetic breakthrough acheived? does the initial fissure need to go right through to a rising?

Most importantly why on earth does the stream go underground rather than flowing over the surface which is shorly easier??
maybe there are just some f@*king large worms about!
cheers
peachey

Did you follow it?

its pretty superficial the watter re emerges a short way further down the valley

Could it be anything like this?

http://www.ubss.org.uk/resources/proceedings/vol16/UBSS_Proc_16_2_105-108.pdf

shit classic typo in the OP needs low permiability not porosity :-[

(Nothing in the picture for scale . . . ?!)

Isn't there something in an ULSA Review somewhere about a cave near Alum Pot (October Hole) which includes a few words about something along these lines? The Northern Caves entry refers to "calcited" till in this example. From memory (because it would use a lot of time to search it out for you) I think there are other references to such passage types elsewhere in the Northern Caves series.

Just another thought; conduits in till are common where a traditional karst resurgence is covered by till (e.g. Newhouses Rising near Horton, or Aire Head Rising at Malham) - however, does your question relate to conduits formed wholly within till, i.e. not limestone related? If so then such phenomena may be equally abundant in what are generally considered to be non karst areas and you may well find useful information exists outside the world of caving.

Pitlamp said:

... outside the world of caving.

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Sorry, where is this mythical place?

I recall finding a micro conduit system in peat some years ago but can't for the life of me remember where now. 

Perhaps these things are quite common but haven't been reported or studied.
I suppose the real question is what brought about the inception. Once there is a conduit then normal erosive actions will form bigger passages.

Les W said:

I suppose the real question is what brought about the inception.

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Rabbits?

Ian,

Not in Glacial Till, but I have a couple of articles relating to caves formed in volcanic rocks, one in Tuff the other in some form of Agglomerate, from the 2006 Vulcanospeleology symposium in Mexico.  These might just be of interest to you in that these caves appear to have been formed by water erosion in rocks other than limestone.  The first refers to Cueva Chapuzon in Jalisco, Mexico and is by Chris Lloyd, John PInt and Susana Pint.  The second is on Cueva Tecolotan in Morelos, Mexixoc and is by Ramon & Luis Espinasa.  I can probably scan the articles if you think they are of use to you.

Occasionally curious cavities are found just under the surface on the scarp face of the North Downs at Reigate. I don't think there has been any serious research into them, but I think the consensus is that they formed in periglacial conditions, maybe when frozen ground thawed out and the sub-surface sludge flowed (like lava?) leaving cavities behind. If the surface was frozen at the time, that may explain why the surface remained intact.

I also remember a description of a cave in peat, but can't remember where. I think I can also remember Goon talking about them in Scotland?

Caves in peat are a relatively well-known phenomenon. Check out Bleaklow Slutch Cave, which was IIRC featured in Caves & Caving on a time. That publication really needs an online index.

One tends to emerge from them absolutely filthy.

This article covers a number of types of pseudokarst, including "piping" which seems the most relevant.

http://www.caves.org/pub/journal/PDF/v69/cave-69-01-103.pdf

Thinking about it, we have a fairly similar phenomenon in Burnsall, but in river deposits. In this particular case, it would seem that there is a resurgence at the base of the limestone underneath the river deposits, and the resurging stream has carved a conduit through the deposits to resurge into the river just above the normal water level level.

About twenty metres back from the resurgence is a mound, which is the site of a flood resurgence. The mound has been created by water mushrooming upwards, bringing sediments. A hole about two metres deep appeared in this a few years ago which enabled  access into a small crawling-sized conduit which went upstream and downstream, but which was too unstable to explore.

In reply to Graham, Caves & Caving is indexed on the British Caving Library site -

http://caving-library.org.uk/catalogue/catalogue.shtml

Search on "slutch" (the most distinctive word - WITHOUT the quotes) to get the article you were thinking of
Search on "bleaklow" (the next most distinctive word - the search is not Case sensitive) to get four more references (additionally to a survey, plus Bleaklow Cave and Bleaklow Quarry Cave)
BUT, search on "Bleaklow slutch" and you get nothing - because the article was called "The Slutch Caves of Bleaklow"

"Tony Moult" or "Steve Fowler" would also work as they were the authors (and, in this case, they are recorded thus and not as e.g. Moult, Tony); "moult" or "fowler" give longer lists which you could use you browser's "Find on Page" (or similar) function to slim down in a more serendipitous way...

The message for efficient searching is that the search function is NOT like Google, it takes what you type in very literally, so try to avoid putting in anything you might not be able to spell or that you are not sure might have been indexed - just use a surname for an author; try the most significant word of the question you want answering - don't try to type in the question itself or any superfluous words...

molerat said:

Les W said:

I suppose the real question is what brought about the inception.

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Rabbits?

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badgers?

I remember Doug Harris used to be a dab hand at finding dead badgers in caves we were excavating.  :

Martin Laverty said:

In reply to Graham, Caves & Caving is indexed on the British Caving Library site -

http://caving-library.org.uk/catalogue/catalogue.shtml

Click to expand...

Excellent work, Martin. Good to see. 

graham said:

Caves in peat are a relatively well-known phenomenon. Check out Bleaklow Slutch Cave, which was IIRC featured in Caves & Caving on a time. That publication really needs an online index.

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I "discovered" one on Featherbed Moss (N of Kinder) which was a hands and knees crawl with several entrances, stream, tiny waterfall and cobble floor, aprroximately 300ft long.  I couldn't give the precise location asd it was in a very featureless area.

Many years ago I did a very short through trip (5m or so)  in a stream-carrying peat cave somewhere near Glencoe, Scotland. Filthy. It's difficult to know whether the stream had cut a subterranean tunnel through the peat or whether it was an open channel that subsequently grassed over.

Rhys