I'm told that the person in that photo is Nick Pierce, not Mike Boon.  Doesn't loook like Boon either.

Mike had of course been inactive caving-wise for a long time, and most cavers here will remember him as a solitary and sometimes antisocial character.  Though I'm a long-time, now-retired caver myself, I came too late to have had the opportunity to go underground with him though he occasionally...

These are, of course, glacier caves and not ice caves.

Our club used to have a little wooden box, open on two sides and with a big hole drilled in each end, in which was affixed two floor scrubbing brushes bristle-to-bristle.  You stick the rope in one hole, inbetween the brushes, and out the other hole, immerse it in water (a stream, or washtub)...

OK I tried it, and I see now that as long as the standing rope is weighted, the bowline cannot come undone.  It could only happen if you seriously weighted the tail inbetween the two knots (cowstail clip-in?).

Am I missing something... doesn't a bowline pop thru if you pull its tail and the loop in opposite directions?  Doesn't everyone tie off a bowline's tail onto its loop to avoid it's being tugged?

Main thing is to link up with the many friendly and helpful local cavers, and give yourself enough time to cave on their schedule as you will be on holiday but they will not.  Six weeks should be about right...

Hm, I didn't read that post as complaining or confrontational, more just informational.  It's easy to put an unintended spin on forum posts - remove the punctuation and it seems quite benign.  It's usually the string of followup posts that can turn things nasty, which is unfortunate.

I'm assuming this is a measure of remoteness, the shortest surveyed distance between the far point and the nearest entrance, regardless of the reasonableness of the route.  We had once thought that Castleguard Cave, at 8.9km, held that record, and maybe it did for awhile but it is something that...

Oh those cool Canadians. Wonder which astronaut was on the piano?

Should give serious consideration to a balance between luxury and weight, depending on the terrain to get to the cave, plus the effort (pitches, squeezes, distance) to get from entrance to camp - and out again.  We tend to be minimalists here.  Also eliminate anything fragile; I will never...

Though she may generally be right, I do think Amy overstates the case somewhat.  When I was active internationally in the 80s and 90s, I met several competent US female cavers, and I still know of a few.  Perhaps they are mostly out west rather than in TAG.

The Alberta Speleological Society, in the Canadian Rockies, has always had a small number of serious female cavers.  Within the last five or ten years I'd say that half of our dozen truly hardcore exploration cavers are female.  And we have some of the most challenging caving conditions in the...

What is the zip problem?  They can be fixed, sometimes.

Or fix it.  If it's not meshing, try crimping the back of the zip car a bit with pliers.  If it's sticking, try lubricating the teeth with some chapstick.  If the zip car is broken or gone altogether, slavage one from another ruined suit and stick it on.  Save the whales, save the furry!