With any luck, five UK cavers are on board a BA flight for Canada right now.  One Canadian team is enroute to the cave today.  The UK team skis in with more Canadians on April 10th and will put two divers in the Boon's Blunder sump on April 12; the intention is to start surveying the dry passage...

Am planning a holiday to Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and am wondering where the best surface karst can be found within a half-day of the road.  Tough one to search on the internet...

Senior cavers may remember Mike Shawcross, pioneer British caver active in the late 1960s to mid 1970s in western Canada and Central America, and over the past thirty years a resident of Antigua, Guatemala.  In early 2011 it was announced that Mike's long-time charitable work improving the...

I've just received word that members of the Alberta Speleological Society made a connection between Pachidream and Heavy Breather on the weekend, which has resulted in a new Canadian depth record of about -650m, pending final survey massage.  These caves are located in the Mount Doupe area of...

One free app you can get is a virtual spirit level, kinda cool.  It got me thinking though... could someone write an app to make the Ipod Touch into a cave surveying instrument?  Just strap it onto a laser distance finder... Someday they will be cheap enough so anyone can afford one.  But I bet...

How does one access/read their own 'sent' PMs? Am I dense, I can't find them...

Fourteen Canadian and six UK cavers are currently at Castleguard Cave undertaking various projects, the principal of which is a dive into the sump at the end of Boon's Blunder.  All will be back by April 8.

Anyone have any experience with airflow permeating apparently solid chokes of sand/silt?  I would have thought it unlikely, but there's a dig here with no airspace that feels cool and there's no breath condensation (common throughout the rest of the cave, which is high, cold and relatively humid). 

Anyone been to the quartzite tepuis of this region?  Am curious/interested...

For you lovers of all things Canadian (and I know there are alot of you...) you can obtain a free copy of the new survey of Canada's longest cave at http://www.cancaver.ca/./pubs2/CanBooks.htm

Diagrams on this site http://en.petzl.com/ProduitsServices/B02%20PANTIN%20B02500.pdf  show the main footloop/ascender tether running underneath your kneepad.  I've never seen this before... is it common to do so where you guys are?

Anyone here been to Meghalaya?

Mike Boon turns 65 on March 29th.

If one acquires an old Wheat lamp and the fluid levels are low, do you just need to add water, or something else?

Website now up: http://members.shaw.ca/pumacocha

My second caving trip of the year... the snow has finally gone from two of the three 'going' caves we have been working on here in the Canadian Rockies. This one is currently 280m deep; we looked at a side-lead partway down, dropped two new pitches but stopped at a loose third one down which a...

How come even tho I've got the 'auto log in each visit' box ticked, I'm not automatically logged in with each visit? And how come, after logging in, I'm prompted to log in a second time if I want to post (e.g. after I hit "reply")? Is it just me or...?

Assuming you have a central maillon on your harness - do you clip your Stop's locking carabiner onto your maillon, or do you clip it separately onto your harness tie-in loops? I clip mine in separately onto the harness below/outside the maillon, so that during changeovers the Stop carabiner...

For the main harness tie-in point maillon, do you folks generally use aluminum, or steel? D, or triangle? I've been using an aluminum triangle but am considering a move to a D, but was wondering whether steel is overkill, or reasonable.

Question: which is most popular - using your long cowstail as your upper jammer safety, or keeping your safety and cowstails separate?