Caving! (No not that Cave)

[JBC]

For the last few years I've been reading up on caving & cave diving in the interest of pursuing the sport. I'm currently on vacation in Tennessee & decided to drive my dad up to Kentucky for a simple tour of Diamond Caverns. It was pretty fun & now I have an awesome idea for a Metroid prequel!

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Super Castlevania IV - Waterfalls

[Rob]

I've been looking this stuff up the past few days. Far away from any place I can go to, but cool stuff. It's like the South making up for its lack of mountains.

Bigger pics?

[JBC]

Sorry, just didn't wanna screw anyone's bandwidth. Most of these should be found decent res in my Dropbox, plus many others.

[Strikers1945guy]

Cool! I don't do caving or much in the way oh hiking or nature walks, but me and a buddy often try and find old abandoned buildings and wander through, taking pictures. We don't do any vandalism obviously and leave as much undisturbed as humanly possible but yes its technically trespassing in many cases I suppose . I actually live near an old abandoned elderly nursing home and its quite creepy in there at night. We drove 2 hours to wander endlessly through an old hospital. There is some cool pictures will have to dig some out.

[Ruldra]

Only went cave exploring once many years ago, but I find it fascinating. Wish I could do it more often. It's a whole new world waiting to be explored.

Once read about super-caves and it's crazy how deep some of them are. Krubera cave is the deepest one known and it has a depth of over 2km.

Huge pics below:

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I actually have this book in my shelf. It details 2 super-cave expeditions. Haven't read it yet but heard it's great.

[Xyga]

I used to do a bit of caving near my hometown when I was young (southern-central mountains in France), either with my parents or on school trip.
Once I found a beautiful formation of what seemed to be quartz crystal in a tiny room, I was totally amazed, you know it was like finding a treasure.
A few years later I went back to that same cave, it had been soiled with trash, graffiti, and the crystals had been destroyed by genuine subhuman assholes.

[JBC]

4000 miles to the core in every direction, yet we've only dug about 8 miles deep at max. To this day, hundreds of cave systems have been registered around the world yet only a small few have actually been explored. Besides the trenches & antarctic lakes, caves are about the last places left uncharted. There are a few spots in the Tsingy De Bemahara (sp?) if I remember correctly. Apparently the dense foliage prevents satellite imagery & jagged landscape discourages ground exploration.

Anyone know of any Sci-fi that features caving on other worlds? It's pretty much the idea behind Metroid, but how cool would it be to find some hard Sci-fi that covers the subject.

[NRS]

Nice stuff. A few years ago some friends and I decided to go to Carlsbad Caverns for shits and giggles, and ended up enjoying far more than we thought we would. I still haven't checked out any other caves/caverns since, but it's an idea that comes to mind every so often.

Super Castlevania IV - Waterfalls

Great tune, but this would have to be my pick for cave crawling:
Super Castlevania IV - The Cave

Cliché, but it works.

Cool! I don't do caving or much in the way oh hiking or nature walks, but me and a buddy often try and find old abandoned buildings and wander through, taking pictures. We don't do any vandalism obviously and leave as much undisturbed as humanly possible but yes its technically trespassing in many cases I suppose . I actually live near an old abandoned elderly nursing home and its quite creepy in there at night. We drove 2 hours to wander endlessly through an old hospital. There is some cool pictures will have to dig some out.

Please do! I love urban exploring.

Once read about super-caves and it's crazy how deep some of them are. Krubera cave is the deepest one known and it has a depth of over 2km.

Those photos are breathtaking; especially the 2nd one. I wonder if I'd ever have the balls to tackle something like that (signs are very doubtful).