Cadomin Cave is a natural limestone cave in the Canadian Rockies near the town of Cadomin, Alberta.
Cadomin Cave is a natural limestone cave in the Canadian Rockies near the town of Cadomin, Alberta.
Cadomin Cave is located within Leyland Mountain at an elevation of 1890m, and was formed within the thickly-bedded limestones of the Palliser Formation. The cave consists of an upper series of spacious phreatic and keyhole-type passages underlain by somewhat smaller passages connected by tight crawlways. There is only one known entrance. Cadomin Cave is named after the town of Cadomin, a portmanteau for the Canada Dominion Mining company.
Cadomin Cave has been known since the early 1900s when prospectors opened up the Coal Branch district, but it was almost certainly known to native peoples before then. The first cave survey was conducted in 1959 prior to the formation of Canada's caving clubs, and produced an accurate map of the passages of the upper series as far as the Mess Hall, the cave's principal chamber. In 1977 and 1978 a long-rumored lower series of passages was discovered and surveyed by members of the Alberta Speleological Society, significantly increasing the cave's measured length to 1704m and its depth to 171m. Subsequent explorations including the discovery of the decorated Crystal Crawls in 1982 and unsuccessful dives of the sump have resulted in a measured length of 2791m and a depth of 220m.
The spacious, easy cave passages of Cadomin Cave's upper series have been popular with local and visiting outdoor enthusiasts for over a hundred years, and are amongst the most vandalized in the Canadian Rockies. In 1997 the Alberta Speleological Society became official stewards of Cadomin Cave under a program managed by Alberta Environment, and periodically conduct garbage cleanups and graffiti removal and assist with bat counts. [1] In 1999 the cave was included within the newly formed Whitehorse Wildlands Provincial Park. Cadomin Cave is a hibernaculum for Little Brown Bats, and access is currently prohibited between the first weekend in September and the first day of May. White nose syndrome is expected to arrive in the next few winters, so the cave has been closed via Ministerial order, effective May 14, 2010. A locked gate will be installed designed to prevent human access while facilitating bat movements.
A cave or cavern is a natural void under the Earth's surface. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. Exogene caves are smaller openings that extend a relatively short distance underground. Caves which extend further underground than the opening is wide are called endogene caves.
Mammoth Cave National Park is a national park in south-central Kentucky, United States. It encompasses portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest known cave system in the world. The park's 52,830 acres (21,380 ha) are located primarily in Edmonson County, with small areas extending eastward into Hart and Barren counties. The Green River runs through the park, with a tributary called the Nolin River feeding into the Green just inside the park.
Speleology is the scientific study of caves and other karst features, as well as their composition, structure, physical properties, history, ecology, and the processes by which they form (speleogenesis) and change over time (speleomorphology). The term speleology is also sometimes applied to the recreational activity of exploring caves, but this is more properly known as caving, potholing, or spelunking. Speleology and caving are often connected, as the physical skills required for in situ study are the same.
Krubera Cave is the second-deepest-known cave on Earth, after the Veryovkina Cave. It is located in the Arabika Massif of the Gagra Range of the Western Caucasus, in the Gagra District of Abkhazia, a partly recognised state, previously part of Soviet Georgia.
The Wellington Caves are a group of limestone caves located 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of Wellington, New South Wales, Australia.
Castleguard Cave is a limestone cave located at the north end of Banff National Park in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada. With 20,357 metres (66,788 ft) of surveyed passages, it is Canada's longest cave, and its fifth deepest at 384 metres (1,260 ft). Castleguard Cave ascends gently from its entrance and terminates beneath the Columbia Icefield.
Dos Ojos is part of a flooded cave system located north of Tulum, on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The exploration of Dos Ojos began in 1987 and still continues. The surveyed extent of the cave system is 82 kilometers (51 mi) and there are 28 known sinkhole entrances, which are locally called cenotes. In January 2018, a connection was found between Sistema Dos Ojos and Sistema Sac Actun. The smaller Dos Ojos became a part of Sac Actun, making the Sistema Sac Actun the longest known underwater cave system in the world.
A sea cave, is also known as a littoral cave, a type of cave formed primarily by the wave action of the sea. The primary process involved is erosion. Sea caves are found throughout the world, actively forming along present coastlines and as relict sea caves on former coastlines. Some of the largest wave-cut caves in the world are found on the coast of Norway, but are now 100 feet or more above present sea level. These would still be classified as littoral caves. By contrast, in places like Thailand's Phang Nga Bay, solutionally formed caves in limestone have been flooded by the rising sea and are now subject to littoral erosion, representing a new phase of their enlargement.
Cadomin is a hamlet in the west-central Alberta, Canada within Yellowhead County. It is located along the McLeod River in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, approximately 50 kilometres (31 mi) south of Hinton near the Bighorn Highway. It is served by a spur of the Canadian National Railway.
Speleogenesis is the origin and development of caves, the primary process that determines essential features of the hydrogeology of karst and guides its evolution. It often deals with the development of caves through limestone, caused by the presence of water with carbon dioxide dissolved within it, producing carbonic acid which permits the dissociation of the calcium carbonate in the limestone.
Hellhole is a large and deep pit cave in Germany Valley of eastern West Virginia. It is the seventh longest cave in the United States and is home to almost half of the world's population of Virginia big-eared bats. At 737 feet (225 m), Hellhole is the deepest of several caves in the Valley.
The Cadomin Formation is a stratigraphic unit of Early Cretaceous age in the western part of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. It is extends from southeastern British Columbia through western Alberta to northeastern British Columbia, and it contains significant reservoirs of natural gas in some areas. It was named after the mining town of Cadomin, which is an acronym of "Canadian Dominion Mining".
Pettyjohn Cave is a karst cave located in Walker County, Georgia on the east side of Pigeon Mountain in the Appalachian Plateau of Northwest Georgia. It has a surveyed length of 31,490 ft and reaches a depth of 235 ft. The cave is accessible via a path from a gravel parking area on the side of Rocky Lane. Out of the 242 listed, it is 119th longest cave in the United States as declared by the Georgia Speleological Survey.
Arctomys Cave is a cave in Trio Mountain above the Moose River Valley in Mount Robson Provincial Park in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia. Arctomys Cave has 3496 metres of surveyed passages and has a maximum depth of 536 metres (1,759 ft).
The Caves of the Tullybrack and Belmore hills are a collection of caves in southwest County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. The region is also described as the West Fermanagh Scarplands by environmental agencies and shares many similar karst features with the nearby Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark.
Charterhouse Cave, on the Mendip Hills in Somerset, is the deepest cave in southern England.
BoomingIceChasm is an ice cave, located in the Crowsnest Pass area of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, Canada.
The Gorman Creek Formation is a geologic formation of Early Cretaceous (Valanginian) age in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin that consists primarily of nonmarine sediments. It is present in the northern foothills of the Canadian Rockies and the adjacent plains in northeastern British Columbia. Plant fossils and dinosaur tracks have been described from its strata.
Bisaro Anima is a cave located on the Mount Bisaro plateau in British Columbia, Canada. It is the deepest cave in Canada.
Cave diving is underwater diving in water-filled caves. The equipment used varies depending on the circumstances, and ranges from breath hold to surface supplied, but almost all cave diving is done using scuba equipment, often in specialised configurations with redundancies such as sidemount or backmounted twinset. Recreational cave diving is generally considered to be a type of technical diving due to the lack of a free surface during large parts of the dive, and often involves planned decompression stops. A distinction is made by recreational diver training agencies between cave diving and cavern diving, where cavern diving is deemed to be diving in those parts of a cave where the exit to open water can be seen by natural light. An arbitrary distance limit to the open water surface may also be specified. Despite the risks, water-filled caves attract scuba divers, cavers, and speleologists due to their often unexplored nature, and present divers with a technical diving challenge.
The Canadian Caver Vol 10 No 1 and Vol 14 No 1 Cave Closure - http://www.caving.ab.ca/cadomin Archived 2012-03-07 at the Wayback Machine