Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/109278
The Spelunk ancouve nV sland rI Norther Madly, Deeply START HERE Guide Dave Wall leads half- and full-day interpretive karst and caving tours out of Port McNeil: islanddaytrippers.com 24 W estw o r ld p18-27_The List.indd 24 >> ���SMATTERING��� KARST CAMP, NORTHERN VANCOUVER ISLAND It���s 6 a.m. and we���re chomping at the bit, eager to see what the guys scouted yesterday: a huge black pit with an entrance they claim can fit two elephants. Cavers talk about ���their caves��� the way fishers talk about the big one. And this could be ours: a vast, heretofore undiscovered world of interconnected caves and underground passages, the potential of which drives some to bushwhack their lives away following every possible lead. Only 32,134 square kilometres, Vancouver Island not only dominates Canada���s ���longest��� and ���deepest��� caves list, it boasts the highest density of caves nationwide ��� some 1,200 and counting, more than in all of the other provinces combined. All because 120,000 years ago, Spring 2013 meltwater from three ice ages and buckets of rain dissolved cracks into ever-larger caverns and caves, carving out passages up to 10 stories tall, tunnels 10 km long, even underground lakes. One remote valley beyond nearby Tahsis leads to a Swisscheese underground maze of 35 km of tunnels and 170 caves. Fuelled by such a possibility, it takes only a few hours of searching to find the entrance to yesterday���s black pit, icy water from a nearby slope now flowing into its dark mouth. Peering over the rim, we see a massive pile of snow some 25 metres down, the accumulation of years of snowfall. Above, the cave���s walls are sweating; constant humidity that gives way to plants clinging to rock, now swaying in a silent wind. I���m the first to rappel into the unknown, and the moment is tense. Cold claws upward, the sounds of my breathing ever louder as I edge downward to the snow cork beneath me. Above, my friends��� faces recede against a halo of sun as one thought loops continuously: ���Man, you���re maybe the first human ever in this place.��� Then the toes of my boots touch the stopper of snow ��� the only way past a one-metre by five-metre pit cut through its heart by dripping water. Is the snow pack solid enough? What if it collapses when I���m midway, or worse, when I belay below? It holds. I yell for the guys to follow. Each drops down and through the bulge of snow to the cave beyond, and we search for an hour for a way past huge, unstable boulders. Silently, we all hope one of us has the guts to squeeze underneath one of the behemoths and clear a passage. Because this could be it: the antechamber of a vast, interconnected world of underground tunnels, caves, caverns and stalactites ��� one of the last unexplored places on earth. ��� ���Francois-Xavier ���Fix��� De Ruydts (caving) Francois-Xavier ���Fix��� De Ruydts 13-01-28 10:30 AM