As I understand it the owners have never allowed and are not interested in a full survey -- worry about damage.
-----Original Message----- From: Mark Minton [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010 11:03 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Texascavers] Re: Sonora Butterfly George, >In any case, I'll be contacting the owners about this so they will know that they may need to do more training with their guides. That might be a good idea if they're still telling people some of the formations are quartz. When the guide told us that many years ago I questioned it, and the guide claimed that's what they were told to say. I doubted that was the case, but obviously they were convinced and as far as they were concerned I was just an uppity tourist. As for there being 7 miles in Sonora, I doubt it, but if true why hasn't anyone started a serious resurvey project? Could make a great TSA activity. Mark >About 13 years ago I wrote a guide for the guides at Sonora. Some of the >guides have it virtually memorized and I hear them quote it or accurately >paraphrase it. The management at the cave works hard to preserve and build >on the accuracy of their tours. Sometimes guides embellish, no matter how >hard the owners try to prevent it. However, sometimes the tourists mix up >the message. Blaming the guide assumes that the author's recollection is >completely accurate. I've given lots of interviews to reporters who even >when taking detailed notes still garbled some of the information because it >is so foreign to them. In any case, I'll be contacting the owners about this >so they will know that they may need to do more training with their guides. > >As for the 7 mile length, it is true that only about 2 miles have been >surveyed, but Jack Burch told me many years ago when I first started >studying the cave "If you add up all of the unsurveyed passages, including >all of the 10-ft-long dead-end crawlways, I bet you'd find there's seven to >seven and half miles in there." That is where 7 miles came from. And from >what I've seen of the cave, I believe Jack's estimate. > >George > >-----Original Message----- >From: Mark Minton [mailto:[email protected]] >Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010 9:03 AM >To: [email protected] >Subject: [Texascavers] Re: Sonora Butterfly > > That's an interesting take on a commercial caving >experience, but not very well fact checked. I was immediately >suspicious when she said it was 85 degrees in the cave. According to >the Caverns of Sonora web site <http://www.cavernsofsonora.com/>, >which she references, it is actually 71 degrees in the cave, with the >humidity making it feel like 85. She mentions quartz as one of the >types of formations present. When I took the tour there many years >ago our guide also claimed some of the formations were quartz, but >what we were looking at was obviously calcite. It is also totally >untrue that one would go blind after two weeks in the dark. The >author states that Caverns of Sonora is 7 miles long, but TSS says >its only about 2 ><http://www.utexas.edu/tmm/sponsored_sites/tss/longdeep/tsslongcaves.htm>. >Sigh. > >Mark Minton You may reply to [email protected] Permanent email address is [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
