"Crystal Giants in the Caves of Naica." Edited by Giovanni Badino. La
Venta—Explorazioni Geografiche, Italy; 2008. ISBN 978-88-95370-04-0.
8.5 by 8.5 inches, 48 pages, hardbound. About $23 from cave-book
sellers or the Association for Mexican Cave Studies at amcs-pubs.org.
[AMCS price $20 plus shipping.]
Most cavers who are reading this will have, unless they recently
immigrated from Mars, heard of the Cave of the Crystals in the Peñoles
Mine in the town of Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico. There have been numerous
articles and web pages about the 10-meter-long gypsum crystals in the
cave room accidentally opened by mining in 2000, but this is the first
book publication about them. The main feature of the book is eighteen
large color photos, some covering two full pages, but there is also
text, translated from Italian, about the discovery of the room, the
techniques developed to explore and map a cave that has 100-percent
humidity and a temperature of 118 degrees F., and the future of the
cave. The room is only accessible because sixteen thousand gallons of
hot water per minute are being pumped out to keep the mine dewatered,
at a cost of a million dollars a month for electricity. A mineral vein
is sort of like a cave--you can't tell where the ore will end until it
does. When it does, photos like those in this book will be all that
remains for us of the Cave of the Crystals.—Bill Mixon
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Work is the curse of the drinking class.
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