On Sep 24, 2008, at 10:51 AM, Mixon Bill wrote:
Why does one have to jump through hoops to visit, say, Austin's
Midnight Cave? >>>>>Julie Jenkins and a few others deserve a lot of
credit for keeping those hoops as low as they are<<<<<, but
nevertheless one wonders (or at least _I_ wonder) just why one can't
make a spur-of-the-moment visit to Midnight Cave just for fun when
one can go rappel a cliff on Barton Creek twice as high as Midnight
is deep anytime one wants to without permission from anyone. Two
answers occur to me. One is that is was easy to close off access to
Midnight Cave, whereas closing off the cliffs along Barton Creek
would be a lot more difficult (but I'll bet the safety fussbudgets
would if they could). The second is that some cavers encourage
governments to "manage" all their caves, which of course translates
mostly into managing cavers. From the city of Austin up to the US
Department of the Interior, the idea seems to be that cliffs are
inherently open, whereas caves are inherently closed, except when
they are gracious enough to make an exception. This is partly
motivated, at least for those cavers, by the illogical notion that
because some caves need protection, all caves need protection.
Lechuguilla Cave needs protection. There is nothing anyone can hurt
in Austin's Midnight Cave.
...except perhaps, themselves. Speaking in generic terms, it's easier
to rescue a person that is hurt on the surface than it is to rescue
someone who is hurt underground. Obviously some caves and cave
passages will be more difficult than others to negotiate with an
injured caver. Having suffered a broken ankle once in a cave
(fortunately for all involved, it was an "easy horizontal cave" and I
crawled out under my own power), perhaps I tend to think about the
relative ease of rescuing someone whenever I take a trip in a cave,
and adjust my thinking about the kinds of risks I'm willing to take
accordingly.
Diana
P.S. I find it interesting that Joe Zamecki thinks that it's only a
handful of people in the caving community that disagree with posting
cave locations on the Internet. I guess he doesn't realize the number
of NSS members out there (as of 2007, the NSS Annual Report lists
"over 12,000 members."). I'd hardly call that a handful.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Diana R. Tomchick
Associate Professor
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Department of Biochemistry
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Rm. ND10.214B
Dallas, TX 75390-8816, U.S.A.
Email: [email protected]
214-645-6383 (phone)
214-645-6353 (fax)
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