That's so cool, W! I'm actually in Missouri, not Georgia. But Missouri has thousands of caves, too, and is unofficially called "the Cave State." Personally, though, I'm totally terrified of caves except the big well-lit ones. Too easy to get lost in them!Wartstein wrote: ↑Wed Nov 04, 2020 1:13 amIf we have CAVES?! Man, Vivi, don´t get me started on that one.. Or ask ANY European caver and they´ll look at you in disbelief when hearing that question
Salzburg (the state, not the city in this case) is really famous among cavers for its unbelievably many and also HUGE caves.
- We have the largest (known) ice cave in the world here (Eisriesenwelt, 42 km / 27 miles of length)
- We have a (non ice) cave that is over 60 km / 37 miles long and quite many that are over 10 km / 6.2 miles
- We long had the deepest (known) cave in the world (Lamprechtshoehle, 1,7 km / about 1 mile of of vertical distance) - but then they found even deeper ones in Georgia (Julia, do you read this? :) )
- Even pretty much all KNOWN caves are not fully discovered yet, they are still doing expeditions there and go deeper and deeper in
- It is estimated that just around 10 to 20 % of all caves are even FOUND yet, I know several cavers who spend all of their holidays beneath the earth in our mountains and find miles and miles of "underworld" no one has ever set foot on before
- There are many caves where it takes 5 or more DAYS to even reach the point where the already discovered areas END (and "new world" begings) (they have fixed bivouacs for overnighters in there) - I know a guy who went searching into a cave in mid December 2019 and came back into the light of day when it was 2020 already... :p (true story, the guy is called Georg Zagler, perhaps there can be found something about him in the internet-he does a lot of caving)
- An average guy like me (I am not really a caver) can discover new caves that are just a 15 minutes drive (and than some uphill hiking of course) away from my home
- I personally do like most REdiscovering smaller (so about up to 500 meters length), but beautiful caves (with ice lakes or ice figures in them) - I have some old books where those are listed, but often times they were discovered between 1900 and 1940, and sometimes no one knows anymore where they are exactly - so the search for the entrance itself is fun and exciting already. At the moment I am searching for the "Eishoehle der Saligen" (see pic below)
Here are some links for you:
- List of the longest and deepest caves in Salzburg (in German language): https://www.sn.at/wiki/H%C3%B6hlen#L.C3 ... _Salzburgs
- Here you can read about the "Riesendinghoehle" (in English): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riesending_cave
It is technically in Germany / Bavaria already, but extends into Salzburg too and I can get there in about a three hour hike. It became famous in Europe cause there was a huge rescue (it took more than ten days) for a caver who was hit by rockfall (I actually know this guy) see here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riesending_cave_rescue
- And here (in English): The largest ice cave in the world, a small part is open for the public and guided tours:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisriesenwelt
On this page there is a short movie about the show part (just one of the fourty kilometers) of the Eisriesenwelt:
https://www.eisriesenwelt.at/en.html
And while I'm here, I've got my Brouwer in the pocket today. I was very glad to see it isn't being disco'd - it's such a great little knife.