I am a powered paraglider preliminary and cave internet explorer. I have been primarily discovering wild west seacoast caves since Nineteen seventy nine. I have been a Countrywide Speleological Society member given that 1980, concentrating most of our efforts in the field of images and conservation. Ca has a wide variety of caverns with a large concentration of lime stone caves just minutes from my home in the Sierra mother lode of main California.
One night in early 2001 My spouse and i viewed a National Geographic’s special of a couple anthropologists flying around the Sudan leave with paramotors on their backs. These kinds of scientists were looking for signs and symptoms of ancient human existence on top of skyscraper tall, smooth top formations jutting upwards from the desert floor. I immediately believed this would be the perfect system to search for remote caves. How is this probable you ask? Most caverns on the west seacoast hover around 60 degrees. Because natural caves breathe, you will see a condensation fog up rising from the access. The bigger the cave, the larger the column of cumul. On my first airline flight from the Columbia air port, I headed direct for a known significant cave in the Stanislaus pond canyon. As I approached the actual cave I could see the increasing air from a fifty percent mile away. Now it was time to people this technique to locate brand-new caves in previously inaccessible terrain. I on course to the Camp Seven area scouting the south facing incline. The area I had chosen was overgrown with 6 foot high comb that is extremely difficult to enter. At the top of the ridge I could see a limestone outcropping that seemed to trend lower through the brush. Towards the bottom of the slope I saw the limestone reappear. This specific lead me to trust the limestone continued over the brush from the the surface of the ridge to the bottom level. From the air I saw that this was in simple fact true.
Flying at 100 feet I was able to locate a tiny condensation cloud about 1000 feet lower from the upper limestone outcropping. I had been unable to actually begin to see the entrance, but the line of rising air flow was distinct. I pulled out my Gps device, flew directly within the spot and designated its location. A month later my caving lover and I pulled out the actual topographical map and plotted the easiest method to approach the spot. After a half hour of moving on our palms and knees we all reached the location as well as discovered a vertical shaft about Nine inches wide in a small outcropping. We could feel and see the air rising in the hole but it ended up being too small to enter. Each of our plan now is to return in the near future to perform the particular excavation necessary to make access.
To locate the give entrance without the use of my para motor could have taken months of crawling close to with the ticks, snakes and the other critters that reside there. The driven paraglider has opened up a whole new dimension of cave exploration for myself and also fellow cavers. More exploration updates to follow.
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