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:mmin...@caver.net]
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010 9:03 AM
To: Texascavers@texascavers.com
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 mmin...@caver.net
Permanent email address is mmin...@illinoisalumni.org
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