Discovery in the Darkness: Jewel Cave National Monument

[Applause] it's always dark except for the light you have on your helmet and it's just quiet you're exploring because you don't know what's there and anything could be there the first time you ever go into a passage that no one's ever been down before it is the most exhilarating feeling at this point we've only discovered like three percent of all that might be there it just it just ignites the imagination you go into a passage and you'll see it keeps going for a little bit and the team will be like does it go and you're like yeah it keeps going then the next question in your mind is where does it go [Applause] [Music] this is jewel cave one of the longest caves in the world and these volunteer cavers are on a four-day trip to survey and map new parts of this expansive underground wilderness caves are one of those last frontiers they're one of the few places on earth where you can go and not know what you're going to see around the next corner sometimes we'll actually walk right by something and somebody will say wait a minute does that go somewhere hey that looks like a i'm going lead take a look i went around the corner climbed up and i stood up in this giant room it was 160 feet long and it had 100 foot tall ceiling and i stood there and i thought this is pretty cool it goes come check it out i am the first person in history to stand in this room right here year after year new discoveries are made by these explorers big rooms winding passageways and even underground lakes are added to the map of jewel cave this is the next frontier of exploration [Music] i've had some incredible opportunities to find things like gigantic rooms beautiful formations you really have that opportunity to explore something that no one's ever seen you're walking where no one's walked before for the most part a lot of people aren't going to come into that passageway unless it's a main artery out to the exploration so you may be the first to see it you may be the last to see it you're going to leave it the way it was and that crystal you lit up for the first time is never gonna sparkle again because no one's gonna come by and so for that moment that crystal sparkled and you walk away in the cave it's dark it's quiet it'll remain that way for forever explorers at jewel cave are constantly working at the edge of what has been mapped but this presents a challenge that pushes the limits of basic human endurance the leads at the individual cave are now getting so far out there that you have to set up a camp the camp is actually very comfortable and it's probably the darkest and quietest place you'll ever sleep it's great to be able to come back to camp and have a hot meal it really adds to our productivity and also safety because we're not so fatigued campsites are located near water but water is scarce in jewel cave in some parts of the cave small drips are collected for weeks in others it can be pumped from nearby underground lakes fresh water is essential for the cavers to forge ahead and expand the map in the future i think it's really going to push the limits of human endurance and you know what we're capable of and it's really exciting to be a part of that in this unforgiving environment cavers must be careful and well prepared all food is carried in with them all forms of waste are carried out the trick with caving is you can't bring everything your pack is only so big and you want to make it as light as possible because you're the one hauling it you can't get tired in the middle of the trip and say can you carry this i've carried too much stuff that doesn't happen [Music] an experienced caver can take a four day trip into jewel cave with a 15 pound pack containing food survey equipment and safety gear but you don't have to commit to years of training or a multi-day trip to explore jewel cave with a park ranger you can ride the elevator 203 feet down to the target room and start to experience this other worldly environment floor and manganese is the black strip that you are seeing underneath the level right there thousands of visitors come each year to jewel cave they find themselves drawn to the beauty and the mystery of this underground wilderness on the scenic tour visitors can get an up-close look at many forms of drip stone such as flowstone draperies stalactites and stalagmites and even soda straws [Music] the plentiful calcite spar these are the jewels that give this cave its name each guide offers visitors an educational experience highlighting the cave in multiple ways making the scenic tour a popular and memorable experience which is adequate enough to see the features of the cave and maneuver the passageways for those that want to experience even more of jewel cave there are other options the historic lantern tour [Music] this more strenuous tour twists and turns through the narrow passages where jewel cave was first discovered and explored and for the truly adventurous there's the wild caving tour four hours of real excitement these passages are challenging and not always easy to get through but once you do even novice cavers discover things that are quite remarkable and if you come a little bit closer you can take a look you can see that balloon right down here and that hydro magnesite balloon is 1 1000 of an inch thick this is the only cave in the world where hydromagnesite balloons can be seen by the public one of the many extraordinary yet incredibly fragile features of this cave so how did the cave itself form there are still many unanswered questions but here is what the latest research shows beginning 60 million years ago around the same time the dinosaurs are dying out geologic forces fractured the pahasapa limestone of the black hills [Music] millions of years later rainwater dissolves carbon dioxide from the soil and carries it into nearby streams turning them slightly acidic over time these streams cut into the rock as some of the water moves through the fractures it dissolves the limestone and opens up underground passages and rooms when the water stops flowing it leaves behind dissolved limestone creating a coating of calcite spar without the buoyancy of the water many passages partially collapse into piles of breakdown [Music] in a few areas of the cave rainwater seeps into air-filled passages depositing unique calcite formations to adorn the cave these beautiful and often colorful formations complement the complexity of the cave this underground world formed over millions of years yet it was discovered just over a century ago [Music] the year is 1900 and frank and albert michaud are riding up hell canyon on a mineral prospecting trip hearing a strange whistling sound they come across a small hole on the side of a limestone cliff with cold air rushing out they return the next day with dynamite to enlarge the hole climbing inside they are the first people to ever see the beautiful crystal-covered passages name it jewel cave the michoas protect develop and promote the cave as a tourist attraction in 1908 president theodore roosevelt proclaims jewel cave a national monument the first ever monument created for the protection of a cave for decades less than two miles of passages are known it isn't until the late 1950s that anyone realizes there might be more much more in 1959 herb and jan khan famed climbers of the black hills team up with geologist dwight diehl to start exploring the cave we would always climb with any passing climber that came along and along came this fellow that had just graduated from college dwight deal so we went climbing with him and when it got cold he says well when it gets cold like that you go underground we went in caving with him and we enjoyed it it was fun it's a lot like climbing it's moving her body conforming to the cave passages but they don't let you just go in and have fun you've got to contribute something to the cave or to science in 1965 herb publishes a scientific paper on the cave's barometric airflow proving there could be thousands of miles of yet undiscovered passages over the next two decades and more than 700 caving trips the cons discover and map more than 60 miles of new passages they'd never found the end of jewel cave that's still true in the 1960s herb khan determined that it was jewel cave's ever-present airflow that could be the key to determining its size he recognized that the air blowing in and out of the cave was in response to pressure changes that makes it a barometric wind in order to have that kind of response it's going to be proportional to the pressure change outside and also proportional to the total volume of cave even the part that hasn't been found yet more recently cave climatologist dr andreas flitch has been conducting a new air flow study herb and gen con started the research in the 60s and they did a really great job it is still the base of the work in barometric caves but we have now more sensitive instrumentation with access to the latest scientific tools dr flitch was able to update and refine the work started by herb and jan khan one thing is a thermal camera you can see the surface temperature of the cave and you can see even the airflow we have the ultrasonic animal meter and with this the instrument can calculate three-dimensional airflow information well we started with herb studies he calculated a volume of about 4 billion cubic feet based on andreas's measurements we can expand that to like 14 billion cubic feet those volume predictions have allowed us to think big with an average size of a million cubic feet per mile there could be literally thousands of miles we haven't yet found jewelcap is such a stable cave and it's one of the most stable caves for the airflow i've ever seen and for me there is no restriction why we couldn't have the biggest cave in the world [Music] armed with this knowledge and a desire to map the unknown dozens of volunteer cavers have made exploration a labor of love for more than 50 years [Music] 98 feet herb khan was the pioneer for the jewel cave mapping dude 55. he was the one who really decided to break the cave out into multiple levels and give the levels color so you could visualize it on a 2d surface we kind of take that a little bit further these days everything's digital of course the actual mapping inside of the cave is done by hand with a paper and pencil but that gets transferred onto a computer once we're back in the office and basically we use computer visualization now to see all of those levels in the cave and build the map as the exploration is happening the cave map at jewel cave as far as i know is one of the most up-to-date maps of any large cave in the world and the exploration is ongoing after every trip we add the new piece that's been found and we update the map and we send it back out to the explorers and that helps them plan for the future for the next trips that go into the cave it is taking longer and longer for explorers to reach the unmapped wilderness of jewel cave and along the way cavers often make unexpected discoveries we want to find big rooms we want to find new formations but it's also about the journey and getting to the destination sometimes is almost as fun as being there finding some of that new stuff cavers pass through enormous rooms and passageways [Music] places like cloud nine [Music] rambling loft [Music] the western motif and countless unnamed passages in rooms on a smaller scale there are many mineral formations known as speleothems to carefully observe and study gypsum formations in every shape and size adorn this cave such as flowers needles and beards it's a real thrill you know to come across some of the rare speleothems deep within the cave so pristine and so incredibly fragile i think everyone agrees the frontier of it all the experience of going out to the end is a value in and of itself [Music] as explorers continue to push the limits underground a diverse bat population has found a home in and around jewel cave a team from the university of wyoming is tracking the bats to see how they're doing i'm trying to figure out how bats are using the cave which species are used in the cave and when they're using it when we catch bats we take a bunch of different measurements to determine what kind of health they're in we measure their forearms we measure their weight we look for parasites we check their wings for physical damage a lot of times they have little pinholes sometimes you see scarring from previous injuries for a couple species that we're targeting in particular we're fixing vhf transmitters on them these transmitters send a pulse every second and a half or so we're able to use vhf receivers to pick up that signal and we can track the bat to wherever it is after five to ten days the transmitter will fall off the bat a hibernacula is a site where bats hibernate during the winter and jewel cave is one of the largest in the western united states a large hibernacula has about 20 to 30 bats jewel cave on the other hand hosts at least 14 1500 bats each and every year and so it's really important that we maintain jewel cave as a working hypernacula for bat conservation understanding and protecting jewel cave's bat population is one of the many important missions underway at this national monument jewel cave peaks our sense of wonder there's so much more to discover and the spirit of exploration just goes on and on one of the most memorable moments of my whole life not just my life caving was being the first person to see the water table our glass lake the first lake discovered in jewel cave and jewel cave is 99 dry and here are thousands of gallons of water and i got to be the first person to see that it all pays off for that one time you come out and the room starts getting bigger it's a giant passage that your light doesn't get to the end of you're so excited you don't get tired we had fun and that's why we did it i just hope the exploration can continue as far as it's humanly possible to do it it doesn't have to just be a cave it could be your own backyard go out and find that adventure go discover something everyone who comes to jewel cave can be inspired by the discoveries taking place from day visits to long cave camps the discoveries keep coming and the more we find the more questions we have [Applause] that's what keeps cavers and visitors coming back [Music] because down the next passage [Music] around the next bend the path goes on and on out into darkness in the wilderness underground [Music] [Music] oh it's a long long crawl way and who knows what's beyond i can picture slender soda straws at dripping in a pond oh it's a long long crawl way and who knows where it leads what matter if my knee is pulp what matter [Music] that almost has a breeze if it opens up a little i can get back on my knees it's a long long crawl way and who knows where it goes now my heels are on the ceiling and the floor curls up my long toes away who knows where it will end now i've struggled to the corner i can click around the bend to see a long long crawl away you

Channel: Harpers Ferry Center NPS

Views: 1,761

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Jewel Cave National Monument, National Park Service

Id: 7H9PgrS_jyc

Length: 23min 44sec (1424 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020