Cave digging

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Cave Digging is the practice of enlarging undiscovered cave openings to allow entry. Cave digging usually follows a search of mountains and valleys in "cave country" (or karst) for new caves.

[edit] Geological cave indicators

Most of the obvious caves in countries with a well-established caving community have already been discovered and explored, so cavers must search for new caves. This is most commonly accomplished while ridgewalking, the practice of scouring the countryside, in areas with cave potential, for new, previously undiscovered openings to the underground. These may be found in sinkholes, in rock outcrops or anywhere the ground is underlain by limestone or other soluble rock. Areas underlain by lava flows or where lava tube caves are found may also contain new caves.

If the discovered feature is either blowing or sucking air in great volumes, it is an encouraging sign and indicates that there is potential for a large or extensive cave beyond.

[edit] Technique

On occasion, a newly discovered opening will be large enough for the average person to enter, but often they are too small and must be enlarged to allow entry. When the entrance is too small, it is enlarged using cave digging techniques.

Sometimes digging simply involves moving a few rocks and some soil. This can be accomplished with the bare hands or may involve the use of folding army shovels, root-pruning saws, small crack hammers, buckets to move the material, and rope to haul the buckets if the opening is being enlarged in a downward direction. Large tamping tools and crowbars are also useful in dislodging the rocks and soil as the digging progresses.

Sometimes, the use of equipment and brute force is not enough to gain entry into the cave. In cases such as these, serious diggers resort to more complicated means of opening the cave. Many "digs" become large group projects, involving backhoes, timber shoring, and even the use of large diameter well drilling methods. Where the main impedement is solid rock, entry may involve the use of explosive material, similar to those used to remove stumps on farms, or it may involve the practice of rock shaving, where small holes are drilled in the rock and small caliber ammunition is detonated to spall the rock off in thin layers. A similar technique, called plug-and-feather, involves driving wedges into lines of small diameter holes that have been drilled in the rock. As the wedges are driven into the holes, a crack forms along the line of holes and the rock is eventually broken.