Below is part of State Rep's Paul Tittl's e-update for Caving in the 25th Assembly district

Caving in Wisconsin

You may know Al Schema enjoys serving on the Manitowoc City Council, but do you know he also loves exploring caves? The good news for Al is that he doesn't need to travel very far to find a one. Neither do you.

Ledge View Nature Center has three caves open to the general public from the end of May to the first weekend in November. For more information click here.

Cherney Maribel Caves County Park offers many caves and crevices that are open and accessible by a series of trails when the park is officially open. On May 19th from 8am-3pm you can join members of the Wisconsin Speleological Society for free public tours of Maribel New Hope Cave - the first tours of the season. Cherney Maribel Caves County Park is just off I-43 half-way between Manitowoc and Green Bay.

Here's a link to Wisconsin Speleological Society where you can learn about additional caving opportunities throughout the state.

Al is making a push to put Wisconsin caving on the map and hopes you will visit a Wisconsin cave soon. He is also working with other cavers to to make caves accessible. Kudos to Al and his friends for that effort!

Here's a new You Tube Channel Al has created for caving in the state: http://www.youtube.com/user/WisconsinCaves.

Looking across Armageddon’s 20 metre (65 foot) wide entrance hole. Photo by Dave Ingold/Speleological Exploration Club

A sinkhole first discovered in the ’90s has, since January this year, yielded new passages leading off from a massive chamber.

Experienced cavers of the South Africa’s Speleological Exploration Club have so far climbed, traversed and rappelled the tortuous main passages to just over 700 metres (2,300 feet) – small by comparison with SA’s longest cave at almost 17 kilometres (10.5 miles) – but hope to extend this explored and surveyed distance in many future trips. It has been found to be South Africa’s deepest cave.

Caver John Dickie descends into Armageddon Pot. Photo by Dave Ingold/Speleological Exploration Club

The North West Province cave is not for the faint-hearted: it has a vertical entrance shaft over 50 metres (164 feet) deep – the height of a 16-story building. Then the explorer scrambles and climbs down a very slippery scree slope of sharp rocks to stand in awe at the massive first chamber which is 150 metres (492 feet) long by 50 metres (164 feet) high. From there the caver is faced with several vertical drops and hard climbs as the main passage gets ever deeper to its record depth so far of 236 metres (774 feet) – the equivalent of a 78-story building.

This is a very difficult cave because the floor and walls are very friable, which makes safety concerns foremost in everyone’s minds and slows the exploration. We are excited to have increased the depth record, which has stood for over 40 years, by almost 30% so far. As it is such a difficult cave to explore we have named it Armageddon Pot. John Dickie, Honorary Chairman of SEC and one of this cave’s principal explorers

Further exploration and surveying is ongoing and expected to continue for the whole of this year.

Armageddon’s vertical entrance shaft is over 50 metres (164 feet) deep. Photo by Dave Ingold/Speleological Exploration Club

For the geologically-minded, this cave is in 2.3-billion year-old dolostone which, in addition to being highly-leached, was severely fractured by the Vredefort impact and has been subject to very localised vertical upheaval.

SEC has been exploring and surveying caves since 1954 and has found over well over 600 caves in South Africa and other African countries.