3 Hikers Survive 13 Days Trapped In Cave In China

A man and his two young nephews were rescued 13 days after getting lost in a cave without any food, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday. Sun Zhongfu, 22, and his nephews, Li Chengqing, 10, and Li Wanqun, 12, wandered into the cave in Guizhou province with a candle, but it soon went out, Xinhua said. They were unable to find the exit in the darkness. They survived by drinking water from a stream. The report said the three were ''thin but in good spirits.'' Xinhua said five men fishing in a stream near the cave's entrance on Sept. 22 heard the trio's weak cries for help.

Bodies Of 2 Divers Removed From Cave At Bottom Of Lake

The bodies of two Central Florida divers not trained to dive in caves were recovered Wednesday after the men ran out of air in an underwater cavern in Lake Apopka.

''It looks to me like a couple of open-water divers who didn't have the certification to go into a cave,'' said diver Jim Calvin, owner of Underwater Adventures.

Calvin and two other divers recovered the bodies of Kevin James Gokey, 26, and Daniel Eugene Smith, 30, at 2:30 a.m.

The men were together, floating in 96 feet of water, just inside a tight spot between some rocks leading into the cave, said Calvin, 43.

Calvin accompanied Mark Long, 36, an expert cave diver who is specially trained in cave rescue and recovery, on the dive. Lake County sheriff's divers did not have the training necessary to recover the bodies, said Lake sheriff's Lt. Chris Daniels.

Carbon Monoxide Blamed In 9 Deaths In French Cave

Nine people died during a teen-agers' outing in a cave in northern France used by German troops in World War II to conceal V1 ''doodlebug'' rockets, rescue workers said Thursday. Dead were three teen-agers, the father of one of them and five members of the team that went to look for them. The nine were apparently killed by a high concentration of carbon monoxide gas in the tunnels, outside the village of Buchy near the northern River Seine port of Rouen. The lethal gas may have been created by a fire lit by the teen-agers. The cave was used during the war to hide some of the V1 rockets that German forces fired at Britain across the English Channel.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Paintings In Cave Could Be Oldest

Scientific tests have shown some of the masterly drawn beasts discovered last December in a cave in the Ardeche to be at least 30,000 years old, making them the world's oldest known paintings, the culture ministry announced this week.

The ministry said French and British specialists had determined that charcoal pigments of two rhinoceroses and a bison found in the Chauvet cave in the southeastern Ardeche were between 30,340 and 32,410 years old.

The oldest previously known cave painting has been dated at 27,110 years old and shows the simple outline of a human hand; it was discovered in 1992 near Marseilles, France. The art at Lascaux, which is similar in style to that in the newly found cave, is thought to be about 15,000 to 17,000 years old.

Archaeologists were surprised by the early date for the Chauvet drawings; the team studying the great underground gallery, with more than 300 animal images, many of them leaping or running across great panels, had initially estimated they had been painted perhaps 20,000 years ago.

Dig In France Unearths Iron Age Cave, Skeletons

A rare, exceptionally well-preserved example of Iron Age burial practices has been found in a cave in southwestern France - 22 skeletons, some still decked out in their funeral finery. Archaeologists think the cave, composed of two galleries and a well, dates to about 600 B.C. It was discovered by amateur speleologists in February 1994, but the Culture Ministry held off announcing the find until the cave could be sealed from the public. Experts said the discovery was significant because cremation, not burial, was the usual form of disposing of the dead during the Iron Age.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Injured Cave Explorer Dies After Getting Stuck In Exit

A man who plunged 30 feet while touring a cave was found dead Monday while two others trapped along with him during a 17-hour ordeal were rescued, authorities said. William John Coughlin, 27, of Oak Forest, Ill., hit his head when he fell from a rope ladder in Buzzard Roost Historic Cave on Sunday. Six others in his group helped Coughlin, who weighed more than 200 pounds, up a 100-foot climb after the fall, but he became lodged in the narrow, V-shaped passage that is the only exit out of the cave. Four of the group traveling ahead of Coughlin continued on and alerted officials.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Diver Saved From Cave After Tva Lowers A Lake

The Tennessee Valley Authority lowered the level of Nickajack Lake several feet to help rescue a scuba diver trapped in an underwater cave. David Gant, of Bryant, Ala., was trapped Saturday after he became separated from his diving partner. He survived for 16 hours by holding onto a stalactite and breathing air trapped in an 8-inch high pocket at the top of the cave. Dropping the lake's level flushed the cave with fresh air. Gant was rescued Sunday afternoon in good condition, said Jim Poplin, head of a rescue unit in Hamilton County.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Extroverted cave divers in most peril, UF study finds

The life of the party is most likely to be the kind of person who dies in a cave-diving accident, says a University of Florida researcher. Extroverts who are social and outgoing probably have a greater chance of dying than quiet introverts because they are less technically minded and pay less attention to details, said Milledge Murphy, a professor in UF's College of Health and Human Performance whose research includes a decadelong study on cave divers.

"Cave diving is the only sport activity were death is an absolute result of performance failure," he said. "It mus be done right or there's no tomorrow." With its high-tech equipment and precise set of instructions, cave diving requires someone with a mind-set for details, and many of the people the sport attracts work in technical professions, Murphey said.

"The general population probably believes that most people who cave dive are very brash risk takers who jeopardize their lives for a good time," he said. "But research on cave divers, aerobatic pilots, sky divers and other participants in high risk sports shows that these are serious, professional people who enjoy technical precision."

In the UF study, all nine of the 65 cave divers who died over a 10-year period were extroverts and fit into one of two of the 16 personality types on the Myers-Briggs psychological test. The cave divers took the test at the beginning of the study, which compared personality traits with activity performance.

There are about 3500 trained cave divers in the world today, and about 430 people have died from the sport since record keeping began during the 1960s, Murphey said. Annually, between six and 10 people die cave diving in the United states. Cave diving, like other high risk sports, has become increasingly popular since the 1970s.

"Many people in advanced cultures crave more excitement in their mundane lives than going to work, coming home and watching television," he said. "They seem to want to look back towards the gladiator days when people truly lived on the edge." Some colleges and universities have capitalized on this interest by beginning to offer academic courses in such activities as rock climbing, scuba diving, parachuting, hang gliding, white-water kayaking and cave diving, Murphey said.

Source: The Gainesville Sun

Class Makes Pupils Cave Dwellers

The second graders at Stenstrom Elementary went spelunking in a cave last week and they didn't even leave campus.

The pupils, along with teacher Susan Keogh, converted a yellow portable classroom into a dark cave with papier-mache bats dangling from the ceiling, stalagmites and fossils.

A turkey carcass served as the bones of a pterodactyl. Rocks painted yellow to look like gold nuggets sat in a make-believe pond. Students fished them out and weighed them.

''I jumped when I saw the bats because their ears glowed,'' said Samantha Gerhehty, 9. ''I was scared.''

Keogh said she got the idea after the class read one of her favorite books, The Mellons Go Spelunking.

''I don't have a radio in my car, so all I do when I drive is think of ideas,'' she said.

Woman Who Was Trapped In Cave Will Go In Again

A woman who fractured her leg inside the nation's deepest cave in what she called her ''spring break 1991'' is back for another go at it. ''I can't wait to get underground,'' said Emily Davis Mobley, 41, of Schoharie, N.Y. ''This is what I do. It's part of my life.'' The spelunker was trapped inside Lechuguilla Cave for four days last March before rescuers got her out. On Friday, Mobley plans to join a team studying bacterial life in the 1,565-foot-deep cave, near Carlsbad Caverns in southeastern New Mexico.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Skeleton Of Man Missing 17 Years Found In Cave

The skeleton of a wealthy service station owner has been found in a cave, 17 years after his disappearance. Police have ruled his death a homicide. An amateur cave explorer found the skeleton of Gary R. Simmons on Wednesday. The remains were clad in cowboy boots and decaying clothing. Simmons' driver's license was in the pants pocket. Gary Compton, a private investigator hired by the family, said he believed Simmons was killed because he planned to testify in a federal investigation of black market gasoline. Simmons was last seen alive in 1974. He was declared dead in 1981.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Woman Rescued From Cave Says She Will Return In March

Emily Mobley, who spent four days trapped in the nation's deepest cave until her dramatic rescue, said she'll return to the New Mexico cave next year.

''If I am physically able to be, I hope to be back there next March,'' she told the El Paso Times in a telephone interview from her home in Schoharie, N.Y.

Mobley's left leg was broken March 31, when it was struck by a 90-pound boulder that dislodged when she grabbed it. She was 900 feet below the surface of Lechuguilla Cave when the accident happened. She still is using crutches.

Mobley, 40, was a member of a mapping expedition into the cave, which is in a wilderness area of Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southern New Mexico.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Mapping Expedition Finds Cave Has Extra 2.6 Miles

A mapping expedition in which an explorer broke a leg deep below the Earth's surface discovered 2.6 more miles to Lechuguilla Cave, making it the eighth-longest in the world. At 56.9 miles, the cave jumped four notches from 12th in the world, Carlsbad National Park management assistant Bob Crisman said. The cave is the deepest in the United States at 1,565 feet and fourth-longest in the country. During the expedition Emily Mobley of Schoharie, N.Y., broke a leg and had to be rescued. After the rescue, the expedition resumed April 4, discovering 2.6 more miles of rooms and passages.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

5 Crawl From Cave After Being Trapped For Hours

Five people emerged wet, shivering but happy late Saturday after being trapped in a cave for about seven hours by a flash flood. The five spelunkers crawled out of Onesquethaw Cave to the cheers of about 100 rescue workers gathered around the cave's entrance. The five were taken to hospitals for observation, although officials at the scene said they appeared healthy. Authorities identified the spelunkers as Laura Selicaro, 20; Lynn Cowan, 22; Peter Bowie, 20; Scott Baisch, 22; and Nicholas Springer, 20, all members of the Syracuse University Outing Club. They were trapped in the cave when a beaver dam upstream of the cave's entrance burst.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

New Species Emerge From Cave

A cave in southeastern Romania, isolated from the rest of the world for at least 5 million years, has yielded an unexpected bonanza of new species. Serban Sarbu, a Romanian biospeleologist, or cave biologist, fled the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1987 for the West. But with the downfall of that government, Sarbu returned last summer and resumed research he had abandoned four years ago in the Movile Cave. After three decades of extensive exploration of the area, it had been thought that the cave had yielded all its secrets. But in an article published this year in Memoires de Biospeologie, a scientific journal, Sarbu said he had identified 14 new species, including small shrimp-like crustaceans, snails and primitive insects, one new genus and one new subfamily. He expects the tally to increase as more specimens are collected and classified.The cave has two levels. The upper level is dry and about 200 yards long; the lower, 40 yards long, is submerged. ''This is a nasty cave,'' said Sarbu. ''The ones in Bermuda or Florida are huge, beautiful passages with no murky water or silt. This one is real narrow. You almost have to push the tanks in front of you and swim behind them.''

Source: Orlando Sentinel

9 Scientists Found Dead in Alps

Nine scientists missing for four days in the Piedmontese Alps were found dead today, buried under mounds of snow from an avalanche, authorities said.

The bodies were recovered at dawn in a remote valley after a search by 70 rescuers and three helicopters.

The victims were part of a group of 12 speleologists, or scientists who study caves, caught in a snowstorm Sunday after exploring caves in the Alps. Three were rescued by helicopter Monday.

Los Angeles Times  [Los Angeles, Calif] 12 Dec 1990

Rescuers Save Amateur Trapped Deep Inside Cave

An inexperienced spelunker spent seven hours trapped under a waterfall 200 feet underground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park before he was rescued Wednesday night. Dozens of rescuers worked for nearly three hours before carrying John Moscheo, 23, out of Bulls Cave near Cades Cove in the park. He was airlifted to the University of Tennessee Medical Center. He had no serious injuries. Moscheo had been caving with an experienced spelunker, but he was unable to climb up from the ledge. It took the rescuers to get him out of the cave.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

International Notes Cave-Associated Histoplasmosis -- Costa Rica

An outbreak of histoplasmosis occurred among a group of university students who entered a cave in Santa Rosa National Park, Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica, on January 4, 1988. The cave was inhabited by about 500 bats, including three species of fruit bats (Glossophaga soricina, Carollia perspicillata, and Carollia subrufra) and one species of vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus). The cave consisted of two entrances to a single chamber 20 x 75 x 5 feet in size. Bat guano covered the floor of the cave, and the ground was noted to be exceptionally dry for the season.

Seventeen students (mean age, 24 years; range, 20-40 years) entered the cave to observe the bats and photograph a small boa constrictor feeding on them. The students were in the cave an average of 26 minutes (range, 3-90 minutes). Fifteen (88%) of the 17 students became acutely ill within 9-24 days (mean, 14.4 days);* 12 remained ill 14 days after onset of symptoms. One student, who did not enter the cave, did not become ill. Signs and symptoms among the 15 ill persons included fever (93%), headache (87%), cough (80%), dyspnea (80%), chest pain (73%); and myalgia (53%). Two patients were hospitalized, but all recovered without antifungal treatment.

Divers Bringing Light To Cave's Dark Mystery

A team of the world's foremost cave divers are venturing into the granddaddy of Florida's underwater caves, discovering clues about Florida's geologic evolution and testing cutting-edge exploration technology.

Halfway through an 11-week expedition at the Wakulla Springs cave in North Florida, the divers are in the thick of an adventure that leaps beyond any of the Tarzan movies filmed here a half-century ago.

For decades Wakulla has been a mystery, but with each exploratory dive a few of the cave's secrets are beginning to surface.

Until last month, divers thought the cave stretched out like a gargantuan throat from its underwater mouth -- a long, watery tunnel. After several weeks of penetrating a half-mile beyond the cave's mouth, divers have found a vast limestone labyrinth that forks off in at least three directions. Each prong of the fork has offshoots heading into even more uncharted territory.

Underwater Caves of New Caledonia Harbor an Eerie World for the Adventurous

Human skulls hang from the entrances, and footsteps are said to disappear as if by magic outside New Caledonia's mysterious limestone caves.

Indigenous Kanak tribesmen on the South Pacific islands stay well away from the water-filled caverns where the remains of ancestral warlords have been laid to rest in a world said to be peopled by the age-old spirits of the land.

But for tourists, scuba-divers and what the French call "speleonauts"-deep water-diving speleologists-the caves tucked away in the jungles of the sun-baked French islands provide sport and discovery.

On a narrow dirt track fringed by towering ferns, a group of divers, flippers in hand and tanks belted on backs, move toward a gap in the greenery.

The mouth of a cave opens onto a vast cathedral-like chamber where thick columns of lace-edged stalactites and stalagmites, millions of years old, frame a gateway to an underwater lake.

60 Feet Underground
With a plop, the five wet-suited divers disappear below the still, black waters of this eerily silent world about 60 feet under the ground.

Half an hour later, the explorers from Australia resurface ecstatic from their first cave-dive into one of the few fresh water cave-diving sites in the world.