Scintilena - English Version

Experts from around the Great Lakes region are converging on Indiana State University in Terre Haute to promote bat conservation this Aug. 11.

The Indiana State University Center for North American Bat Research and Conservation, and The Organization for Bat Conservation, are sponsoring the sixth Annual Great Lakes Bat Festival.

The festival will include bat programs for kids and presentations about the benefits of bats, bat houses, bat research, bat conservation, public health and more. (more…)

The idea about the initiating of the First Assembly of the cavers from the Balkan peninsula appeared in the autumn of 2006. and it belongs to the Vice-Chairman of the Bulgarian Federation of Speleology (BFS) and General Secretary of the Balkan Speleological Union (BSU) – Alexey Zhalov. (more…)

Call For Papers, 2008 Society for American Archaeology Meeting,
Vancouver: North American Cave Archaeology

Scott Nicolay and Joel Craig Williams are planning a double session on cave archaeology in North America for the 2008 SAA Meeting in Vancouver. The combined abstract for both sessions follows: (more…)

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 

The news are from Andrea Benassi, on the blog Lepinia
(http://blog.libero.it/Lepinia/ in Italian) it is possible to read the whole report on the exploration at the Ouso del Pratiglio and more.   News translated by Giuseppe Moro

Good exploration news from the Lepini mountains (Lazio, Italy) front, the last descent dropped us directly at -900 meters; we stopped at the top of a shaft with a large lake at its base and a new (inundated) passage that goes on.
The main problem is always water, that is not of course decreasing, but increasing to an amount hard to face. In the whole cave the only place we could find to camp, without a lake or a waterfall, is at -700 meters: it is as wide as a Smart car and of course water is at hand, just outside the tent.
All this damp causes just a bit of hydrophobia, so we are going on with the usual two-men team (Paolo Turrini and Andrea Benassi), by now so rotten to flow over it.
Next appointment will be in september, hoping that we will find less water and more people to help.

News from the 5 Luglio Abyss, it’s a cave located on the faces of Monte Pisanino in Alpi Apuane at 1520 m on sea-level. The abyss scoutings, discovered and scouted by caving society of Val Freddana up to a drain pipe at -380 m, have been resumed after several excavations made by
Gruppo Speleologico Archeologico Livornese. This Saturday subsequently the drain pipe has been discovered a deep pitch about 100 m, that has developed in a huge joint large about 7/8 m and long in some sites 30-40 m.

At the base the pitch is closed and it’s airless, but if we go up again few meters and there is airstream, if we follow the joint between huge breakdown stones till a next new pitch. Another vertical part of 100 m of medium width about 10 x 10! The bottom is a cul de sac, the ligth constant trickle is lost in the terminal hall stones and there is no airstream. Going up we can see at the pitch top that the airstream goes in the opposite side of ours following in the joint between the breakdown stones, the next target of Saturday will be to go across in hopes to see a passage in the breakdown, we hope that the abyss keeps going in a parallel pitch to the previous.

Anyway the cave now is deep 600 m with a incredible series of jumps: the initial pitch is a P300 then there are two P100, we remember to you that the cave could be deep about 1200 m till Equi Terme risings.

The explorations are carried out by Gruppo Speleologico Archeologico Livornese on team up with many people, during the decisin moments, in the last two years with Matteo Baroni, Gianni Dellavalle, Lucia Montomoli, Daniele Guerri and Marco Menicucci ofl GSAL and also Tommaso
Biondi, Paolo Carrara, Filippo Dobrilla, Martina, David Fucile, Mariano Primierani and Yuri.

For the Gruppo Speleologico Archeologico Livornese
www.speleolivorno.it http://www.speleolivorno.it/
Matteo Baroni

News translated by Elio Sbrocchi  

In the month of August (precisely from 4th to 26th) on the plateau of Cansiglio a Caving Camp will take place.

The massif of limestone, straddling the province of Pordenone, Belluno and Treviso, is famous for its enormous explorative potential, not yet discovered at all.

By now, in fact, only 2 great cavities (Bus della Genziana and Abyss Col della Rizza) and 3 large springs are known at the base of the massif (1000mt lower).

The Camp (organized by the Caving Group of Ferrara and by the Caving Group of Sacile (PN), with the help of the Caving Group of Urbino and the Caving Section of Città di Castello (PG)) consists of a wide external research, a re-examination of the old cavities and the exploration of the 2 mentioned above cavities.

The Camp is open to anyone intends to practice some caving activities (the most disparate ones) and, at the same time, to spend some time with cavers coming from various regions.

Will be provided a house/hostel, to use as a topographical office, warehouse, kitchen, shower, etc.
Nights will be spent in tents.

Anyone interested, please contact “Lancillotto” to this email address: stephanlolo@hotmail.com, or Filippo Felici to this address: felpe2000@yahoo.it or Roberto Corsi to this address: corsir@libero.it

For the organizing committee
“Lancillotto” 
Traslated by Maurizio Lancia

‘Speleo 2008, weekly engagement calendar’ has just been printed. you can see it at:

http://calendar.speleo.pl/

2008 edition looks the same as the previous one, but has of course new pictures. we also added a caving vocabulary: 124 speleo terms in english, translated into french and spanish.

kasia biernacka, marcin gala

Yesterday and today an expedition to Kinder took place. We had been longing to go back for one month, but it had been impossible due to bad weather, and we unwillingly had to turn down to the half-flooded coppers in Fornitor (the surveying of this cave now reaches 24,660 mt.

The last month’s rains however have considerably swollen the Kinder torrent which was definitely looking in flood…

First we went down to recover a couple of sacks with ropes at -830 mt, then we started to descend a route in the hall at -750 mt which in our opinion would take us to a big water mouth at -860 mt. A short passage in landslide and a 3mt basin lead us to the departing point of a definitely deeper sink. Quite hesitating we came down a vertical wall for 45mt… Luckily, among three waterfalls at a few liters per sec, we manage to find the only half square meter of all the trap (a trap whose size by the way is 20 by 30 mt) where you have some chance not to drown. The three water cascades came from three canyons that have not been explored so far: one of them should anyway be the active way that you leave behind 100mt before the hall at -750mt, while as for the other two it is absolutely unclear where they come from.

The basis of the sink takes to another jump of 7 mt, followed by another of 12 mt. In this section the canyon’s size is 4mt of width and 15 mt of height! We then covered our way alongside the torrent for another fifty meters, stopping at a 10mt jump. In this area you can see another beautiful freatic duct which has not been reached yet. Unfortunately we ran out of ropes and therefore we had to set off towards the escape with our two usual heaviest bags.

Anyway, the interesting feature of these new explorations is that along the canyon there were other significant water mouths, giving hope for a future link with other caves on the Releccio side.

Participants: Daniele Bassani (ASC) and myself (GGM).

Total explorations:150 mt

News from Andrea Maconi translated by Claudia Rossetti

The exploration of caves in the area of Sant’Agata di Militello (Nebrodi Mountains Park) in the Province of Messina (Sicily), held by the Gruppo Grotte CAI of Catania and the Gruppo Speleologico Siracusano CAI, are going on.
Cavers are again descending in a cave which lays along the fault that crosses the whole slope of the Mount Furci, where they have just gained the depth of almost 120 meters. Several parts of the cave have been surveyed
and new ways have been discovered.

News from Giuseppe Spitaleri  translated by Giuseppe Moro