Cavemud wrote:There's some formation damage but doesn't appear to be intentional. They were off trail looking for more cave that doesn't exist in that passage.
Every cave has it's on circumstances and best practices for conservation. In some cases secrecy works, and in other cases some openness and sharing helps. We have some delicate areas in caves here in Colorado on public land where there is no additional passage. In these cases it can help to communicate via flagging, and on the map, that there is no going passage and not to cross a certain point. If we didn't have open communication about these areas, then every single caver would cross these delicate areas in order to see for themselves. I recently heard of a caver disobeying these signs in order to see for himself because he thought the signs and warnings on the map were a ploy to keep other cavers out of an important extension (that in reality didn't exist). When you have a culture of secrecy then it's difficult to know when someone is telling the truth. Fortunately this was an isolated incident by a caver with lower than average intelligence.