Wake-up call, it's never too late to clean-up a cave

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Wake-up call, it's never too late to clean-up a cave

Postby Leclused » Jun 29, 2012 6:35 am

Situation:

The "Sainte-Anne" cave was visited for about 170years with candles,torches and with carbide (acetylene) - lights. The soot of all these flames was deposited all over the cave and made everything black.

Last week-end we did a test to remove this soot ==> see this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ysEaDhL ... e=youtu.be

With such a result the Belgian caving community is planning a large scale cleaning action before the end of 2012 in this cave. We hope to clean as much as possible to make this cave shine again :-)

Let this video encourage others to follow our example and let's clean-up some caves all around the globe.

Dagobert L'Ecluse

SC Avalon
Ps the test was done with pure water and with a little bit of presure in the can. Imagine what you can do when you use a "Kärcher" (pressure washer).
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Re: Wake-up call, it's never too late to clean-up a cave

Postby Leclused » Aug 27, 2012 2:06 pm

Last week-end (24/26 september 2012) the clean-up action took place.

With a lot of people, 2 pressure washer and a lot of small spray cans we clenaned more theb 300 square metres (perhaps more). The action was filmed by a crew of the news and was broadcasted today on national television

A link to the broadcast : http://tinyurl.com/9po79al (see on 23:52 - 25:44)

It was a great succes and the result was amazing. I think these kind of actions will be repeated in the future.

BR

Dagobert L'Ecluse (Sc Avalon)
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Re: Wake-up call, it's never too late to clean-up a cave

Postby NZcaver » Aug 27, 2012 5:22 pm

Good effort! :clap: And it made the news! Thanks for sharing the link.
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Re: Wake-up call, it's never too late to clean-up a cave

Postby MUD » Aug 27, 2012 5:50 pm

:bow: :wtg: :clap:
Thank you for your efforts! Job well done!!
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Re: Wake-up call, it's never too late to clean-up a cave

Postby Leclused » Sep 6, 2012 1:19 am

Hi Folks,

Vincent Gerber, a Belgian caver, made another clip about this clean-up action. It contains somme amazing before/after situations.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/- ... directlink

Hopefully this clip encourage other cavers to go out and clean-up some caves. The Belgian caving community is going to repeat this action next year. First of all to clean the remaining part of this cave (Saint-Anne, Tilff-Belgium) but we will also investigate the possibilites to clean other caves.

BR

DAgobert L'Ecluse (SC Avalon - Belgium)
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Re: Wake-up call, it's never too late to clean-up a cave

Postby Leclused » Apr 4, 2013 3:41 pm

I noticed that the previous link is broken.

But the clip can be still be seen here

https://sites.google.com/site/speleovig ... a-ste-anne

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Re: Wake-up call, it's never too late to clean-up a cave

Postby Ketonquot » Apr 5, 2013 12:15 am

I just recently started caving, and the first cave I have visited was trashed by locals I'm assuming. My sons and I returned to the cave on Easter. We started at the back of the the cave cleaning as we worked our way out. By the time we reached the first few chambers our bags were full. Looks like another visit is in order I guess. It is really a shame that people can enter such an awesome place, and trash it so. I am realizing that being a caver is a bit more than just exploring.
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