Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby nathanroser » May 2, 2012 10:12 pm

From what I read in Caves and Karst of the USA, Kazumura Cave in Hawaii is the longest cave by linear extent being 20 miles end to end. But this is a lava tube with many entrances. As for the longest passage Sistema del Rio Encantado has the longest continuous river passage being 17 kilometers long. Wasn't there an expedition in 2011 that connected this with another cave and made the passage 21 km long?

As for most remote location from an entrance, Fort Stanton sounds like it could be the most, all of the passages in Mammoth seem to be within no more than a few miles of an entrance. Fisher Ridge could be a possible candidate. Anyone seen any maps of the big ones in Europe? Something long and deep in France or Spain seems like a good place to look at.
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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby jeffkruse » May 3, 2012 8:04 am

There are many entrances for the Rio Encantada and a section (100-200') has no roof so it is just a gorge thus technically cutting it short.
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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby Roppelcaver » May 3, 2012 10:45 am

Roppel (part of Mammoth) tops out at about 5.8 miles to the furthest point. Admittedly, this is not guaranteed as the shortest, but is the route used as the quickest/easiest (although likely the shortest).
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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby Leclused » May 3, 2012 11:26 am

muddyface wrote:From what I read in Caves and Karst of the USA, Kazumura Cave in Hawaii is the longest cave by linear extent being 20 miles end to end. But this is a lava tube with many entrances. As for the longest passage Sistema del Rio Encantado has the longest continuous river passage being 17 kilometers long. Wasn't there an expedition in 2011 that connected this with another cave and made the passage 21 km long?

As for most remote location from an entrance, Fort Stanton sounds like it could be the most, all of the passages in Mammoth seem to be within no more than a few miles of an entrance. Fisher Ridge could be a possible candidate. Anyone seen any maps of the big ones in Europe? Something long and deep in France or Spain seems like a good place to look at.


Sure in spain/france there are a lot of remote spots. But I would not measure remoteness in meters but in hours/days. For example if we (members of Sc Avalon) want to go working at the "Crimson" boulder choke at -740 in the Anialurra system it will take us 1 day to get there.

A typical trip looks like this
Day 1 : Descending 400m pitches then a long passage (severel miles) until the previous boulder choke at -600, 150m climb to the underground camp were we sleep
Day 2 : another 3-5 hours trip to get at the crimson boulder choke. Work there for half a day an return back to the underground camp
Day 3 : leave camp and do some work on the way back an get out

Sure you can do everything in one long trip, roughly 12-16 hours but at crimson boulder choke you can't sleep so that would mean that you have to go back directly.

An even more remote spot is the bottem of BU56 / Puertas de Illamina (-1408 m.):
- one entry, 400m pitches and then more then 10km to get to bottem at -1408 (divers can even go further)

Just to get you an idea of some remote spots in Europe :-)

Does anybody knows how long a trip to the bottom of Voronja would take?

BR

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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby chac » May 3, 2012 11:51 am

According to a 2009 paper (Die langsten Siphons der Welt; Edited by Oliver Knab), the longest one-way penetration in an underwater cave is 7856 m/25776 ft. This was done at Wakulla Springs, Florida in the Q-tunnel (Q-tunnel dead-ends apparently). It is quite a deep tunnel. For the return trip with decompression time included, the dive took 26 hours 16 minutes to complete.

At about a 4.9 mile penetration at depth, that's an impressive dive to a remote location. I don't know if this record is still valid today. None of the (known) one-way cave penetrations in Quintana Roo caves could even approach this record. Those caves are too shallow and probability too high that an exit to the surface would be encountered.
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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby ReneOhms » May 3, 2012 12:03 pm

Using the Utility Network Analyst tools in ArcGIS, the shortest route from an entrance in Jewel Cave to the farthest point (the end of Hazard County), is 6.13 miles. The "shortest" route deviates significantly from the actual route that would be traveled to get there, and goes through passage that's more difficult, too delicate, or slower to travel. The route you'd actually travel from the elevator to Hazard County is 6.63 miles. From the historic entrance, it's 7.25 miles to Hazard County via the shortest surveyed path, and 7.86 miles via the route that would actually be traveled. This doesn't account for the ups and downs and other deviations between stations, but it's the best measurement we've got.

I'd be careful with the COMPASS tool -- it doesn't seem to be calculating it accurately for Jewel, at least. COMPASS identifies station VI13 as the "furthest station," and says it's 8.80 miles. VI13 is definitely not the furthest station in the cave. I'm not sure what COMPASS is doing to calculate this route, but ArcGIS says the same station is 6.8 miles from the historic entrance. I think COMPASS is actually calculating the travel distance from one end of the cave (The Brr Hole, to the west) to the other (Hazard County). Haha... Now THAT would be a rough trip!

No matter how you add it up, it looks like Ft. Stanton's travel distance from an entrance is further than Jewel's.

Congrats on the recent trips, all! Simply amazing.
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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby Stan Allison » May 3, 2012 1:48 pm

Thanks for the information on Jewel Cave Rene. The 7.9 mile figure that GypCaver posted is actually the centerline distance from the entrance of Fort Stanton Cave to the current end of exploration in Snowy River. Fort Stanton Cave Study Project cartographer John Corcoran uses TurboCAD to draft his nice map of the cave. Using CAD software to draft maps has some advantages in that John can determine the centerline distance of passages or even the actual distance of Snowy River which is greater than the passage length due to the meanders that the Snowy River makes. John and I both played around with using Compass to determine the distance to the end and had to break the original discovery route into Snowy River to get Compass to follow the travel route. If you read the Compass help file you will see that Compass determines the most distant point by following the earliest surveys in order to get to that point. If a shortcut was found at a later time this shortcut is ignored by Compass. This explains why Compass doesn't find the most remote spot in Jewel correctly. It tries to follow the original routes we surveyed, not the shortest or travel routes. So to get a good figure it is necessary to chop the Compass data so that the travel route or shortest route is selected. After doing that I came up with a surveyed distance of 6.9 miles from the entrance. The survey distance of 6.9 miles is probably a bit short of actual travel distance since the survey line cuts across many meanders that we walk or crawl around. The 7.9 miles centerline distance is probably a bit long for actual travel since we don't follow the passage centerline and cut corners at whenever possible. I'm sure that the 6.63 mile figure for Jewel is also short for Jewel travel due to ups and downs, but I'm more comfortable with the 6.9 mile figure for Fort Stanton since it is a more similar comparison to the length of Jewel. But it would be good to run the ArcGIS Utility Network Analyst on Fort Stanton to make sure that 6.9 mile long figure is good.

I have been both to the end of Jewel and to the end of Fort Stanton and I know that we got out from the end of Fort Stanton in 6 hours. No one has been to the end of Jewel without camping, but I suppose a solid team could make it at a similar pace in about 9 hours or so. Jewel is definitely much tougher per mile. The exciting thing about Fort Stanton is we left the passage going at 50 feet tall and 20 feet wide with strong airflow!

I wonder if there are any other caves in the USA or world where you can get further from an entrance manmade or natural than Snowy River in Fort Stanton? We all know that there are much more difficult caves in the world than Fort Stanton, but measuring travel time is so subjective and measuring travel distance is much more objective. Perhaps we should create a standard for measuring travel time. We could calibrate Britney Spears to cave at a steady pace to the end of all of the major caves in the world and we could then say that it takes 20.34921 Britney Spears Hours (BSH) to get to the end of Jewel and 14.6423 BSH to get to the end of Fort Stanton. I assume that Ms. Spears is a certified cave diver so she could repeat the Wakulla dive to determine how many BSH that takes as well. :grin:

I should probably stop before the BSH gets any deeper! :tonguecheek:

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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby Scott McCrea » May 3, 2012 2:55 pm

Britney Spears units are ridiculous. I would have said a Jessica Simpson unit would be better, but, apparently, she just had a baby. Lindsay Lohan—unreliable. Kim Kardashian—who? I guess, by default, that leaves Katie Perry. KPH from the bottom of Cyclops (our current project) is 7.1154.
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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby Dwight Livingston » May 4, 2012 5:18 pm

gypcaver wrote: . . . The other question is, does anyone know what the most remote accessible location in any cave is? By that I mean a point that is furthest away from an entrance, using the shortest possible route to get there.
Steve Peerman -- Fort Stanton Cave Study Project Director



I like the "remote" statistic for caves. What you have is the right name and the right definition. People object, in my experience and has they have here, that this does not capture the effort, time, aggravation, or whatever involved. I don't know why it should. Remote is a fine and interesting statistic. and worth listing.

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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby Stan Allison » May 6, 2012 10:23 pm

Britney Spears units are ridiculous. I would have said a Jessica Simpson unit would be better, but, apparently, she just had a baby. Lindsay Lohan—unreliable. Kim Kardashian—who? I guess, by default, that leaves Katie Perry. KPH from the bottom of Cyclops (our current project) is 7.1154.


After much serious, serious thought into the matter. I do have to admit that Scott is correct, not only is using Britney Spears as a unit of measurement for travel time in a cave ridiculous, but it also dates me as a has-been. However, I do disagree with Scott that Jessica Simpson is unfit for caving just because she had a baby. Even when she was pregnant we could have just made an adjustment factor for her. An ideal situation would be to send Jessica Simpson to the bottom of Krubera while pregnant and while not pregnant. Then it would be a simple matter of determining a P factor where P=Not Pregnant/Pregnant. The P factor could then be used to multiply against any pregnant caving hours that Jessica may have done.

Another option to consider is to create a Bieber Unit. Sure Justin Bieber is an annoying little brat with minimal musical talent and in my opinion, not nearly as attractive as Jessica, Lindsay or Katie, but measuring cave travel in Biebers has a nice ring to it.

Good luck on your Cyclops project Scott! Hopefully the cave will continue to lead you for many Bieber or KPH from the entrance.
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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby Scott McCrea » May 7, 2012 7:26 am

Yes, Bieber units is even better. :banana: :banana_yay:
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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby LukeM » May 7, 2012 7:53 am

Surely Krubera will be somewhere in the kilobiebers.
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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby Jeff Bartlett » Jul 19, 2012 9:18 pm

ReneOhms wrote:Using the Utility Network Analyst tools in ArcGIS, the shortest route from an entrance in Jewel Cave to the farthest point (the end of Hazard County), is 6.13 miles. The "shortest" route deviates significantly from the actual route that would be traveled to get there, and goes through passage that's more difficult, too delicate, or slower to travel. The route you'd actually travel from the elevator to Hazard County is 6.63 miles. From the historic entrance, it's 7.25 miles to Hazard County via the shortest surveyed path, and 7.86 miles via the route that would actually be traveled. This doesn't account for the ups and downs and other deviations between stations, but it's the best measurement we've got.


Whoa... we just witnessed the annual Rene Ohms Cavechat post! Can't wait to read the 2013 post, Rene!

:big grin:
"Although it pains me to say it, in this case Jeff is right. Plan accordingly." --Andy Armstrong
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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby gindling » Jul 23, 2012 3:17 am

muddyface wrote:. As for the longest passage Sistema del Rio Encantado has the longest continuous river passage being 17 kilometers long. Wasn't there an expedition in 2011 that connected this with another cave and made the passage 21 km long?


Yes Mike Green and I connected Rio Encantada into Cueva Zumbo last year. Im trying to figure out how long it is from the Zumbo entrance to the Escalera entrance, and while it may be very difficult and remote (I dont think anyone will make that connection again), I dont think it would beat @7 miles! There are 7 entrances over its 21.77km of length. I was thinking Castleguard from the entrance to the glacial ice plugs might be a contender.
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Re: Longest Passage/Most Remote Location

Postby jeffkruse » Jul 23, 2012 8:16 am

gindling wrote:
muddyface wrote:. As for the longest passage Sistema del Rio Encantado has the longest continuous river passage being 17 kilometers long. Wasn't there an expedition in 2011 that connected this with another cave and made the passage 21 km long?


Yes Mike Green and I connected Rio Encantada into Cueva Zumbo last year. Im trying to figure out how long it is from the Zumbo entrance to the Escalera entrance, and while it may be very difficult and remote (I dont think anyone will make that connection again), I dont think it would beat @7 miles! There are 7 entrances over its 21.77km of length. I was thinking Castleguard from the entrance to the glacial ice plugs might be a contender.


That great! We tried to find this connection 3 times this year. Can you give me some pointers where to look? We tried pushing the bottom of the breakdown where the river was. We tried the upper muddy part on top of the breakdown pile. We also tried the dynamic rope that leads into a small room. We even tried the ropes "stairway to heaven" before the big breakdown room. Although we didn’t push up there.
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