We have explored a cave in N.E. Ohio, and have recorded our efforts by photography, video, and sound tracks. A group of us have
rappelled into the deep recesses of the cave, and also practice on the cliff faces in the area. The rocks consist of the Sharon Conglomerate sandstone that outcrops in this region of Ohio, which provide a sturdy but somewhat yielding surface.
We are a group of people who decided to enrich the education of young and
older adults, to study, experience and record the investigation of our natural
resources - the forests, lands and waterways - and to further research of these
by the addition of knowledge in the form of books and media. We try to
understand the interaction of mankind and the environment, and we are constantly
teaching our members, and learning ourselves, the many sciences and dependencies
of our world. We study everything our senses experience, and try to leave a
legacy of knowledge for others.
First Aid and CPR
Hiking, Camping, Backpacking
Canoeing and Whitewater Rafting
Spelunking
Wilderness Survival
RECON Tactics
Rappelling, Bouldering and Rock
Climbing
Geocaching and Orienteering
Compass and Map Land Navigation
If you want a map of the trail to the cave, sent as an e-mail attachment, you can reach me
at:mikebowen@roadrunner.com
If you want to download the trail image as a high resolution .jpg, here are the two images. Place them next to each other for the complete
topographic map. Also here is a .txt file that is a detailed route to the cave, using a map and an orienteering compass.
Sept.7,1997 IMPORTANT
The property around the ledges and the cave has been sold to a developer, and the land
has been staked out for homes and roads. This will be the last year that anyone will be able to see
the cave and surrounding area in a natural setting, because as soon as the people move into the
development, they will trash the micro ecology that sustains the cave. We are
always extremely careful when we rappel at the cave and cliffs, and try our
best to leave as little evidence of our activities at the site as possible, and
preserve the natural beauty. There are other examples in
this area of NE Ohio of this type of rock and ledges, and careless people have destroyed the fragile
environment there, also. What a shame that such a beautiful land formation will be lost as an idyllic
setting. We may only hope that some of the people that will be living so close to the cave will have
the courage to keep the fragile ledges as pristine as possible.
CAVE PHOTOS
ASSULTRIX
rappeling on the ledges at the cave. This is our favorite spot to play "rock
jock" because the face is perpendicular, and the edge doesn't crumble or fall on
us.
ASSULTRIX on lock-out to play for the camera.
CAVEMAN over the edge. We use a blanket as an edge protector to keep a low
impact on the fragile environment, as well as keeping the rope from abrading.
CAVEMAN makes it look easy...it is, though. It's just like walking
backwards, only way cool & more fun! The hat is an official Indiana Jones
fedora.
LOST WORLDS members at the entrance to the cave.
The entrance to the cave. The passage measures about 8 feet in height, and 2
1/2 feet in width. The stream exits from the cave here.
Other places LOST WORLDS EXPLORATION COMPANY has been.
CAVEMAN was a trail guide at Chapin Forest State Park, located here in NE Ohio. This is a view of the same type of rock outcropping (the Sharon conglomerate) that occurs at the cave and ledges in Munson. Lake Erie can be seen in the distance. This is a beautiful place at sunset, and you can also see for many miles to the east, north, and
west.
At Chapin Forest, while there is quite a lot to see, there are many places that have been posted 'restricted area', due to the fragile environment of the cliffs and plant life. Only a few of these areas are allowed to be accessed by trained trail guides, naturalists, or park security. Some can be seen when the park allows a guided tour, by appointment only, and the tours are a lot of fun and always informative for both the visitors and trail guides. This particular place that CAVEMAN (myself) is close to also has a few small caves that we take visitors through. The fragile beauty of the cliffs must be protected, hence the posting of the sign.
Hey, where did he go? (I'm in my favorite spot, the restricted area!)
CAVEMAN out on a limb, on a hike at a state park in New York, along Lake
Ontario.
Even MORE cave photos...
Looking down into the cave from on top of the ledges.
Inside the depths of the cave, looking up. This is the wall we
rappel on when descending into the cave.
The big cliffs and ledges in the area of the cave.
We call this the 'squeeze' when we start to walk down into the ledges. This is where the cliffs and ledges begin. As you descend into the formations and follow the bottom, for every 10 foot of descent we
recede into the geologic past 1 million years. The bedding layers can be seen at this point. The outcropping of the Sharon conglomerate clearly shows planar cross-bedding, honeycomb weathering, and
sub horizontal pebble beds. The imbricate pebbles, resting one against the other, are at an average inclination of 10 to 15 degrees. This is typical of the Pennsylvanian formations within Northeastern Ohio.
This is a face chiseled into the cliffside. It has been enhanced with blue chalk. We have measured the depth of lichen growth within the carving, and have estimated it was made approximately 100 to 125 years ago. This is based on the type of lichen that inhabits the carving, as well as the growth per year. We have found many other carvings in and around the cave, some which have dates of 1863.
Our Geocaching and Land Navigation page. (under construction)
A Story: LOST WORLDS at the ESCHATON, the OMEGA-POINT
" Stand still,
ever moving spheres of heaven, that time may cease and
midnight
never come"
We realized just recently that communication is becoming
easier. Contact between far-separated parts is simplified.
Information transfer is much faster, over diminishing
distances. Processes are proceeding more rapidly,
and
computation power is growing linearily. These things
are
happening because the universe is shrinking;
it is the subtle
beginning of the end.
Our Story
The great dust clouds have been consumed, the blazing
blue supergiant stars have long ago exploded to supernovas
or collapsed to black holes. Every main sequence
star has
been reduced from a bloated giant to a white dwarf.
Only
the slow-burning, low-mass stars remain, miserly
giving
up dribbles of radiation. The cosmos is changing,
evolving.
It is far past its critical point. The receding galaxies have
reversed their motion and have begun to approach
each
other, no longer demonstrating the red
shift properties.
The remote galaxies are now displaying a strong blue
shift,
a displacement of the light toward shorter wavelengths.
The microwave background radiation now reveals an
increase in its black body temperature. The universe
is
warming up. The great expansion is far in the past.
The
collapse, toward the final singularity and the end
of time,
is under way.
In our closed universe, a final point of collapse
lies at the
end of time; the ESCHATON,
or OMEGA-POINT.
It is the final boundary of space-time, a singularity
of
infinite heat and pressure, the ultimate stage
of confluence
of all things. The end point is a state of infinite
density,
pressure and temperature.
In a machine of our own design, we have traveled
to the edge of space-time, and reached the OMEGA-POINT.
At the statistical nexus of congruence and chaos, mr.atoz,
the antediluvian founder of LOST
WORLDS EXPLORATION
COMPANY (who, in a parallel realm, is the
Librarian), in the warrior's mathematical armor, offers the numinous prepotency
of the device called the atavachron, divides
by zero, and effects confrontation with the non-Euclidian authorities of
disorder and discordance, at the temple of Mega Byte.
The atavachron, at full quantum
flux, just prior to establishing a wormhole; destination, the Omega-point !
The temple ziggurat is a node on a singularity at
the event horizon of reality. It is in a quantum thermodynamic flux, occupying
a hard equation state of unspace and nontime, where possibility equals
actuality. It is a pre-space relic, left over from the Aleph, the "Initial
Configuration", the starting point of the universe.
Using the atavachron, we have traveled to the Omega-point. It has been
theorized, by an electronic traveler called OUROBORUS, that we had reached
the eschaton of only one of an infinite number of possible realities. Another
cyberentity named CHTHONIUS called this the "All-Topology Model".
By way of this theory, the vacuum of empty space-time is viewed as a
seething mass of wormholes, as well as other more exotic topological quantum
distortions, violently bursting in and out of our existence. The smooth
appearance (at macrocosmic size and human time scale) is just the 'visible'
average of a concealed disorder of complexity.
In a way, our space-time is like ordinary matter; a rubber band betrays
nothing to the unaided eye of its microstructure - molecules, atoms, electrons,
quarks - but cognition of the substructure allows the material's physical
properties to be determined: its expression of elasticity, or its coefficient
of non-conductivity, for example.
Space-time isn't made of atoms, but its properties can be understood
by perceiving it as being constructed from a hierarchy of ever more complex
deviations from its apparent state of continuity and curvature.
The quantum theory of gravity illuminates us as to why 'observable'
space-time, underpinned by an infinite number of imperceptible detours
and interwoven knots, behaves as it does in the presence of mass or energy,
curving in exactly the method required to generate the gravitational force.
The ATM theory contends to generalize this consequence to explain
the (almost) smooth ten-dimensional "total space" of the standard Unified
Field Theory - whose properties account for all four forces: strong,
weak, gravitational, and electromagnetic - as the net conclusion of
an infinite number of elaborate, interrelated geometric structural forms.
Nine spatial dimensions (six of the magnitudes enwrapped tightly),
and one attribute of time, is only what "total space" appears to be if
it isn't investigated too closely.
Accordingly, whenever two subatomic particles interact, there
is always the possibility the total space they occupy will behave, instead,
like part of a twelve-dimensional hypersphere, a three-dimensional doughnut,
an n-dimensional mobius construct, or just about anything else. In fact,
just as a single photon can travel along two dissimilar paths at once,
any quantity of these possibilities can take effect simultaneously, and
intervene with each other to produce the conclusive outcome.
Nine space, one time, is nothing but an average.
What "all topologies" means
Just how bizarre could the possibilities contributing
to the average "total space" become?
Did they have to be those geometries that
could be formed with a Mobius-twisted, Gordian knotted higher-dimensional
rubber band, or could they include states more like infinite scattered
grains of sand - where theorems like "number of dimensions" and "space-time
quantum curvature" ceased to exist altogether?
Before the BIG BANG and the creation of time, there was the "Initial
Configuration" - Aleph - the starting point of everything. There was nothing
but a perfectly symmetrical "prespace", in which all topologies had equal existence. The average result of the physical quantities of that reality
was infinite. Pre-space can be thought of as the kind of balanced chaos
which our space-time would become if so much energy were poured into it
that literally everything would become equally possible!
Everything and its opposite-but-equal; the net result was that
nothing
happened at all.
But some local fluctuation had disturbed the balance in such a way
as to give rise to the BIG BANG. From that diminutive irregularity, our
universe had burst into existence.
At that exact moment, the original infinitely hot and equally qualitative
matrix of topologies had been forced to become obliquely biased, because
"temperature" and "energy" now had a meaning - and, in our now expanding,
cooling universe, most of the old n-dimensional symmetries became as unstable
as molten metal thrown into a vat of water. And when they cooled, the qualitative
geometries into which they'd frozen had given concession to topologies
close to certain ten-dimensional "total space" - one of which gave rise
to particles such as quarks and electrons, and forces like gravity and
electromagnetism.
By this logic, the only correct way to sum over all the topologies is
to incorporate the fact that our universe had emerged from pre-space in
a certain quantum state and demi-specific way.
We only possess form by virtue of the fact that one
(infinitely)
possible geometry happened to include conscious observers!
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