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81 lines
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HTML
81 lines
3.8 KiB
HTML
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<title>CUCC Expo Surveying Handbook: Rationale</title>
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<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../css/main2.css" />
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</head>
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<body>
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<h2 id="tophead">CUCC Expo Surveying Handbook</h2>
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<h1>Why am I doing this?</h1>
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<p>Once upon a time, none of the caves were explored. Anything you found was
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guaranteed virgin. Now, many of the obvious caves have been looked at. Some
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went, some didn't. The fact that <strong>you can come to Austria and be pretty sure
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of finding new passage to explore is all down to the folk who came before you
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recording what they looked at</strong>, both the stuff that went, and the stuff that
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didn't.
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<p>Without detailed recording and surveying of the caves, it would
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rapidly become more difficult to find new passage, or to be sure that round
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the next corner wouldn't be a load of previous explorers' footprints.</p>
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<a href="../computing/onlinesystems.html">
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<img style="margin:10px auto 20px; display:block"
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width=70% src="../computing/go-caving.jpg"></a>
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<h3>Austria</h3>
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<p>There is a more basic reason: if we do not produce surveys, we will <em>not be allowed</em> to
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have an expo in Austria.
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<p>The price of being allowed to do primary exploration in a foreign country
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is that the national caving association and the local caving clubs require that we
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survey the caves and share the survey data.
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<h3>Expedition surveying</h3>
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<p>The main aim of the expedition is to explore new passages - to boldly
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explore what no-one has seen before. Indeed, in many cases, what noone even
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suspected was there. This is the fun and excitement of expo, so why spoil it
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all by doing tedious activities like surveying?</p>
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<p>A lot of work is involved in maintaining the lists of caves that didn't
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go, the lists of going leads, the cave surveys, the route descriptions and
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other documentation. In the very earliest years, this work was not regarded
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as a priority and we are still living with the problems which this created.
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In the UK this work is done by a dedicated few souls with a long-term
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commitment to the Loser plateau. To make their job easier, indeed, to make
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their job possible, and thus to ensure that future expeditions have new
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passage to find, those actually exploring the caves need also to survey them
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and to record what they looked at in a variety of other ways.</p>
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<p>Of course, its also rewarding to have a big survey or a cave photograph on
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your wall and to be able to point to it and say "I found that !" Good
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documentation is also essential to ensure that the club appears competant
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when applying for Sports Council money and the like. Indirectly, surveying
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makes your holiday cheaper.</p>
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<p><b>Surveying ethics</b>. <em>Survey what you find - don't leave it for
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someone else</em>. For horizontal stuff, it is usually most effective to
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survey into virgin passage. Don't run off finding loads of cave and then
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survey back - this leads to long nights and eventually to poor or incomplete
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surveys, and probably to missed call-outs. For vertical stuff, where rigging
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is time consuming and you don't find too much in one go, surveying back is
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probably warmer, but if you run out of time, energy, morale or lights, make
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sure you go back and survey before derigging or pushing more!</p>
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<p>One great advantage of doing the surveying yourself is that a surveying
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party inevitably looks more closely at a passage than an exploration party.
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This means you are quite likely to find new going leads as a result of doing
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the survey. As evidence for this, at one time, the University of Leeds
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Speleological Association found more passage in Yorkshire each year than most
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other clubs put together. The reason - they had a program of systematically
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resurveying known caves, and invariably found previously overlooked ways
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on.</p>
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<hr />
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<p>Go back to the <a href="index.htm">Survey Guide introduction</a>
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<hr />
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</body>
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</html>
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