• Features Last River Caverns, Crystal Cave, Indian Echo Caverns, Woodward Cave, Penn's Cave, Indian Caverns, Lincoln Caverns, Coral Caverns, and Laurel Caverns and includes ice mines, coal mines, boulder fields, and rock cities
• Detailed history of each cave
• Legends and local lore of many features and sites

A roadside travel guide to and history of Pennsylvania's nine commercial caves and a wealth of other geographical sites within the state.

This guidebook has been created for both experienced canyoneers and for those who have just started to delve into this adventurous sport. Here you will find information about some of the best canyons and gorges Scotland has to offer. There are 47 Scottish routes to explore, ranging from beautiful entry-level gorge-walks to committing and challenging canyon descents. Canyoning is an adventurous sport that follows the path of a stream down the mountain side - usually in steep-sided gorges, through cold plunge pools and over tumbling waterfalls. This extreme sport requires a combined range of skills to overcome the obstacles along the river path; from abseiling to jumping, scrambling, climbing, sliding, and swimming. When you put all of this together, it enables you to explore a harsh yet outstanding environment where few have ever been before.

This wonderfully appealing and practical gift book features step-by-step instructions on how to tie over 50 knots and when and where to use them. The beautiful two colour illustrations and clear instructions quickly teach you how to tie classic knots, such as the Reef Knot and Bowline, through to more specialist knots such as the Alpine Butterfly and the Taut Line Hitch. The knots are clearly organised for safe application across a range of activities including sailing, climbing, fishing, camping or for decoration. The useful introduction and reference section tells you all you need to know about knot work; including an explanation of the key terms, recommended techniques and a complexity rating for tying each knot. So, if you want to make a rope ladder with your kids, sail the oceans, be safe climbing in the mountains or make a True Lovers knot then this book has every knot you should know how to tie, plus many more. The perfect gift for craftsmen and women alike and the adventurer in all of us. Featuring an exclusive foreword from Tim Treloar of TT Adventures, co-presenter of the BAFTA-winning Survival School with Bear Grylls.

Underground cave systems have a unique fascination for explorers, with their soaring caverns, breath-taking formations, and potential for finding uncharted passageways. Illustrated throughout with stunning photographs and explanatory diagrams, "The Complete Caving Manual" is a comprehensive guide to safe, responsible caving for novices and experts alike. Topics covered include: how caves and cave formations develop; modern caving equipment; planning and preparation for a caving trip; party leadership; horizontal techniques; vertical techniques and rope work; dealing with emergencies; exploring underground; cave flora and fauna, and where to cave.

The deepest cave on earth was a prize that had remained unclaimed for centuries, long after every other ultimate discovery had been made. This is the story of the men and women who risked everything to find it, earning their place in history beside the likes of Peary, Amundsen, Hillary, and Armstrong. In 2004, two great scientist-explorers attempted to find the bottom of the world. Bold, American Bill Stone was committed to the vast Cheve Cave, located in southern Mexico and deadly even by supercave standards. On the other side of the globe, legendary Ukrainian explorer Alexander Klimchouk - Stone's opposite in temperament and style - had targeted Krubera, a freezing nightmare of a supercave in the Republic of Georgia. Blind Descent explores both the brightest and darkest aspects of the timeless human urge to discover - to be first. It is also a thrilling epic about a pursuit that makes even extreme mountaineering and ocean exploration pale by comparison. These supercavers spent months in multiple camps almost two vertical miles deep and many more miles from their caves' exits. They had to contend with thousand-foot drops, deadly flooded tunnels, raging whitewater rivers, monstrous waterfalls, mile-long belly crawls, and much more. Perhaps even worse were the psychological horrors produced by weeks plunged into absolute, perpetual darkness, beyond all hope of rescue, including a particularly insidious derangement called 'The Rapture'. Blind Descent is a testament to human survival and endurance - and to two extraordinary men whose relentless pursuit of greatness led them to heights of triumph and depths of tragedy neither could have imagined.

As depicted in Ron Howard's hit film THIRTEEN LIVES, this is the THRILLING account of the dramatic Thai cave rescue which saved the lives of thirteen people, FROM THE DIVER WHO LED THE RESCUE. 'A profound and thrilling read.' COLIN FARRELL 'Riveting...a powerful story written by a hero who lived it.' RON HOWARD, Oscar-winning director of Apollo 13 In this first-hand account, John Volanthen reveals how he pushed the limits of human endurance in the life-or-death mission to rescue the Thai youth soccer team trapped in the flooded cave. The world held its breath in 2018 when the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach went missing deep underground in the Tham Luang cave complex in northern Thailand. They had been stranded by sudden, continuous monsoon rains while exploring the caves after practice. With torrential rain pouring down and the waters still on the rise, an army of rescue teams and equipment was deployed, including Thai Navy SEALs, a US Air Force special tactics squadron, police sniffer dogs, drones and robots. But it was British cave diver John Volanthen and his partner, Rick Stanton, who were first to reach the stranded team and who played a key role in their ultimate rescue. As John's light flickered from one boy to another, he called out, 'How many of you?' 'Thirteen,'a boy answered. After 10 days trapped in desperate darkness, the boys and their coach were all alive. Each chapter of Thirteen Lessons that Saved Thirteen Lives tells one part of the edge-of-your-seat mission from Tham Luang but also imparts a life lesson, gleaned from John's previous rescues and record-breaking cave dives, that can be applied to everyday obstacles and challenges. In this story of breathtaking courage and nerves of steel, John reveals how responding positively to the statement, 'But I can't...' by stating, 'I can,' led to one of the most incredible rescues of all time. He hopes that his story will inspire the superhero in you. Meanwhile, he is always on standby for the next rescue.

More than 10,000 known caves lie beneath the state of Tennessee according to the Tennessee Cave Survey, a nonprofit organization that catalogs and maps them. In Hidden Nature: Wild Southern Caves, Taylor tells the story of this vast underground wilderness. Besides describing the sheer physical majesty of the region's wild caverns and the concurrent joys and dangers of exploring them, he examines their rich natural history and scientific import, their relationship to clean water and a healthy surface environment, and their uncertain future. As a long-time caver and the author of three popular books related to caving - Cave Passages (1996), Dark Life (1998), and Caves (2000) - Taylor enjoys (for a journalist) unusual access to their secretive world. He is personally acquainted with many of the region's most accomplished cave explorers and scientists, and they in turn are familiar with his popular writing on caves in books; in magazines such as Audubon, Outside, and Sports Illustrated; and on websites such as those of the Discovery Channel and the PBS science series Nova. Hidden Nature: Wild Southern Caves is structured as a comprehensive work of well-researched fact that reads like a personal narrative of the author's long attraction to these caves and the people who dare enter their hidden chambers.

Duncan's curiosity has got him into a lot of tight spots-quite literally! As a teenager, Duncan really wanted to be an astronaut but took to the exploration of inner space instead. Only a dozen men might have stood on the moon but Duncan has squeezed into many places that no-one has ever been before, and some places that no-one is ever likely to go again (probably for a very good reason). These memoirs recount the author's misadventures during his thirty-year involvement with caving and cave diving beginning with student antics in the caves of the Mendip Hills in England to a hair-raising escape from deep beneath an English stately home. Along the way we are treated to the ups and downs of subterranean enterprise-from the joys of discovering new caves to the sadness of losing close friends. Duncan tells his tales with characteristic candour, often making light of difficult situations: rock falls, serious illness and an embarrassing incident with a tick. There are tears and laughter, often at the same time: who else would perform an animal impression with a suspected metatarsal fracture? We dive beneath Welsh Valleys, Yorkshire Dales and the Blue Ridge Mountains, encounter sharks, unexploded bombs and secret nuclear research facilities. Technical concepts and jargon are explained clearly and concisely, allowing the reader to follow Duncan into the depths. These stories are a treat for anyone interested in exploration, above or below ground, over or underwater. People often tell Duncan that he must be 'mad' to go cave diving-read this and judge for yourself...

From award-winning ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman, and written using exclusive interviews and information comes the definitive account of the dramatic story that gripped the world: the miracle rescue of twelve boys and their soccer coach trapped in a flooded cave miles underground for nearly three weeks-a pulse-pounding page-turner by a reporter who was there every step of their journey out. After a practice in June 2018, a Thai soccer coach took a dozen of his young players to explore a famous but flood-prone cave. It was one of the boys' birthday, but neither he nor the dozen resurfaced. Worried parents and rescuers flocked to the mouth of a cave that seemed to have swallowed the boys without a trace. Ranging in age from eleven to sixteen, the boys were all members of the Wild Boars soccer team. When water unexpectedly inundated the cave, blocking their escape, they retreated deeper inside, taking shelter in a side cavern. While the world feared them dead, the thirteen young souls survived by licking the condensation off the cave's walls, meditating, and huddling together for warmth. In this thrilling account, ABC News Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman recounts this amazing story in depth and from every angle, exploring their time in the cave, the failed plans and human mistakes that nearly doomed them, and the daring mission that ultimately saved them. Gutman introduces the elite team of volunteer divers who risked death to execute a plan so risky that its American planners admitted, "for us, success would have meant getting just one boy out alive." He takes you inside the meetings where life and death decisions were grimly made and describes how these heroes pulled off an improbable rescue under immense pressure, with the boys' desperate parents and the entire world watching. One of the largest rescues in history was in doubt until the very last moment. Matt Gutman covered the story intensively, went deep inside the caves himself, and interviewed dozens of rescuers, experts and eye-witnessed around the world. The result is this pulse-pounding page-turner that vividly recreates this extraordinary event in all its intensity-and documents the ingenuity and sacrifice it took to succeed.