
Canadian team confirms presence of huge unexplored cave in British Columbia - ExactoKnight
https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/canadian-team-confirms-presence-huge-unexplored-cave-british-columbia
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avar
It's on OpenStreetMap already
[https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/651633176](https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/651633176)
and someone's named it the "Sarlacc Pit" (Star Wars reference). Unclear if the
OSM editor came up with it or if it's from somewhere else.

~~~
dmix
>Bevan Ernst, a regional caribou biologist with the ministry, called it
“Sarlaac Pit” (a reference to a subterranean creature that made a brief
appearance in the film Return of the Jedi). Pollack added that the name Ernst
gave the pit is unofficial and temporary. BC Parks is consulting with local
First Nations to determine whether a traditional Indigenous name for the cave
exists.

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avar
Thanks. As ggsp pointed out I missed that when reading the article.

Curious that they're going to consult with First Nations about whether there's
an existing name. "Yeah we knew about that giant hole, just never thought to
mention it before".

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celticninja
It might be more, yeah we knew about it and didn't want it fucked up with
graffiti and litter so we didn't tell you about it.

Or even, we have stories about it but the location was lost.

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Fnoord
There's a river going there, how could this have been missed? Anyone got a map
of this?

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avip
BC is 950K km^2 with less than 5M people (drop Metro Vancouver and it's 2.5M).
So 1.5 the size of France, the majority of which basically looks like Wells
Gray (though Wells Gray has some extra beautiful spots). There are dozens of
"Wells Gray like" parks, and most visitors don't hike up the mountains (and
surely not off trails). So it's missable in theory.

[EDIT]: also mentioned in another cover - explorers believe cave was snow
covered year-round up until 20-50 ago.

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assblaster
Are there any satellite imaging surveys or aerial surveys 50+ years ago that
can confirm the assertion that the cave entrance has been covered with snow
100% of the time before 50 years ago?

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clubm8
>Are there any satellite imaging surveys or aerial surveys 50+ years ago that
can confirm the assertion that the cave entrance has been covered with snow
100% of the time before 50 years ago?

You think people comb through satellite photos to look for cave entrances?

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assblaster
I was only asking what the basis was for the assertion that the cave entrance
has been persistently covered with snow year-round prior to 50 years ago.

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elymar
I’m curious as to how there are massive caves like this that we still haven’t
discovered. Wouldn’t satellite imagery along with some ML be able to find
these?

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Voloskaya
I guess the intersection between the set of people with the sufficient
capabilities to do that and the set of people hunting for caves isn't that
big. Is there a registry of all such caves with their coordinates to act as a
training set?

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cakemix
Generally, cave location datasets are not widely shared. The contents of
caves, both physical and biological, tend to be susceptible--nonresistant and
nonresilient--to damage from human activity. It's easier to keep the data "low
key" rather than the expend effort on widespread education.

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divbzero
I wish we could keep this cave unexplored. I like the thought that there are
places on Earth still untouched by human activity.

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forgot-my-pw
Don't worry, we haven't explored much of the underground.

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gevz
Here is short aerial shot video of the entrance
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=m0zCbxYravM](https://youtube.com/watch?v=m0zCbxYravM)

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notyourwork
Did you read the article? It includes the same video.

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throwaway2419
Wow ... That Cave is huge ... What unexpected things could we find there?

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diggernet
Orcs. Definitely orcs.

~~~
flyingfences
Or a weird little shriveled guy with a ring.

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blazespin
I used to live quite close to there. As the bird flies, doesn't seem that
remote. Probably hard to get to though.

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avip
It seems a completely reasonable hike from the sandy bank of Azure lake (in
summer).

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rurban
On youtube there's a comment of some guy who went into this Cave V (he named
it that way) some years ago. it's is huge he said.
[https://youtu.be/m0zCbxYravM](https://youtu.be/m0zCbxYravM)

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hguhghuff
It contains a maze of twisty little passages.

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drpgq
I would be curious to see a picture of where the underground river emerges.

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glennon
A dye trace would be in order, but this would be the most likely resurgence.
[https://zoom.earth/#52.514097,-120.011987,20z,sat](https://zoom.earth/#52.514097,-120.011987,20z,sat)

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radicaldreamer
It seems like it’s full of water during the summers though...

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cvaidya1986
Potential co-working space for early stage startups?

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binbag
Quick, someone get Musk!

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8bitsrule
a

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ainiriand
Dear 8bitsrule, YouTube has very good quality videos now, welcome to the
future. You are more than welcome to not open the YouTube link as you are
browsing in low bandwidth mode, but your problems are not ours.

Edit: typo.

