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Castleguard Cave

Canada / British Columbia / Golden /
 park, cave / caves
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Castleguard Cave is a limestone cave located at the north end of Banff National Park. There are 20,357 m of surveyed passages making it Canada's longest cave, and its fifth deepest at 384 m. The cave ascends from its entrance and terminates beneath the Columbia Icefield.

Castleguard has some sections with flowstone and stalactites and is known for its nest of exceedingly rare cubic cave pearls and extensive displays of flagged soda straws. The back passages of Castleguard Cave are the only ones in the world that end in plugs of glacial ice pushed into the cave from the sole of a surface icefield.

A Canadian-supported team from the UK dived the sump at Boon's Blunder in 2009 and 2010, reaching substantial dry phreatic passage, after a dive of 845m. Exploration of these passages is expected early 2012.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castleguard_Cave
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Coordinates:   52°5'49"N   117°13'17"W

Comments

  • kencummings
    Risk of the entrance being closed by flooding in the summer restricts most exploration to winter months. A journey to the ice plugs at the back of the cave covers some 6 miles and can take days underground.
This article was last modified 14 years ago