Caving Courses
Canmore Caverns provides a three day caving program at Rat’s Nest Cave. Below is a brief outline of the program. Full details are available on request. Please contact us for a complete description and prices. Courses are offered by special request only.
Introduction to Caving – Course Outline Summary
Day 1 a.m.
- Welcome and Introductions
- Presentation of course outline
- Slide show presentation on Caves – geology, formation, ecology and exploration.
- Introduction to Vertical Caving (Guide to Client Ratio 1:8 participants)
- Single Rope Technique (SRT) kit setup.
- Sit harnesses
- Cowstails – short and long
- Carabiners
- Chest ascender (“Croll”)
- Chest harness
- Footloops for hand ascender
- Descender (“Figure 8”)
- Descender safety (“Autoblock prusik”)
Day 1 p.m.
- At The Vsion Climbing Gym (Guide to Client Ratio 1:5 participants)
- Single Rope Technique (SRT) Practice
- Fine-tuning SRT kit near the ground
- Practicing ascending & descending techniques, a very detailed description available as many aspects are covered.
- Prusiking
- Cable ladders
Day 2
All day in Rat’s Nest Cave (Guide to Client Ratio 1:5 participants). Half the group doing Session A in the cave, while other half does Session B at the surface. Switch over after lunch.
Session A:
- Horizontal caving techniques:
- Caving gear (helmets, headlamps, cowstails, kneepads etc.)
- Cave travel – safety and accident avoidance
- Cave conservation
- Cave rescue scenario
- Personal rescue equipment
- Navigation in the cave
- Reading cave survey maps
- Navigation exercise in the cave
Session B:
- Simple anchors
- Practiced at surface, discussion on natural anchors vs. artificial
- Vertical caving
- 15m entrance pitch descending and ascending
- Ladders on outcrop by cave entrance
Day 3
All day in Rat’s Nest Cave (Guide to Client Ratio 1:5 participants)
Putting it all into practice…
Vertical caving
- 20 meter pitch rigged with traverse line, rebelay and deviation
- descend pitch with self belay (negotiating rebelay and deviation)
- ascend pitch (negotiating deviation and rebelay)
Horizontal caving
- Safe and low-impact cave travel into more difficult passages i.e. Hosepipe passage.
- More Navigation practice
- Debrief