I had a free afternoon on an otherwise busy business trip in Montreal, and I wanted to visit Caverne de Saint-Léonard, a famous cave right under a city park. While this is a small cave, what I found was not your typical touristy show cave, but an adventure.
This was not a stroll on an asphalt path with handrails. We went on all fours, climbed ladders, and chimneyd cracks up.
The cave is just 50 meters long, but just last year, in October 2017, they discovered 350 meters more tunnels. On our climb, we got to see the entrance hole to the new parts, with a tempting ladder on the other side taking you down to the virgin cave. Sadly, that part cannot yet be visited. But it is interesting, a crack partially filled with water so it has to be navigated by an inflatable boat.
The opening to the new part:
The cave has been formed when immense pressure from kilometres of ice pressing on rock cracked the rock, a process known as glacial tectonics. In the years after the crack formed, water seeping to the cave has also formed stalactites, but this is not a karst cave.
We also saw some life in the cave, two small crawlers and one all-white (but dead) spider.
More pictures:
Tämä artikkeli löytyy myös suomeksi Relaasta. All caving related articles can be found at planetcaver.net and all skiing related articles at planetskier.net.
Photos and videos (c) 2018 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.
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