More lights testing, now in Torhola

We continued the sampling of the best Finnish caves on our weekend tour, as well as played more with the nice lights we had. (Previous light story was here.)

This time we were at the Torhola cave in Lohja, conveniently near Lohja's Tytyri mine we just visited (the mine visit article is here.)

Torhola cave is of course one of the most wonderful caves in Finland, the only even medium-sized karst cave, with lots of tunnels, squeezes, cracks, multiple levels, etc. And in a nice environment by the lake. There's also a couple of side caves. 

I think Torhola is also the only cave in Finland with its own parking lot and sign. But I feel sad for the tourists and families who are planning on a nice outing only to see scary, dirty overall-dressed helmet heads messing around. Even if we always try to be helpful and act as guides, talk about the cave, etc. Seems like people feel they need more equipment to enter, when they see our outfits. Sigh.

The photos above and below are taken from the tight entrance to the "basement" part of the Torhola cave. This tight entrance can be found at the very end of the main big hall. You have to get on your knees to get to the end, as the roof gets low. And only when you get to the end you will see a hole that leads down. Go feet first. It is a drop, nothing dangerous, but you won't see easily what's going on before your feet reach the stones. This is why we have named the tunnel the Schrödinger's drop (see map further down).

It is even more interesting for coming up. The difference between the levels is large enough that it is difficult to get up. But, there's a foothold in the roof behind you when you're climbing up, and you can use it to push yourself through the hole. Scary or fun, depending on your viewpoint :-) I like it.

And once again, the oil lamp provided wonderful warm light:

The map:

And of course, some bonehead had decided to make a modern cave painting in the main hall of the cave:

Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text and coordinates (c) 2023 by Jari Arkko, Jarmo Ruuth, and Duncan Simey. All rights reserved