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Blanchard Springs Caverns and the Explorers Who Discovered It.         There is a place in the Ozarks where summer doesn't exist. No matter if it's 98 degrees and humid on the hills above Mountain View, Arkansas, 216 feet below ground it is always 58 degrees, always...

For decades, the standard tour of Blanchard Springs Caverns in northern Arkansas has led visitors through soaring cathedral-like chambers, shimmering flowstones, and towering calcite columns sculpted over countless centuries. It's easy to assume that this spectacular...

Inspired by Into the Absolute Darkness by Glenn Thompson, PhD Most people standing beside a hole cut into a frozen lake would never consider slipping beneath the ice. Every instinct warns against it. Yet as a twenty-year-old zoology student at the time, Glenn Thompson...

Martha and I recently returned from attending the Annual Meeting of the Cave Diving Section of the National Speleological Society (NSS-CDS) near Gainesville, Florida. This was only the second time I have attended the organization's annual gathering. The first was 52...

Life on Hundred Acre Pond During his junior and senior years at the University of Rhode Island, Glenn Thompson traded the typical college dorm for something far more atmospheric: a small cottage perched on the edge of Hundred Acre Pond. He shared it with three...

The match stick gives a size ref for this cluster of helectites.Helictites are among the most mysterious and visually striking formations found in caves. Unlike stalactites and stalagmites, which grow predictably downward or upward due to gravity, helictites seem to...

In the early 1970s, underwater cave photography wasn’t a discipline—it was an experiment unfolding in real time. Every dive was a test, every image a gamble. Before digital sensors, autofocus, or dependable underwater electronics, photographers had only mechanical...

For decades, the residents of Fifty-Six, Arkansas, were captivated by a geological puzzle. They knew that the water flowing from Blanchard Spring originated a mile away within the Blanchard Springs Caverns, but a simple test in the 1950s—tossing corn husks into the...

Stalagmites are more than just pretty cave formations; they are ancient time-travelers. Scientists have figured out how to use the "radioactive clocks" hidden inside them to determine exactly how old they are and how the environment has changed over hundreds of...