Spelunking the Jenolan Caves

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Hello Everyone!
Today we take you to the underworld of Australia and the Blue Mountains with our visit to the famous Jenolan Caves. Heidi and I have wanted to visit this network of caves for a while and with one of our friends on vacation and us left to car-sit his ford falcon, we headed up to the Blue Mountains for a day of spelunking.
We decided to take two different tours during our day trip, the Lucas cave (1st section of pictures) and the Orient Cave (second set of pictures after the above ground photos in the middle). There are about 16 different tours you can do that visit different sections, but all areas are connected via an underground river that runs the length. The two that we did do provided a good overview of what there is to see, but by the time we finished we realized that you could keep going back to see more and still be impressed. You can see more information on this area at www.jenolancaves.org.au.
The Lucas cave is one of the most popular caves and has the tallest chamber (54meters) of all the caves. The Cathedral Chamber is used for concerts and has impressive natural accoustics that we sampled with a song and light show. Many of the more unique areas of all these caves were back-lit and gave an impressive look at areas that would traditionally only be able to be seen by a flashlight. Other interesting formations that were pointed out were stalactites, stalagmites, columns (formed when stalactites and stalagmites eventually connect), helictites (randomly growing shoots that scientists are boggled by), rimstone pools, and curtains.
The Orient Cave is an extremely beautiful cave that was highly decorated with fragile and colorful formations and included the Persian and Egyptian Chambers. The pictures hardly do these caves justice, but it gives you an idea of the variety and ornateness of these extremely old underground passages. Enjoy the photos and our attempt at taking pictures in the dark!
Matt and Heidi

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Photos

cathedral organ pipes
this is taken looking straight up and the ladder is used for changing the light bulbs we were told

Heidi with broken column
rocks are always shifting in these caves as the water erodes away at limestone.....sometimes breaking existing formations

straw stalactites
extremely fragile and have a hollow center

Huge column
see people in background for scale

Variety of features
hard to see, but has some of the randomly growing helictites included