Oct 032011
This is the Cave of Swallows, an enormous pit cave in Mexico. With a 370m drop from the cave entrance to the floor it has the largest cave shaft in the world. It could pretty much swallow up a whole skyscraper with ease. Like most pit caves and sink holes it was formed by centuries of carbonic acid in rain water chomping through the calcium carbonate that makes up limestone. It’s the same process that formed our favourite blue hole in Belize. It’s seems that people like jumping into holes no matter what the medium involved. This footage of base-jumpers flinging themselves into the abyss is totally mesmerising. It’s shot at the Cave of Swallows and nicked from the BBC planet earth series – enjoy.
by joseph
I love caves and I would definitely love to visit the cave of swallows one day but there’s one slight error here that I can’t help mentioning: That picture isn’t actually the cave of swallows. It’s a very famous picture of Neversink Pit in Alabama. The photo was shot from a ledge about 1/3 of the way down. This cave isn’t nearly as deep as the cave actually mentioned in this article, but despite that it is one of the most beautiful rappels I’ve done in the past year.
However I dont mean to be a debbie downer – this post is still awesome. Props on your recognition of the badassery that some cavers and adventure-lovers can get into!