Talk:Wells Gray Park Cave discovery

Contested deletion
This page should not be speedily deleted because... The draft should merge into this page and be renamed to the official name. -- AngusWOOF ( bark  •  sniff ) 01:37, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

potential COI, copyright, and tone issues
I'm rather concerned about the COI statement made during CSD "The person who created this page was not part of the permitted exploration group" This hints that only people who were part of the group are allowed to contribute to this article, which contradicts the whole purpose of Wikipedia being edited by people not connected to the subject. So I have tagged the article with COI until the newly added information from that draft can be sourced properly and the tone cleaned up. AngusWOOF ( bark  •  sniff ) 01:55, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

A lot of the recent writeup is potentially a copy-paste of some other reports, so needs to be rewritten so it is not a potential copyright violation. AngusWOOF ( bark  •  sniff ) 02:03, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Additional citations have been added where requested. Magmawoman (talk) 06:08, 10 December 2018 (UTC)magmawoman Changes were made to improve the encyclopedic tone of the article. Magmawoman (talk) 06:08, 10 December 2018 (UTC)magmawoman

To date, there are no published reports on this discovery. Only the three people that explored the cave have first-hand knowledge from their direct experience of it.Magmawoman (talk) 06:08, 10 December 2018 (UTC)magmawoman

If the word Discovery in the Title could be capitalized that would be most appreciated.Magmawoman (talk) 06:08, 10 December 2018 (UTC)magmawoman
 * Article titles are to be in sentence case, as per WP:LOWERCASE. Hadron137 (talk) 00:11, 15 December 2018 (UTC)


 * ,, you should only be including information that is formally reported by a publication (news reports, magazine reports, websites). Do not add direct research or direct experience. See WP:NOR and WP:NOTNEWSPAPER Also you should declare whether you are related to the explorers or organizations in any way. AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 20:52, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Uncited material temporarily removed from article until citations can be added
I am working on making this article policy-compliant for the Did You Know project. So I removed all the unsourced statements for now. As sources are found, they can be put back into the article. These are the statement requiring citations:70.67.193.176 (talk) 17:41, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Planning for the short one-day reconnaissance visit began with the assistance and support of BC Park’s staff Vladimira Gat and Tod Haughton.

The vertical section forming the cave is both very large and deep.

In plan view the entrance pit is 100 m long by 60 m wide, with an overhanging drop on the high side exceeding 120 m.

The true depth of the cave could not be measured due to mist from a fast flowing, turbulent river that flows into the cave, but is estimated to be at least 180 m deep and 2.1 km long.

The expedition was a flag expedition of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

However, it is not likely to be the deepest stripe karst cave if the current spring exit is proven.

this is supposition – likely the late Wisconsinan Glaciation covered the entrance until a few thousand years ago)

Stripe karst is marble (principally calcium carbonate) interbedded with rock units containing less marble.

These interbedded units are often garnet, mica, schist, and quartzite.

The interlayering of the three kinds of rocks gives the overall rock mass a striped look, hence the name stripe karst.

The rocks within which the cave formed are steeply NE dipping intensely folded marble units $1 m$ in thickness.

The marble units are intercalated with garnet mica schist layers of similar thickness with minor quartzite.

These units have been mapped as Kootenay Terrane of Proterozoic and perhaps Paleozoic age; and are most likely the “main marble” unit.

The cave likely formed from a combination of hydraulic milling (largely in a subglacial to periglacial environment) and dissolution.

A complex set of fractures and fault intersections are coincident with the cave opening.

Topographically, the valley has a bedrock ridge just downslope of the cave.

This formed an upslope depression and ponding area that likely focused dissolution and erosion at the location of the cave during the early stages of its formation.

Topographically the cave is significantly downslope from the peaks and ridges that surround it.

Viewed from upslope, it is hard to discern that it is not just another rocky knoll along the valley bottom.

There may have been a cave prior to the continental scale glaciations, but it was probably largely destroyed by the glaciers.

Nevertheless, some of this proto-cave may have survived within the current cave system as ancient passageways.

Only further exploration will reveal this.

In glacial times the sub-glacial flow appears to have targeted the thin ($1 m$) steeply-dipping marble strata, promoting the dissolution and erosion of these marble units.

The prominent fractures and faults that cut the strata enhanced erosion.

In addition, it should be noted that the interlayered rocks between the marble units (schist and quartzite) are resistant to chemical attack by the carbon dioxide dissolved in the flowing water.

Pollack and Chas Yonge believe this feature is among the largest karst cave entrances in Canada.

Vanishing River is a river sink notably smaller in dimension than Sarlacc’s Pit that takes a large surface stream of variable flow.

The Vermillion Creek Collapse ends in water, and has no discernible continuation.

It is 120 by wide by 40 m deep.

Also, in the NWT is the Disappearing River near the Hare Indian River Plateau.

Ford noted at the time that the Disappearing River is one of the finest examples of a sinking river in Canada, and gauged the flow at 10 litres per second in late July.

However, the Sarlacc’s Pit Cave’s river is significantly larger.

Neither the Vermillion Creek Collapse nor the Disappearing River have open cave passages.

However, the Moraine Polje, a 90 km2 drainage area on the Keele River, NWT, has a partially explored cave running approximately 1.3 km between sink and the resurgence (point where the water in the cave exits to the surface).

No flow data has been published.

The sink of the Salmon River on Anticosti Island has a catchment area exceeding 140 km2.

This feature, and the diffuse sink of the Medicine River in Jasper National Park, are likely the greatest river sinks known in Canada.

These sentences have citations, but the linked sources don't contain the information in the statements. Therefore I have also removed them here until the statements can be backed up with a published source of this information. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 01:13, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

The expedition was funded by Catherine Hickson, John Pollack, Lee Hollis, Tuya Terra Geo Corp., BC Park, Cody Cave Tours, Yellowhead Helicopters, Susan Dalby and Eskild Peterson. (given sources are simply links to the websites of the companies mentioned)

Stripe karst tends to be discontinuous and because the rocks have been subjected to a high degree of metamorphism, they are often folded and highly contorted. (first source doesn't contain the word discontinuous and the second one is a map)

The rocks of the cave valley are parallel with a major stratigraphic break between the Kootenay Terrane rocks and Upper Proterozoic Windermere Supergroup rocks, and are most likely part of the Isaac Formation. (source is a map showing various formations, but not the location of the cave with respect to them)

Once a depression was formed, dissolution and erosion probably continued over tens of thousands of years to create the cave. (sources are 3-D animatiosn of the cave, not explanations)

The Wells Gray area has been subject to several continental scale glaciations in the past 2.6 million years, and the cave may have formed from meltwater flowing beneath the resultant glaciers (this is seen elsewhere in the vicinity). (source does not mention the Wells Gray area, more than one glaciation, 2.6 million years or how the Sarlaac Pit cave formed)

And these statements have also been removed because it is original research/synthesis to say they show the significance of the Sarlaac Pit cave. In order to have such material in the article, we need a published source that explicitly compares the significance of this cave to other caves.70.67.193.176 (talk) 04:08, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

In British Columbia (BC), comparable caves would include Devil’s Bath&mdash;a 100 to 120 m diameter water-filled sink&mdash;and Vanishing River, both on northern Vancouver Island (unfortunately we can’t cite to personal communications here)

There is also the Moon River Cave in east central BC, which takes a large stream, and the White Rabbit entrance in the northern Selkirk Mountains of BC, both of which have very large entrances and have been mapped. ( one source is in press – we will be able to use it once it is published. The other source is from 1988 and therefore cannot possibly be comparing the significance of the Sarlaac Pit cave to the Moon River cave.)

In the Northwest Territories (NWT), there are several large karst features including the Vermillion Creek Collapse&mdash;a vertically walled sinkhole in shaly limestones overlying gypsum. The karst of the Nahanni River, NWT also has very large sinking features. Finally, there is the sink of the Salmon River on Anticosti Island, Quebec. (these sources from 2008, 2008 and 1983 also cannot possibly be comparing the significance of the Sarlaac Pit cave to these caves.)

Requested move 1 April 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus.  Calidum   02:16, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Wells Gray Park Cave discovery → ? – The current name of the article is not attested in any of the sources. Instead, there are two names attested in the sources. (1) Sarlacc's Pit cave is the name used in media articles about the cave, such as, ,. (2) Wells Gray Cave is the name used on the provincial park information page. As reported by the media sources and mentioned in the article, eventually a proper name will be determined, but until that happens the sources we do have are calling it either Sarlacc's Pit cave or Wells Gray Cave. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 04:17, 1 April 2019 (UTC) --Relisting. Iffy★Chat -- 12:22, 16 April 2019 (UTC) --Relisting. B dash (talk) 10:11, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Survey

 * Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this subsection with  or  , then sign your comment with  . Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.


 * Oppose. The cave is still not named so there's no need to move it from the discovery AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 05:17, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Support a change ... though to what, I'm not entirely sure. The capitalization within the current "Wells Gray Park Cave discovery" strongly suggests that "Wells Gray Park Cave" is a/the established name. I don't notice any evidence for this. It seems that "Wells Gray Provincial Park" is the formal name of the park, though "Wells Gray Park" is commonly used (even by officialdom). So "Wells Gray cave discovery"? "Wells Gray Park cave discovery"? "Sarlacc's Pit cave"? "Sarlacc's Pit"? -- Hoary (talk) 23:38, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * lower-case to "cave discovery" would be okay too. AngusWOOF  ( bark  •  sniff ) 00:34, 3 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Move to Wells Gray Provincial Park cave discovery. Full name of the park is more useful than the present title, also lowercase cave discovery for the event is a good description. The year is not needed, unless there was another cave discovering in the same year. Flibirigit (talk) 03:29, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Move to Sarlacc's Pit since that's the name seemingly most on use by the reliable sources; the park's own informantion page would be a primary or SPS at best. ——  SerialNumber  54129  11:04, 14 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Wait and see - Until there is an official designation, no need to move it. strongly oppose move to "Sarlacc's Pit" or any variant as obviously confusing and incorrect in the long-term. -- Netoholic @ 00:42, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Wait, but oppose move to Sarlacc's Pit per the surprise principle. I'd expect that to be a primary redirect to the most precise Return of the Jedi article or subsection thereof.    SITH   (talk)   14:12, 27 April 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Secret location?
The body says the location is secret, yet the article displays coordinates to the tenth of a second? ☆ Bri (talk) 19:13, 12 April 2019 (UTC)


 * I reworded the sentence to better reflect the sources. Flibirigit (talk) 20:04, 12 April 2019 (UTC)