Spelunking @ Warsaw Caves

A few weeks ago I went spelunking (aka caving) with my friends at Warsaw Caves, which are located near Peterborough (about 2 hrs drive NE of Toronto). The area has multiple caves to explore, and some caves are even connected to each other. It sounded very interesting until I looked at some reviews of the site and they made it sounds like a really hardcore sport! "Clothes may get dirty, torn... you may get bruises from crawling and climbing... there's no 'walk-in' caves..." So taken their advice, I got myself prepared with headlamp (bought from dollar store), gloves, long sleeves unwanted clothing, bug spray, running shoes... the only thing I didn't bring was the helmet.

Anyways, the caving part turned out to be ok (once you get the guts to go in as some opening are quite narrow and steep). The headlight was useful because it really was dark inside, and gloves were essential as well because your hands would be grabbing rocks around you for support to go up/down. Thin long sleeves clothing was a smart idea to stay away from dirtying/scratching your arms and from the mosquitoes... which turned out to be more of a problem than the caving itself (bug spray is a must!). We went near the end of May but probably it'd be nicer to cave at end of April/beginning of May or in autumn so that the weather would be cooler and less mosquitoes around. But once you got inside the caves, it's quite cool down there. Also try not to go after a rainy day because the rocks can be slippery to climb.

But caving was definitely an interesting experience! The caves were actually bigger than I thought (originally I thought you'd have to duck and crawl a lot inside and maybe bending arms and legs to fit inside). This closed caving was different than open caving at Greig's caves at Bruce Peninsula or Scenic caves at Collingwood. Too bad we didn't stick around to see the "kettles". Will definitely go caving again in the future!