Caves: Exploring Hidden Realms

For today's explorer, Earth offers precious few uncharted regions. Even the deepest trenches in the Pacific have been mapped by sonar, and if you venture to the most remote village on the Amazon, you're more than likely to find natives wearing Nikes. The only truly unexplored places that remain -- those that neither humans nor technology has penetrated -- are caves. Until now. In the course of this breathtaking book, Michael Ray Taylor guides an astounding journey into the wonders and hazards of caving. Along the way, he introduces a pair of expert cavers as they tackle the sweeping, awe-inspiring beauty of Greenland's ice caves; the dramatic underwater realm beneath the jungles of the Yucatan; and the vertigo-inducing pits in the wild caves of the American Southwest. Aided by trailblazing IMAX RM? camera technology from the award-winning MacGillivray Freeman Films (Everest, Dolphins, The Living Sea), Caves delivers hundreds of vivid, full-color images of places no large-format camera has ever been before and conveys the excitement, terror, and exhilaration of the world's vast and least accessible spaces. Featuring compelling and informative sidebars from leading cave scientists, Caves also includes a Foteword from Ronald C. Kerbo, chief cave specialist of the U.S. National Park Service.