Caves of the Canadian Rockies and Columbia Mountains

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

Jon Rollins is obviously hooked on the sport of caving, and this book
gives us the benefit of his experience and his knowledge of the caves in
the Rockies and the Columbia Mountains. Both a reference work and a cave
atlas, it documents more than 200 caves and is the most comprehensive
work to date on the caves of this area. To be included, “a cave has to
go out of daylight and have some horizontal passage.”

The caves are organized south to north by National or Provincial park
or recreation area. A separate entry for each cave includes its
location, exploration history and description, access information,
warnings, a Cave Softly section, and a sketch or survey. The surveys
have been done by different people and vary greatly in quality and
detail. A computer program was used to convert manually collected data
into line plots. Detail was added freehand.

The access information includes detailed driving and trail
instructions. Exploration history and descriptions celebrate the
individuals who expanded the knowledge of the caves through successive
attempts. The Cave Softly section describes sensitive areas, including
its structure and flora and fauna, as well as responsible caving
practices for specific caves.

The extent of the entry for each cave varies depending on how large and
complex the cave is, how long it has been known about, and how much is
known about it.

Rollins also includes good introductory information for anyone who is
planning to go caving in this area: a good, though brief, introduction
to the natural history of caves; a glossary; and a bibliography. There
are a number of black-and-white photographs, many of them remarkable for
either their content or their composition.

This volume is a must-have for all academic libraries with
natural-history collections and for public libraries in the Rocky
Mountain and Columbia Mountain regions.