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So how many of you
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have ever been in a cave before?
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Okay, a few of you.
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When you think of a cave,
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most of you think of a tunnel
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going through solid rock.
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In fact, that's how most caves are.
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Around this half of the country,
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most of your caves are made of limestone.
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Back where I'm from,
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most of our caves are made from lava rock
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because we have a lot of volcanoes out there.
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But the caves I want to share with you today
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are made completely of ice,
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specifically glacier ice
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as formed in the side of the tallest mountain
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in the state of Oregon
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called Mount Hood.
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Now, Mount Hood's only one hour's drive
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from Portland,
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the largest city in Oregon
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where over two million people live.
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Now, the most exciting thing
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for a cave explorer
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is to find a new cave
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and be the first human to ever go into it.
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The second most exciting thing
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for a cave explorer
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is to be the first one to make a map of a cave.
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Now, these days,
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with so many people hiking around,
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it's pretty hard to find a new cave,
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so you can imagine how excited
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we were to find three new caves
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within sight of Oregon's largest city
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and realize that they have never been explored
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or mapped before.
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It was kind of like being an astronaut
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because we were getting to see things
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and go places
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that no one had ever seen or gone before.
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So, what is a glacier?
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Well, those of you that have ever seen
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or touched snow,
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you know that it's really light
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because it's just a bunch of tiny ice crystals
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clumped together
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and it's mostly air.
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If you squish a handful of snow
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to make a snowball,
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it gets really small, hard, and dense.
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Well, in a mountain like Hood
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where it snows over twenty feet a year,
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it crushes the air out of it
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and gradually forms it into hard, blue ice.
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Now, each year more and more ice
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stacks up on top of it
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and eventually gets so heavy
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that it starts to slide down the mountain
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under its own weight,
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forming a slow-moving river of ice.
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When an ice pack like that starts to move,
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we call it a glacier
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and we give it a name.
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The name of the glacier these caves were formed
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is the Sandy Glacier.
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Now, each year as new snow lands on the glacier,
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it melts in the summer sun,
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and it forms little rivers of water
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on the flow along the ice
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and they start to melt
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and bore their way down through the glacier,
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forming big networks of caves,
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sometimes going all the way down
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to the underlying bedrock.
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Now, the crazy thing about glacier caves
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is that each year new tunnels form,
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different waterfalls pop up
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or move around from place to place
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inside the cave.
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Warm water from the top of the ice
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is boring its way down,
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and warm air from below the mountain
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actually rises up,
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gets into the cave,
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and melts the ceilings back taller and taller.
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But the weirdest thing about glacier caves
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is that the entire cave is moving
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because it's formed inside a block of ice
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the size of a small city
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that's slowly sliding down the mountain.
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Now, this is Brent McGregor,
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my cave exploration partner.
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He and I have both been exploring caves a long time
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and we've been climbing mountains a long time,
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but neither of us have ever really explored
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a glacier cave before.
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Back in 2011, Brent saw a YouTube video
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of a couple of hikers
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that stumbled across the entrance
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to one of these caves.
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There were no GPS coordinates for it,
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and all we knew was that it was somewhere
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out on the Sandy Glacier.
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So, in July of that year,
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we went out on the glacier,
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and we found a big crack in the ice.
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We had to build snow and ice anchors,
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so we could tie off ropes
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and repel down into the hole.
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This is me looking into the entrance crevasse.
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At the end of this hole,
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we found a huge tunnel
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going right up the mountain
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underneath thousands of tons of glacier ice.
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We followed this cave back
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for about a half mile until it came to an end.
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And then with the help of our survey tools,
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we made a three-dimensional map of the cave
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on our way back out.
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So, how do you map a cave?
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Well, cave maps aren't like trail maps or road maps
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because they have pits and holes
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going to overlapping levels.
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To make a cave map,
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you have to set up survey stations
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every few feet inside the cave,
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and you use a laser to measure the distance
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between those stations.
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And you use a compass and an inclinometer
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to measure the direction the cave is headed
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and measure the slope of the floor and the ceilings.
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Now, those of you taking trigonometry,
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that particular type of math
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is very useful for making maps like this
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because it allows you to measure
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heights and distances
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without actually having to go there.
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In fact, the more I mapped and studied caves,
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the more useful I found all that math
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that I originally hated in school to be.
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So, when you're done surveying,
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you take all this data,
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you punch it into the computer,
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and you find someone
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that can draw really well,
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and you have them draft up a map
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that looks something like this.
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And it will show you both
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a bird's eye view of the passage
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as well as a profile view of the passage,
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kind of like an ant farm view.
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We named this cave Snow Dragon Cave
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because it was like a big dragon
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sleeping under the snow.
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Now, later this summer
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as more snow melted off the glacier,
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we found more caves,
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and we realized they were all connected.
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Not long after we mapped Snow Dragon,
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Brent discovered this new cave
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not very far away.
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The inside of it was coated with ice
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so we had to wear big spikes
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in our feet called crampons,
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so we could walk around without slipping.
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This cave was amazing!
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The ice in the ceiling was glowing blue and green
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because the sunlight from far above
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was shining through the ice
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and lighting it all up.
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Now, we couldn't understand why this cave
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was so much colder than Snow Dragon
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until we got to the end,
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and we found out why.
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There was a huge pit or shaft called a moulin
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going a 130 feet straight up
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to the surface of the glacier.
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Cold air from the top of the mountain
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was flowing down this hole,
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blasting through the cave,
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freezing everything inside of it.
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And we were so excited about finding this new pit,
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we actually came back in January the following year
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so we could be the first ones to explore it.
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It was so cold outside,
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we actually had to sleep inside the cave.
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Here's our camp on the left side
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of this entrance room.
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The next morning we climbed out of the cave
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and hiked all the way
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to the top of the glacier
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where we finally rigged and repelled this pit
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for the very first time.
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Brent named this cave Pure Imagination, I think,
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because the beautiful sights we saw in there
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were beyond what we could have ever imagined.
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So, besides really cool ice,
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what else is inside these caves?
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Well, not too much lives in them
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because they're so cold,
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and the entrance is actually covered up with snow
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for about eight months of the year,
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but there are some really cool things in there.
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There's weird bacteria living in the water
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that actually eat and digest rocks
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to make their own food
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to live under this ice.
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In fact, this past summer
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scientists collected samples of water and ice
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specifically to see if things called extremophiles,
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tiny lifeforms that have evolved
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to live in a completely hostile conditions,
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might be living under the ice,
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kind of like what they hope to find
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in the polar ice caps of Mars some day.
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Another really cool thing
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is that as seeds and birds land
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on the surface of the glacier and die,
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they get buried in the snow
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and gradually become part of the glacier,
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sinking deeper and deeper into the ice.
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As these caves form
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and melt their way up into the ice,
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they make these artifacts rain down from the ceiling
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and fall into the cave floor
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where we end up finding them.
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For example, this is a nodal first seed we found.
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It's been frozen in ice for over a hundred years,
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and it's just now starting to sprout.
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This mallard duck feather was found over 1800 feet
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in the back of Snow Dragon Cave.
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This duck died on the surface
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of the glacier long, long ago,
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and its feathers have finally made it down
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through over a hundred feet of ice
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before falling inside the cave.
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And this beautiful quartz crystal
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was also found in the back of Snow Dragon.
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Even now Brent and I find it hard to believe
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that all these discoveries
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were essentially in our own backyard,
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hidden away just waiting to be found.
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Like I said earlier,
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the idea of discovery
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in this busy world we live in
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kind of seems like something
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you can only do with space travel now,
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but that's not true.
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Every year new caves get discovered
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that no one has ever been in before.
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So, it's actually not too late
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for one of you to become a discoverer yourself.
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You just have to be willing to look
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and go where people don't often go
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and focus your eyes and your mind
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to recognize the discovery when you see it
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because it might be in your own backyard.
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Thank you very much.