Spelunking, from afar

You don’t need a headlamp or neoprene undies to enjoy Steven M. Bumgardner’s style of caving. The California filmmaker-photographer’s DVD on Sequoia caves is spelunking at its safest and sanest.

From the vantage point of a dry warm sofa, you can scoot down tight twisting passages, ogle 25-foot, milky white calcite curtains, ford gurgling underground streams and observe the occasional millipede.

Bumgardner’s valentine to the little-known caves of Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks (more than 200 mapped so far) follows cavers as they plumb the recesses of Lilburn Cave, Hurricane Crawl and Palmer Cave, three of the most fascinating caverns in the 860,000-acre park system.

Lilburn, at 20 miles (so far), is one the longest and most complex cave systems in western North America, and Palmer boasts two of the biggest cave rooms in the state, including one of the most pristine, untrammeled and diversely decorated caves in the West, Hurricane Crawl, which was mapped in 1986-88.

The only drawback to this 60-minute gem is that the interviews are sometimes gee-whizzy. Otherwise, it’s a serious pleasure to navigate some of America’s lesser-known speleological wonders.

-- Shermakaye Bass