 My name is Richard Varela. I'm the Park Director at Hornlake Caves Provincial Park. For the last 24 years, it's been my job to take people and show them the magic of the underground world. My name is Drew Chatlin. I'm a park ranger with BC Parks. I've been with BC Parks for nearly 30 years, and Hornlake Caves is one of the parks that I manage. Through my work with BC Parks in the last 30 years, I've been responsible for ensuring public safety and the protection of the natural and cultural features for the public to come and enjoy and to learn from. There are over 1,500 caves on Vancouver Island, and they form in a karst landscape. A karst landscape is essentially bedded in limestone or a water-soluble rock. This limestone was created on the floor of an ancient sea from the coral reefs and shellfish deposited there millions of years ago. Over time, water will travel through the cracks in the limestone and those cracks will open up into the caves that we can see today. Speleothems are the beautiful crystals that grow inside of caves after the caverns have been formed. This dripping water leaves behind tiny microscopic particles with every droplet, making the stalactites microscopically longer. Over thousands of years, they'll form stalactites, stalagmites, brain rock, moon milk, flowstone, many different kinds of features that are all made out of the same material. It's calcium being re-deposited in the cave by the water, and the calcium has come out of the limestone, which originally was the shells and the coral reefs from an ancient sea. Caves and karst are important parts of the British Columbia landscape. Caves play a vital role in clean water and healthy forests. Caves and karst are also important for scientific values. Caves contain seed and pollen data that you'll find in the sediments built up inside the cave. Also, you can get climate data from the speleothems. Caves are also wonderful repositories for bone beds and fossil records that are archaeological and paleontological evidence of previous historical data. One of the things that, when you're a park there, one of the things to remember is to always, you know, respect the environment around you. Make sure you wear good sturdy footwear. Rocks are very slippery and they're wet. Ensure that you wear a helmet on your head. Make sure you've got lights. You have spare batteries. Remember, dress warmly because the caves are cold and damp. The temperatures are usually around 8 degrees or 50 degrees Fahrenheit. When you head out into a cave or into any back country area, make sure you let somebody responsible know where you're going and also to let them know what time you're going to be home. The limestone here in this park was formed over 250 million years ago, so you can imagine how long it's taken for these features to become present for you to enjoy. So we just ask that you show that a little bit of respect when you're here. Whenever you go inside a cave, it's important that you don't touch the crystal formations. They're very delicate and take thousands of years to grow. Simply touching them will deposit the natural oils on your skin on these crystal formations and inhibit their future growth. You can kill these formations by simply touching them. The park offers something for everybody. All ages and abilities. From easy family cavern tours to wild underground adventure. Helmets and lights are available if you would like to self explore these caverns or you can enjoy an educational guided tour. These tours leave every hour on the hour from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 7 days a week. Aside from caving, there are many other activities that park visitors can enjoy. Park visitors who choose not to enter the caves can also learn more about the park by going into the visitors' center, looking at the museum and the geological displays and walking the outside trails. We've had cave explorers here as young as five and all the way up into their 80s. So Horn Lake really does offer something for everybody. We invite you to come out to Horn Lake Caves Provincial Park and enjoy these underground environments. And don't forget, the Caver's motto, take nothing but pictures, kill nothing but time.