Baigong Pipes - Baigong Pipes

Baigong Pipes

Two Baigong Pipes have been reported from the largest cave. One of these is described as being 40 cm (16 in) in diameter and preserved as a reddish-brown "half-pipe". Within the same cave, another pipe-like feature of similar diameter was also found. "Dozens" of upright pipe-like features, about 10 to 40 cm (4 to 16 inches) in diameter, were also found protruding from Mount Baigong above the largest cave.

Additional Baigong Pipes were found on shore and within Toson Lake, which lies 80 meters (260 feet) from the mouth of the largest cave. On the beach of Lake Toson, about 40 meters (130 feet) from the mouth of the largest cave, apparently flat-lying, hollow, pipe-like features were found. These reddish-brown pipe-like features range in diameter from 2 to 4.5 cm (0.8 to 1.8 inch) and have an east-west orientation. Another group of pipe-like features, presumably vertical, either protrude from or lie just below the surface of the lake.

Associated with these pipe-like features are "rusty scraps" and "strangely shaped stones". Analysis of the "rusty scraps" by Liu Shaolin at a "local smeltery" reportedly found that they consist of 30 percent ferric oxide and large amounts of silicon dioxide and calcium oxide. Because any metallurgical analysis reports the composition of a material analyzed, not in terms of the actual minerals comprising it, but only in terms of percentages of the oxides of the specific elements present, the calcium present in the "pipes" could have been in the form of calcite, a mineral that naturally forms concretions.