Hi everyone!
(A note on this trip was posted on CaveChat a little more than a week ago, apologies for crossposting to those of you who follow both fora.)
The Swazi-Swedish Gobholo Cave Expedition 2012 (or rather the recon-trip 2012) to Swaziland is now over. This years most unlikely caving expedition (Swaziland is "of no speleological interest" according to one source) and one of the smallest (it was only the two of us from Sweden, although complemented with support and sponsoring from Swazi Trails and its staff) met some of its goals, and failed some other (as expected). We only managed to map about 360m of cave (out of a prospected 4-6km!), but Gobholo Cave is a really amazing and promising granitic boulder(!) cave, that definitely will make it to the top 3 longest granitic caves in the world, if not the longest. We have also collected cave life (including several species of spiders and a photo of a crab) and speleothems (most certainly non-calcitic) for later analyses, developed a hypothesis for its origin, found a thermal spring in the cave, and had a lot of fun over the three weeks we were there!
There are also rumours about British cavers visiting Ghobolo Cave (for recreation only, I guess) early (in the 40's to the 60's?). Does anyone here know more about that? Or know who might have some information? It would be great if we could identify these early explorers, and any tips are most welcome! (They probably were military personal stationed in Swaziland before its independence in 1968.)
We have a small and irregularly updated expedition blog at gobholocave.wordpress.com, that we plan to keep (but even more irregularly) updated with more information on what we've found and will find, as well as future plans for the exploration of Gobholo Cave as well as other Swazi caves. I also have some photos from our Swazi expedition (experience) on my Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/johanneslundberg/sets/72157630709420040/.
Cheers,
Johannes
(A note on this trip was posted on CaveChat a little more than a week ago, apologies for crossposting to those of you who follow both fora.)
The Swazi-Swedish Gobholo Cave Expedition 2012 (or rather the recon-trip 2012) to Swaziland is now over. This years most unlikely caving expedition (Swaziland is "of no speleological interest" according to one source) and one of the smallest (it was only the two of us from Sweden, although complemented with support and sponsoring from Swazi Trails and its staff) met some of its goals, and failed some other (as expected). We only managed to map about 360m of cave (out of a prospected 4-6km!), but Gobholo Cave is a really amazing and promising granitic boulder(!) cave, that definitely will make it to the top 3 longest granitic caves in the world, if not the longest. We have also collected cave life (including several species of spiders and a photo of a crab) and speleothems (most certainly non-calcitic) for later analyses, developed a hypothesis for its origin, found a thermal spring in the cave, and had a lot of fun over the three weeks we were there!
There are also rumours about British cavers visiting Ghobolo Cave (for recreation only, I guess) early (in the 40's to the 60's?). Does anyone here know more about that? Or know who might have some information? It would be great if we could identify these early explorers, and any tips are most welcome! (They probably were military personal stationed in Swaziland before its independence in 1968.)
We have a small and irregularly updated expedition blog at gobholocave.wordpress.com, that we plan to keep (but even more irregularly) updated with more information on what we've found and will find, as well as future plans for the exploration of Gobholo Cave as well as other Swazi caves. I also have some photos from our Swazi expedition (experience) on my Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/johanneslundberg/sets/72157630709420040/.
Cheers,
Johannes
