tamarmole said:

Wasn't there a Himalayan caving expedition in the late 1960s early 1970s?

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To  date we know of some large portals, unfortunately closed, recently searched (2018) in remote Yak Danda massif in Dolpo at altitudes even over 5500. At similar altitudes, something always very small is also known in the Pakistani province of Chitral. Perhaps the Kali Gandaki and Annapurna described by Herzog still retain some surprises. A clearly karst area was in fact identified almost thirty years ago in this area at altitudes between 5000 and 6000 meters. A karst that is partly hydrologically active today, partly the result of very ancient processes. Identified, but little studied and seeing that everyone has their preferences and tastes, I must confess, that I root for this place which, moreover, in terms of sacredness, can boast nothing less than a grandiose sanctuary dedicated to Vishnu. Finding an abyss or something similar around here would have its own charm!

What if we wanted to climb even higher? At altitudes where air and reason are increasingly rarefied and evanescent qualities? Well maybe we wouldn't find the being who left the footprints photographed by Eric Shipton, but if we look hard we could certainly find the entrance to the Rahkiot Cave. What today I consider one of the most mysterious caves on the planet. Surely the highest we know, given that its entrance, indeed its portal of about 13 x 13 meters wide, should open at over 6600 meters above sea level on the south-east flank of Rahkiot Peak, secondary peak of Nanga Parbat. I dare to say mysterious because its name has been associated since the 1960s with the primacy of the highest cave on the planet, but since then none other than  Meinzinger and Caldwell or the two mountaineers who reported the news in 1963, went there, never saw it or at least wrote about it.

There do not seem to be any photographs of this place, let alone a relief. And to say that in this case it is not really a little hole, given that in the mountaineering report that mentions it, we talk about a length of about 250 feet, or almost a hundred meters in length and then say that it closes on ice and snow . God forbid that two mountaineers who happened to be there by chance in the 1960s and found this entrance at such an altitude would start exploring for kilometers! Indeed, to be precise, the two also add that the cavity opens in marble "metamorphosed sediments" or something similar. It could probably be a cavity set on a large tectonic fracture, most likely we will not find continuations ... or maybe not. In fact, we speak of " solution cave"to highlight the presumed traces of a karst in all respects. How could water have created anything at 6,600 meters? Well simple, just think a little better in a four-dimensional way and place that cave in another point of time, perhaps at the beginning of the Pliocene, when that block of metamorphosed sediments had emerged from the Tethys and was not yet more than 6 kilometers above sea level. . Another time, another place and another temperature, all frozen in an archive of time projected into the clouds by plate tectonics. Mountains can play strange tricks. Or at least this is the hypothesis to explain the presence there of that tunnel of unknown extension. Anyway it is certain that imagining this entrance opening into the lost marbles on the top of Rahkiot Peak has a powerful charm.

Letting themselves be carried away freely by memories and associations,  possible places flourish and multiply:  Mauri and Bonatti, narrating the conquest of Gasherbrum IV, describe the crazy final crest as composed of candid and resplendent white marbles. If we then move east we risk getting lost in the infinite southeastern areas of Tibet on the border with Burma, dotted with limestone at very high altitudes. But also the great heart of the continent, the Pamir and the Hindu Kush, the ancient Paropamiso described by Fosco Maraini or some north-eastern areas of India between Nanda Devi and Mount Api ... all places to go hunting!

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Helen June Caldwell | Obituaries | themountaineer.com
27 Sept 2020 ? She was preceded in death by her beloved husband of 64 years, J.R. Caldwell, who died in 2017

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