My copy of A Travers le Karst by Fabien Darne and Patrice Tordjman has a printing smudge in precisely the wrong place, so I cannot decypher the rope length required for the Grotte des Masques - Grotte du Mort Ru through  trip on page 158.

Can anyone enlighten me, please?

Also, if anyone here has done the trip, I would be grateful for their impressions.

Hi Langcliffe

My copies of that book all have a printing smudge at the same point.
I think that it says 70m which would make sense as the biggest pitch is around 35m

I did the trip in May 2009, the cave was excellent. Unfortunately we only had one car on that day and the walk back to it was reasonably epic - probably due to our incompetence.

My notes are below

regards
Beardy


Monday 25th May, Grotte des Masques to the Grotte du Mort Ru.
Mark Madden & Beardy.
A very interesting and spectacular through trip only 252m deep but with about 16 pitches and some interesting rigging to make safe some serious pitches. We parked at a road head in a hamlet called Les Varvats and a straightforward walk along forest paths for an hour took us to the obvious entrance of the Grotte des Masques, as described in the A Travers le Karst guidebook. A quick change saw us underground, where a short crawl led to a feet first slot onto the head of the first pitch complete with a nice pull-through belay. A series of chambers and meanders and short pitches soon took us to the impressive Puits de President (P29). A meander with a couple of short drops soon debouched on to the top a serious section the Puits de la Jonction. Here a series of unusual pull-throughs kept the descending caver?s rope away from loose rock at the pitch heads, firstly by a tight deviation and secondly by a cunning aid climb that had been done for 5m above the pitch to leave an in situ rope belayed to bolts 5m up leaving a maillion to rig a pull through from just over the abyss. From the base of this pitch an in situ traverse along the left hand wall led to a series of pitches, down to a fixed handline across into a narrow hading rift where a series of climbs down and then back up led to the challenging ?La Pirouette Japonaise? a challenging crawl for the larger caver with tackle. Beyond this we descended two short pitches before having to ascend a 5m pitch, the final series of pitches were fun, P4, P10, P13 &P31, the noise of the wind blowing through the head of the P10 was a forerunner of what was about to come. The final pitch being a particular highlight, dropping straight into the silent and majestic Grande Salle of the Grotte du Mort Ru, a simple stroll past a few ice patches led to sunlight and a warm afternoon outside.         

For the return from the bottom entrance we fell in to the trap of not fully understanding the subtleties of the French description and would not recommend the walk back to Les Varvats, and although we did not undertake the descent direct to St Meme we can guarantee that this would have been a better choice. The harrowing trip back through the forest to Les Varvats is probably best forgotten. (Although I have the strange feeling that a certain Mr Davies would have enjoyed every minute of it.)   
 

Thanks, Beardy - I knew you would come up trumps! 2*35m it is.

For returning, one is better off going down to the St. Meme meadows, and back to the main car park where there's a path that goes up to the track leading from les Varvats.

I first did the Mort Ru in 1968 with some French guys who were exploring it. They had ascended a pitch from the entrance chamber which led to a lake with an incredible draught going through it - someone had to sit at the end to stop the boat from being flipped over! I quite fancy going back.