Many of you may have heard of the famous Blautopf karst spring in Southern Germany. This is one of the largest karst springs in Europe and has been the site of many famous cave diving trips, notably by Jochin Hasselmeyer. Since his accident Jochin has continued exploration using a self constructed U-boat!! Anyway, my club in southern Germany (Grabenstetten) have long beleived there must be a dry way to reach the further reaches of the Blau Cave and have dug various sites in the area over the years. Last year I was able to help dig in the Vetterhoehle which is basically an infilled shaft on the side of a hill about half a km from the resurgence. When I was there we were at a depth of about 25 m in small dry pebble infill. The whole shaft was full of this stuff so has been completely dug out and shored up with wood and steel. Not so long back a narrow rift was entered at about -35m and a dry chamber of large proportions entered. This rapidly led to the discovery of any even larger chamber (Valhalla) and over 600m of passages with many free leads. After much survey work and lead checking the explorers finally found the legendary Blau river. The link has been verified by divers from the other side. At the moment the link is with a lake about 600m into the known flooded section of the system. The main dry extensions lie further in throuhg more long sumps. However there should now be leads to follow that may yeild dry passage above the sumps and in any case divers will now have 600 m less to dive allowing them to spend more time at the further reaches of the cave.

For anyone who reads German have a look at the following article


http://www.das-blaumaennle.de/#image#image

All the best and 'Glueck Tief'