francis
New member
On Saturday 26 of Jan - 08, Mark, Kenneth, Odin, Bjarne, Magnus and I set off on a trip to Greftsprekka, a 265m deep cave in northern Norway. The objective of the trip was to carry diving gear down to the sump so that Mark could do a dive to try and connect the cave to Greftkjelen, a cave that is very close and has a sump at about the same level.
We met up at the train station and packed our gear into the cars. It was about an hours drive to the cave, and as you can imagine, I was very eager to get going after the 19h train journey from Kongsberg. We stopped on the way to do some shopping and to have a look a Saltstraumen, the worlds strongest tidal current (40km/h). It wasn't flowing very strongly when we were there, but it was still very impressive!
When we arrived at the "carpark" it had started to snow and there was a bit more snow than we had expected, but not enough to be problematic.
The route to cave goes up a steep snowy slope. It's quite steep (I would guess about 30*) so you need to be careful in some places. One of the guys on the trip almost slid over the edge of a short drop after loosing his footing, but managed to grab hold of a small birch in the last minute :
. You gain about 300 height meters going up, so you get very hot. I had a spare woolshirt with me to change into after the ascent, which proved to be very useful as I was totally soaked when we reached the entrance.
When we got to the entrace we got our gear on and finished distributing the diving gear.
The entrance is quite small, so because of the snow and wind in the area it was covered in snow, and had to be dug out.
There are 8 pitches (I think) on the way down, and very little crawling. The local guys had pre rigged the cave for the expedition, so the progress was very fast. The cave is quite clean to start with, but gets more and more muddy as you get deeper.
When we got to the sump Mark started getting the diving gear ready with some help from Kenneth and me, while the others got out the cooking equipment and started making hot water so that we could get something to eat
The water looked very nice and clear, but just after I had finished taking the pictures it got all churned up, and the visibility became very poor.
Mark reached a depth of 17m, but didn't find a connection to the other cave. I'm sure he can say more about the actual dive
The trip took a total of 10h from the entrance and back again. When we got out it had snowed about 30-40cm, so the slope we had come up became very slippery. It took a while to get back down to the cars, I for one was very tired, but we all got back down safely.
It was a good trip, and we all really enjoyed ourselves!
Francis
All pictures ? Francis Dougherty Paulin
We met up at the train station and packed our gear into the cars. It was about an hours drive to the cave, and as you can imagine, I was very eager to get going after the 19h train journey from Kongsberg. We stopped on the way to do some shopping and to have a look a Saltstraumen, the worlds strongest tidal current (40km/h). It wasn't flowing very strongly when we were there, but it was still very impressive!
When we arrived at the "carpark" it had started to snow and there was a bit more snow than we had expected, but not enough to be problematic.
The route to cave goes up a steep snowy slope. It's quite steep (I would guess about 30*) so you need to be careful in some places. One of the guys on the trip almost slid over the edge of a short drop after loosing his footing, but managed to grab hold of a small birch in the last minute :
. You gain about 300 height meters going up, so you get very hot. I had a spare woolshirt with me to change into after the ascent, which proved to be very useful as I was totally soaked when we reached the entrance.
When we got to the entrace we got our gear on and finished distributing the diving gear.
The entrance is quite small, so because of the snow and wind in the area it was covered in snow, and had to be dug out.
There are 8 pitches (I think) on the way down, and very little crawling. The local guys had pre rigged the cave for the expedition, so the progress was very fast
. The cave is quite clean to start with, but gets more and more muddy as you get deeper.
When we got to the sump Mark started getting the diving gear ready with some help from Kenneth and me, while the others got out the cooking equipment and started making hot water so that we could get something to eat
The water looked very nice and clear, but just after I had finished taking the pictures it got all churned up, and the visibility became very poor.
Mark reached a depth of 17m, but didn't find a connection to the other cave. I'm sure he can say more about the actual dive
The trip took a total of 10h from the entrance and back again. When we got out it had snowed about 30-40cm, so the slope we had come up became very slippery. It took a while to get back down to the cars, I for one was very tired, but we all got back down safely.
It was a good trip, and we all really enjoyed ourselves!
Francis
All pictures ? Francis Dougherty Paulin
