Ellis Basin, Arthur Range, kahurangi National Park, NW Nelson, New Zealand

[pete_the_caver]

For anyone interested in this area, an Expedition is underway running from January 9th till the 31st January 2010 to extend and link various caves in the area to obtain the deepest cave in the southern hemisphere.

Anyone interested can visit http://nzcaving.com/ for more info.

This trip will be followed be a similar expedition by the Hamilton Tomo Group and it may also be of interest that the Bulmer system on Mt Owen, has been extended to 66km in the last few weeks

 

[NOZ]

They have a very long way to go to beat Muruk, 1258m deep.

 

[pete_the_caver]

Twin Traverse Tomo should drop into the Ellis system and this would give a depth of 1300m.  If the Ellis was pushed though to the Nettlebed/ the Pearce Resurgence this would give 1500m above the water table plus 182mdepth dived below giving a grand total of 1682m.  I think that will beat Muruk

 

[pete_the_caver]

Thinking about it: 1682m would make it the World's 5th deepest!

 

[Joel Corrigan]

Yes, but trying to get more than two kiwi cavers to join forces on a project is more of a challenge than getting twenty multi-national explorers who've never met each other beforehand into the middle of remote jungle in New Britain.  Hence regardless of the potential it will never happen ;-)

 

[pete_the_caver]

I was wondering how long it would take you to point that out.  However, they seem to be doing quite well at the moment. Wont last.

 

[NOZ]

The expedition is now finished. Week 3 is now reported on the nzcaving.com site. I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise by telling everybody which cave is still the deepest in the southern hemisphere.  :-\ Well done to the team.