Licanke Expedition 2021 Blog

[christine]

So, I thought I'd test out this new fangled forum and post my blog here on last year's Croatia exped before we head out and do it all again....

Note: The blog is designed for the non caving, non diving public...not seasoned hard core cavers and divers, please bear that in mind when reading.

I'll trickle out the subsequent parts as time and wifi allows. Enjoy!

Part 1: A Tall Order

As the covid-19 saga rolled on into 2021, the likelihood of me being able to get to Croatia with a team to continue pushing the cave Izvor Licanke, looked gloomy.

As June approached, the travel restriction hokey-cokey continued and getting even the most enthusiastic divers to commit was proving impossible.
Travel through France was a no go and with a heavy heart, yet again I had to cancel the expedition.

Preparations had been stop start - how on earth do you plan an expedition when you don’t know who can come, when or even if it will take place and how you will ultimately get there.
Nothing was open, nothing was really working and, admitting defeat, I took a chance on August.

Image: Mark Burkey

Figuring that holidays abroad and getting people moving would be good for somebody’s economy, I took the first of many risks, that partly by luck and partly by judgement, paid off.
For some reason August was rammed for most people so it was with a small team of 5 that we headed out to Croatia, with a tall order ahead of us.

The 2019 expedition had yielded a further 2 sumps beyond the deep sump 2 and the dive line ended some hundred or so metres into sump 4.
We had no idea if sump 4 would surface or plummet deeper. This is both the beauty and frustration of cave exploration - no human has ever been there; it cannot be photographed from space or planned by flying over it or studying it as you can with mountains. Even the world’s deepest ocean trenches have now been mapped.

Caves remain the last frontiers on Earth that cannot be discovered unless you go there in person. Most of the easy pickings have long gone.

We got lucky with Licanke in that access problems for the local cavers and cave divers globally had been lost for 20 years, but we managed with the help of locals, to gain legal access Licanke.
Thus, the end of the line laid by the French prolific cave explorer Frank Vasseur, was ready for the taking and with his permission (always ask, never just take) we began exploring the cave.

Since 2015 my team have now extended this cave by a further 1,229 metres, bringing the total length of the cave system to 1623 metres.

What we lacked in numbers in 2021 we made up for in talent. We are always fortunate to have a National Geographic and globally acclaimed underground photographer, Mark Burkey, on our team, He was taught to cave dive by my own fair hand and has let rip ever since, photographing beyond sumps all over the place in some really quite hard-to-reach places.

Louise McMahon was new to the team and relatively new to cave diving, Highly intelligent and a fast learner, she brought various skills with her but most importantly, is a computer whizz and she offered to re-survey the cave system as far as sump 2 and produce a proper survey of the whole known cave.

Fred Nunn was a last-minute acquisition. I had taken him caving a few times (with WetWellies...all the jokes about grooming my new sherpas came true...) and he took it all in his stride. He had thousands of dives under his belt, all of them in the sea, but it was not a difficult task to up-skill him in the cave diving skills he needed to cross the first short and shallow sump and he passed his course with flying colours.
Fred is often described as ‘Heath Robinson’ - a real problem solver. We hadn’t long invited him when he was already making lead flashing for the dry tubes and weighting systems of all sorts to tidy up our attempts and sinking unwieldy camera boxes and dry tubes.


The two push divers were myself and Rich as our chosen third partner was unable to get out of Mexico due to covid.

C'est la vie.We knew it would be tough - and it was.

Fred helping survey. Image: Mark Burkey

With thanks to The Ghar Parau Foundation and the Mount Everest Foundation.

 

[christine]

Part 2:
"We had all become distracted by the loss of a 5 grand scooter..."

Rich and I conducted the important but tiresome task of sorting cylinders to be filled, checking regulators, fixing regulators, dealing with fizzing pressure gauges and cracked o-rings and analysing each cylinder, before packing them into their own tackle bags for transportation through the cave.

Mark and Lou in Licanke. Image: Mark Burkey.

This is all done in a relatively pleasant environment of Krnica dive centre and a dip in the sea afterwards is always welcome.

The team began to arrive at the airport and we loaded the rental van with Js of oxygen, trimix and air banks and Mark’s entire collection (almost) of camera gear.

We headed up to Fuzine and moved in.

The next morning we headed to the cave entrance. We had never been here in August and were shocked to see the water levels had dropped dramatically. Sump 1 was still a sump, but it added extra faff having to lower equipment down onto dry land rather than the convenient deep pool we had been used to.

Furthermore, inside the cave the normally flooded deep lakes which we scootered equipment across were now wading depth. This meant a prolonged carry with each of the 15+ bags, scooters, rebreathers and camera gear.
Another factor was that the low water levels exposed rocks that had never been trodden on, as they were usually underwater.

We weren’t long into the carry when Mark found one; carrying a heavy dry tube, he trod on a slab which I normally caught my knee on when scootering across the lake - and it snapped right under him.

I heard shouting and hurried back to the spot where Mark had ended up. His knee had shot down a slot after the rock had broken and twisted. After a quick assessment (good job I’m a Paramedic) I was happy to move him and after the initial shock, he felt better and had a good range of movement. His thick neoprene wetsuit had supported him enough to prevent any further damage and he wanted to carry on.

Lou and Fred setting up at sump 2. Image: Mark Burkey


It was a stark reminder that we were thin on the ground for support and we couldn’t afford to lose a single person. Added to the extra time and effort involved with lower water levels, we knew this trip was going to be tough.

The carry was also interrupted by my nagging concern that I had only seen 2 scooters carried into the cave. I knew there were 3...

After some discussion, 2 divers were sent back to sump 1 to look for the missing Suex XK1. Somehow it had come free and was hiding in an alcove on the wrong side of sump 1.

Several hours later, as I headed back to the lakes to get another cylinder bag, I heard an almighty bang and loud voices. Then silence. Back at the climb, nobody was there so whatever it had been could not have been that bad….
It turned out that Rich had attempted the awkward climb up into the boulders and slipped, falling backwards whilst wearing his JJ rebreather; the huge slab of rock behind him bending the frame.

He was unhurt but we vowed that despite the climb being short, we should put in proper bolts to discourage people from free climbing it with only a hand-line - especially with thousands of pounds worth of heavy, expensive gear on their backs…

Rich pointed out that we had all become distracted by the loss of a 5 grand scooter and needed to concentrate. With such a small team, two of whom had never been in this cave before, the pressure was starting to show.

It seemed to take an age to get all the gear to sump 2 but it got there and we set Fred on the task of checking all the cylinders and regulators. A few had succumbed to the carry and we switched them out for new.
It had been a long day and the team elected to take a day off the next day rather than launch straight into the push dive. This was a wise decision.

We spent our ‘day off’ brushing up on cave survey, knotting more line and sorting cameras.

The next morning, Rich and I got into our drysuits and the team got ready to see us to sump 2 and off into the unknown.
We had not even got as far as the boulder pile when again, I was called back. This time, Rich was in trouble.

He was coughing incessantly and complaining of exhaustion. He could barely put one foot in front of the other and he wasn’t even carrying anything. We feared the worst and sent him out of the cave.

Did he have covid?

I carried on to sump 2 whilst thinking on my feet about what to do. We were a man down and there was only one diver left capable of pushing the cave. It was all down to me. I’d have to do it alone...

 

[christine]

Part 3: “You need to stop doing that”

Some of the best, if a little uncomfortable advice I was given when I was a Cave Diving Group trainee, came from none other than Rick Stanton.

As a diligent and conscientious trainee, I would spend hours poring over cave surveys before I went diving. I would work out the gas I needed, what size cylinders to take, whether there would be any decompression and the depth profiles.

It wasn’t a bad thing to be learning, but of course I was diving in caves where others had been previously and lines were in situ. They had been surveyed and, in many cases, photographed and filmed (less so in the UK, I hasten to add).

The author at sump 2, image: Mark Burkey

The CDG refers to these dives as ‘Tourist and Training dives’ in its newsletter, which is the bible for finding out about submerged caves not just in the UK, but around the world.

Anything where nobody had ever been before; a new discovery, was referred to as ‘Exploration’.

You can see then why it irritates genuine cave explorers to hear the latest cohort of cave divers saying they have explored this cave and that cave - and then being immediately disappointed to find they just dived a tourist route. The word is getting muddied by those who think that because it is their first dive in the cave, it counts as ‘exploration’.

The term in the cave diving world is very clear cut, to distinguish between new discoveries and ‘tourist’ dives along existing line. If you are not the first person to go there, it is not exploration.

“You need to stop doing that” Rick said, bursting my bubble. “I know you’ve been taught to study cave surveys but that won’t help you when you go into new cave”.
I was 26 years old and about to undergo my qualifying test in the CDG.

I didn’t dawn on me then that Rick was already looking at my future in being a cave explorer and I shrugged off his comments as something only he did - and carried on studying the survey in front of me.

He was right though. If nobody has ever been there, not only will there be no line in place to follow but you will have no idea of what the cave will do.
You get a hunch of course, from years of caving and cave diving experience and having dived other caves in the region.
I have an unfinished geology degree so have an inkling of what a cave might do.
But Licanke was acutely unhelpful.

Fred and Lou shifting cylinders. Image: Mark Burkey

Caves in Croatia had a habit of plummeting super deep, 100 metres + and when we hit 50m in Licanke, we feared the worst. Decompressing in 7 degrees was miserable. Given the cave already had a dry section, we figured it would do one of two things; Go to surface, or plummet deeper.

Really, really unhelpful.

All we could really do was plan for how deep we were prepared to dive and how much deco we were prepared to do on any given dive. That would determine the limit of exploration.

I’m not in the habit of winging it and sorting it out at the the deco stop. That’s silly.
To plan for virgin exploration, we simply look at our logistics, capabilities, gas available and time available. Put simply, based on what we did last time, we make a personal decision on what we are prepared to do this time.

It really is that simple. Conversations go along the lines of “I really don’t want to do more than 3 hours deco in there tomorrow” or “We’ve only got two bottles for pushing….so how far will that get us if the average depth is 30m, 40m or 50m?”


You need to know your swimming speed, scootering speed given the conditions, plan for various average depths and decompression contingencies.

Thermal factors need to be considered and lots of ‘what ifs’.

What if we lose a stage bottle? What if we lose a scooter? What if the rebreather malfunctions?

We try to mitigate all of the ‘what ifs’ and inevitably, the cave will throw something at us that we hadn’t bargained for. That’s exploration.

Lou placing bolts to stop people falling down holes. Image: Mark Burkey.

I kitted up into my KISS rebreather and performed my final checks.

Rich was unable to dive, which meant several things:

- I would only be able to carry enough bailout gas* to get me home from sump 3, thus I would not be able to undertake exploration alone on this dive.
- I was also towing a back-up scooter which limited the amount of extra bailout I could take.
- I would need to carry all my equipment through the dry sections without help and this would be extremely time consuming.
- There was nobody able to rescue me if I got trapped beyond sump 2.

I set off, disappointed that this was only to be a recce dive, but I already had a wild and cunning plan in my mind to salvage the expedition - I just needed one phone call.


*Bailout gas is contained in open circuit scuba cylinders, which are used as a safety factor to get a diver home in the event or rebreather malfunction or failure. Rebreather divers should always carry enough bailout gas to get them home from the furthest and deepest point in the event of rebreather failure.

 

[christine]

Part 4:
"It sounds crazy enough to be fun"


Sump 2 in Izvor Licanke is committing.
We worked out that if you go as fast as possible in the milky visibility on the scooter, you can just about pass it without having to undertake any decompression.

I scootered alone through the sump, my brain completely focussed on the thin, white line and keeping the speed up on the trigger and enough oxygen coming through my breathing loop.

Close to the end of the sump, as it started to ascend, I dropped off the scooters and made my way up the wall from 45m to the surface.
Surfacing in dry passage without somebody to chat too is both disappointing, but also relaxing.
The time is your own and you don’t have anyone else’s problems to concern yourself with.

Lou bolting. Image: Mark Burkey

I was impressed with the cave passage and made 3 journeys with my fins and suit bottle, then my rebreather, then my bailout bottle.

We renamed this piece of passage 'Helen's Highway' after our good friend and CDG treasurer of over a decade.

It was befitting of the whole team rather than one individual. After a cave diving and technical diving career of over 20 years, diving all over the world, to the shock of everybody, Helen took her own life at the start of the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.
Helen was one of those women I looked up to, wished I could be like and her generous, kind and very thoughtful nature was something I aspired to.
She once told me (when she sent me a Christmas present and I hadn't sent her one) "You don't give to receive". That was Helen all over.

It took me 20 minutes to get to sump 3 while carrying equipment and 15 minutes to go back to sump 2 empty handed.

I took it steady as I was wearing a drysuit and didn’t want to puncture it, but also moved methodically and efficiently. Being a caver of 26 years definitely has its advantages. You cannot be stumbling or uncoordinated beyond a sump.
I quite often chat to myself when I’m alone in a cave. Usually coming out with swear words and exclamations of incredulity when encountering something that is a nuisance.

Not far from where sump 2 surfaces, is an annoying boulder choke. Huge rocks balanced precariously and haphazardly atop one another block the passage. There is a convenient hole just the right size for me and a KISS rebreather to get through. I tried not to look too closely at the boulders - and tried even harder not to brush against the ones above me.

I trudged back and forth to a gravel ‘beach’ believing that the lake ahead was the start of sump 3.

Once all my gear was there, I started looking for the dive line. As I got down to water level, I realised this was not a sump at all, but in fact another lake.

Marvellous.

More swear words came out loud.

I moved my gear again, item at a time across the lake which was out of my depth and finally after a bit of rock-hopping, spied sump 3 and the line tied off properly above the waterline and well back on dry land. My ex-trainee had done good.
It was a comfortable kitting up spot and I was soon in the sump which only took 4 minutes to cross. I surfaced at the edge of a sloping ramp which led around a corner. I couldn’t see any further into the cave from the water, due to a huge rock flake obscuring my view. I knew that sump 4 was only a couple of metres further on and, given I did not have enough bailout with me to dive it, figured getting de-kitted was pointless.

Feeling a bit deflated, I set off home.

As I prepared to dive back through sump 2, I tested my 'go to' bailout bottle. This one stays with me at all times and the regulator is necklaced for easy access. I took a breath and got a complete mouthful of water. I checked the mouthpiece but it seemed intact.

Looking closer to try and decipher the problem, to my horror, the actual second stage body of the regulator itself had split. Clearly this regulator could not withstand a bit of caving.

This was completely unfixable. I was faced with diving home with only one bailout bottle and with no buddy, could not steal anyone else's.

I did not hang about on the way home and took a big sigh of relief when I reached the slightly shallower part of the cave, as I knew one bailout bottle would now get me at least to the decompression cylinders staged at the bottom of the shaft.

This trip was not one to be done solo and I vowed not to do it alone again. There were too many eggs in just one basket.
I surfaced to find a very chilly Mark and Lou waiting to greet me. They got me out of my equipment quickly and after some warm water with nothing else in it, we bagged up some items that needed to be taken out and plodded out of the cave.

Once I had something of a phone signal, I called my friend and cave diving buddy, Anton Van Rosmalen. The Dutchman was in the south of France and was wrapping up his own cave diving project in a super deep system called Coudouliére. This neighboured a system I and my team had been exploring and they were currently only 25 vertical metres away from each other…
Anton had visited Licanke briefly in 2015 and not returned. This was his opportunity to see the entire cave for himself and do some exploration here.

He took an hour to think about it and line some things up, before he replied to say he was in.

He laughed down the phone “It sounds crazy enough to be fun!”

He had no idea…..

Anton's preferred colour of survey marker....

The good news for Anton was that, despite driving 14 hours to Fuzine and arriving in something of a ‘space cadet’ state, he had very little work to do. Ok, apart from completely rebuilding his rebreather and charging everything he owned, the good news was that all the scooters and bailout bottles were already in the cave.

All he had to do was dive... and cave... wearing his rebreather…

Luckily Anton dives the same unit as me, a manual KISS. He hadn’t arrived long when I was already eyeing him up as a spare part dispenser.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare BOV have you?” I pondered.

“Of course”.

I knew he would have.

The front of mine had fallen off somewhere in the cave and I was worried about gravel ingress jamming it open. I put the spare in a pot ready to go into the cave.
We assisted Anton on getting his rebreather to sump 2 and did some housekeeping.

I re-lined and re-surveyed sump one and Fred, Lou and Mark set about finishing the dry cave survey between sumps 1 and 2 as the original data had been long lost. They did some bolting and photography and generally wrapped up the list of 'jobs' this project produces.

Rich continued convalescing and Anton headed back to the house to finish preparations.

The team decided to take an extra day off, knowing that the push dive would take a very long time. And it did.

Fred and Lou surveying. Image: Mark Burkey

 

[christine]

Part 5:
"You scared the sh!t out of me!"

It was an early start in the Licanke house.

Anton and I didn’t mess about getting changed and heading into the cave, arriving in plenty of time to dive sump 2.

Anton elected to follow me as he had never dived this sump and it was milky visibility. Fortunately one of my back up lights has a mind of its own and often decides to turn itself on at depth. This gave Anton a welcome ‘lighthouse’ to follow in the gloom as we crossed the sump and we soon met our scooter drop, somewhat prematurely, and swam to the surface to de-kit.
As I surfaced, the dive line felt a bit flimsy in my hand. I grabbed onto it so as not to de-rig Anton and at that moment, it snapped just above the water’s edge.

That was lucky.​

I waited for Anton to get out of his gear. He could see what had happened and in silence I repaired the line and we started moving our gear through the dry cave.

After a few journeys to sump 3, we had a brief chat before setting off through the sump. It only takes 4 minutes to cross sump 3. Anton was on a mission and had got all his gear to sump 4 before I had even exited the water.

He got into sump 4 first and reached up for his bailout bottle, which was lying on a ledge just above the water. The bottle seemed to catch on something and as he pulled it towards him, it nose-dived violently straight onto a sharp flake of rock. A loud hiss and puff of gas was followed by silence.

Oh shit.​

The rock had taken a chunk out of Anton’s regulator hose.

I stared at it in disbelief. This cave had bitten just about everyone in one way or another and now even Anton had not escaped its clutches.

Bugger.​

Anton declared he could fix the hose back at sump 2, but could not dive any further into the cave.

It was down to me now.

As before, there was nobody who could come and get me in the event of a problem.

I got into sump 4, clipped off my line reel ready for deployment and set off. I knew that the line went about 100 metres distance, dipping to 28m depth, before it ended at about 10m. After that, who knew what it would do?
It took a while to get to the end of the well-laid line. I was taking it steady and trying to get a feel for this sump. It was much like the other sumps; sandy, undulating floor with the occasional jagged rock here and there. I found the end of line with some of it bundled neatly under a big rock. It was safe and secure, so I tied into it, feeling huge relief that finally we were getting somewhere.

The cave gradually undulated shallower and I was laying line at about 10m depth through easy going, large passage when I suddenly hit a huge, vertical wall. Looking left and right, I could see no ongoing passage - the only way was up.

Fred Nunn. Image: Mark Burkey

Laying line up a sheer wall on a manual rebreather is tricky. I took my time, making small tie offs wherever the opportunity arose and there weren’t many of them. As I got to about 4m depth I started looking up and sure enough, there was the glistening ripples of air surface. I bobbed to the surface only to crack my helmet on a roof projection.

Arse. ​

Moving away slightly to the side, I was now floating in a perfectly round, turquoise pool.

Where the hell was the way on?​

Just across the pool was a large flake of rock slicing across my view of the otherwise circular sump pool. That must be it.

Swimming carefully on the surface over to the rock flake, I stuck my nose around the corner.

There lay a perfect de-kitting ramp, a flat stream passage with cream, orange and black walls and a ledge which looked like a perfect de-kitting bench!

Brilliant!​

I de-kitted, turned off all my bottles and wandered down the brand new stream passage. The roof was about 30 metres high, the passage was a couple of metres wide, bigger in places and the stream flowed gently towards me under my feet.


It was beautiful and for that moment, it was all mine. My own piece of planet earth that nobody else had ever seen. It had never seen light, never been walked on and I had no clue how long this would last.

As I walked down the easy going passage, stopping to have a good look up into the tall roof, I let out a “Woo Hoooooo!!” of delight. At this point, I realised I had left my Paralenz dive camera clipped off to the nose cone of my scooter in sump 2.

Richard Walker; Christine Grosart; Mark Burkey (back); Fred Nunn (front) Louise McMahon; Anton Van Rosmalen.

I didn’t actually mind at this stage and concentrated on not tripping over and hurting myself, or putting a hole in my drysuit.

It was far too soon but some 70 metres later, I came across another perfectly round pool of turquoise water.

I walked straight into it to check if it was a lake, a duck or a sump.

It was a sump.

This was the cave that kept on giving. I had found sump 5.

With only one bailout bottle (again) I didn’t chance it. I wouldn’t have enough gas to make any meaningful progress and bail out if I needed to.

I took a compass bearing of the passage, counted my paces back to sump 4 and kitted up to dive back to a waiting Anton.

As I surfaced, excited to tell him the news, my BOV (bailout valve) started to free-flow and we had quite a job turning it off. I lost quite a lot of diluent gas and this was a concern as I still had two sumps to dive home.

As we were sorting out the problem, I felt something strange by my right hip. I reached behind to locate my line reel and found it had unclipped itself and rolled back down the slope, underwater.

With a lack of diluent I figured it would have to stay there, it was not worth diving back into the sump to find it.


Anton and I dived back through sump 3 and embarked on the painstaking carry back and forth to sump 2. Once all our gear was safely stashed, we unpacked the mini dry tube and began a grade 5 survey of the passage between sump 2 and sump 3. This was a relaxing affair and felt like a serious achievement to finally get this done and dusted.
It was finally time to dive home. I dispatched Anton into the sump first as there wasn’t much kitting up space for two people. As I turned on my rebreather, I realised I barely had 10 bar of diluent left. This was not good. Scratching my head, I worked out a way of plumbing in my bailout bottle to my rebreather and this worked remarkably well. The partial pressure of oxygen was easy to manage and it was a surprisingly comfortable dive home.
I surfaced to a very concerned team. Mark was particularly upset.

Anton did not know that I had needed to rectify a rebreather problem and of course, this took time. When he surfaced, he told the team I was a few minutes behind. In fact, I was an hour or so behind.

I had not even started kitting up when he’d left and the team were getting more and more concerned.

Anton did not have enough battery remaining on his scooter to come back looking for me easily, so they waited and waited, getting more and more worried as time passed.

They were pleased to see me, but much like when a child runs out into the road, you greet them with a bollocking.
It was dark when we finally surfaced from sump 1. The guys had sorted pizza for us and beer. I was almost too tired to eat it.

We had been underground for 14 hours and underwater for 124 minutes. Sump 4 had been passed, new cave discovered and sump 5 was there, just waiting to be dived.

After a day off and an evening at our favourite ‘Bear’ restaurant, we headed back into the cave to recover all the equipment. Possibly due to familiarity or maybe just motivation to get the job done, the gear all came out in half the time it took to go in.
As usual, I was bringing up the rear and did a final ‘idiot check’ beyond sump one to make sure all items had been taken out of the cave. I kitted up into my twinset to dive home.

“Where’s my hood?”​

Vaguely remembering that I had packed a hood for safe keeping in a pot - which had doubtless headed out of the cave in someone’s bag - I looked dejectedly at the Santi woollen beanie that was lying on a slab of rock.

That would have to do.

I made a hasty exit from the 7 degree sump, wondering why I couldn’t have chosen a different hobby.

I cannot thank the team enough for all their hard work and support on this project, members both past and present. Also, we must thank the staff and friends from Krnica dive centre; those who arranged permits to dive the cave, loaned us cylinders and sorted our gas.

We must also express our gratitude to the Ghar Parau Foundation for yet again giving us a grant and likewise, the Mount Everest Foundation for again selecting our project for an award.

We also wish to thank various diving and caving outfits who have assisted in some way, along the way:

Santi Diving; Halcyon Dive Systems; Suex Scooters; Fourth Element; Little Monkey Caving; Narkedat90