Ogof Draenen survey

[mudmonkey]

http://www.cavinguk.co.uk/draenen/ has a very good description but no survey

I've done the round trip a few times and been to Dollimore Series once so know a fw of the routes

 

[Cave Mapper]

Just out of interest, Cave Mapper, do you ever go down caves that don't have guidebook descriptions or surveys to help you? Or don't they count?

They'd certainly count, but I haven't been able to find any.

 

[cap n chris]

Very commendable approach, most do-able if you live locally; however, I'd guess that if significant travel is involved then you'll be wanting a survey for route-finding.

Not sure why the distance travelled to the cave has anything to do with the approach adopted towards navigation once you are there. I don't use printed surveys underground when I visit caves in the eastern Pyrenees and the travel factor is much greater than anything you are likely to encounter in the UK. Works fine for me.

You surely have some idea of where you are going and what's involved; a description, what kit/rope is required etc..

 

[Cave Mapper]

No-one really understands exactly why everyone fell out.

Lots of people who contributed time and effort to surveying trips are very pissed off that their work has not seen the light of day except in a remarkably limited fashion.

Sounds like a sad and shameful episode.

Cave surveys should be seen for what they invariably are, i.e collaborative works.

 

[NigR]

I am curious NigR and Peter, do you take a selection of assorted tackle with you on your trips in case you encounter any pitches you did not know about?

Depends where I am going and what my objectives are. If it is a recce-type trip in a cave I am unfamiliar with I usually tend to take a bit more tackle than I think I might need - better to carry too much rather than have to turn around early due to lack of gear. Peter mentions Ogof Ffynnon Ddu and that is a good example of a place where an extra rope can come in handy on occasion.

You surely must have sought as much information as you could get before you headed off to the Pyrenees. Or did you spend years roaming Europe, obviously without a road atlas!, before you found a hole, that was worth the drive, to go down.  True dedication to your own ethics indeed if that was the case. A long trip back home if you find you need a 200m rope to get down the second pitch.

Most of the cave systems I visit in the eastern Pyrenees have not been very well-publicised (even in France) - some have not been publicised at all so obtaining a printed survey or written information is often not a viable option. Indeed, I had no prior information about the area before my initial visit - I just went over there, took a look around and found what I found on the ground. So far as needing an extra rope goes, that's no great problem - I usually have plenty back at the campsite and if they all get used up it's easy enough to just go and buy some more. I do take a road atlas, though!

[You surely have some idea of where you are going and what's involved; a description, what kit/rope is required etc..

Yes, some descriptions do exist but they vary from system to system, area to area and they are often not readily available. Even when they are to hand, a certain amount of initiative is required to make the best use of them. To give one example, a certain 16 km system was the subject of a major article in Speleo magazine, along with a fold-out survey - but the co-ordinates where omitted and the directions to the entrance were made deliberately vague. All the more satisfying when you do eventually locate it. In another case, I stumbled across the entrance to a 25 km system purely by chance - I did manage to locate a very basic, very out-of-date survey later on but not before I had done several really good trips into it. Again, a much more satisfying experience than if I had possessed a detailed description and survey to begin with.

 

[cap n chris]

.... if they were well publicised and there were good surveys available, would you use them, ignore them or visit other caves elsewhere instead?

 

[menacer]

I do take a road atlas, though!

Ptah...thats Cheating....

 

[NigR]

.... if they were well publicised and there were good surveys available, would you use them, ignore them or visit other caves elsewhere instead?

I would use the surveys to see where I have been and to plan future trips. I wouldn't use them as a deliberate aid to finding my way around underground, although I would not be averse to taking a copy with me in case the need arose. The only way in which the general availability of a good survey would put me off visiting a particular cave would be if I thought there was nothing else left to be discovered - then, and only then, would I go elsewhere instead.


Getting back to the original subject of this thread - Ogof Draenen - I'm just wondering whether the current lack of availability of a survey is having long-term conservation benefits, i.e. is it helping to limit the amount of traffic on the more popular routes in the cave? Any thoughts on this? Has anyone else been put off going there because they haven't got a survey?

(Note to hell little caver: If you are used to finding your way in OFD then Draenen should present no great problem as the main routes are much more linear. Yes, if you try to do too much in one go (for example the Round Trip on your first visit) you will probably get lost but just take it one step at a time and you should be fine.)

I

 

[cap n chris]

When you do discover new stuff, do you survey it?

 

[footleg]

and how do you know it is new stuff if you do not have a survey of what is already known?

 

[caving_fox]

"Yes, if you try to do too much in one go (for example the Round Trip on your first visit)"

And this is why the distance to the cave is important that you so dismissed earlier upthread. If it's a major trip for a caver and likely to be the only opportunity to get into draenen that year, why would you want to waste it stumbling around the entrance, when by using a survey you could do the round trip on your first and only visit. (Though even with a survey you may not manage)

Re the climbing analogy not using a survey would be like solo'ing the climb, rather than leading it on sight. DIfferent sort of challenge.

 

[footleg]

I once did the round trip without a survey, having got well down the main streamway as part of a larger group, a few of us decided to try and complete the round trip with a copy of the guidebook description we had with us. This was a superb challenge, as the trip is described in the opposite direction to the one we were doing it. So statements like 'when you reach the active stream passage turn left and follow it to the end' had to be reinterpreted as 'head upstream and try and work out which of several passages on the right is the one you are supposed to be going up'. We had a lot of fun and completed the trip successfully. We would never have managed it in one trip without the guidebook description however, and a survey would have helped in a few places!

 

[cap n chris]

Or how about a Thought Experiment? - imagine that we live in a country populated with a fair number of active cavers, who engage in working out the route for themselves, based on their own experiences, into caves which have few sources of description and no surveys. Right, fix that in your mind.

How long do you think it would take before some bright spark said "Hey, I've got an idea! - why don't we draw up maps of the caves we visit so that (a) we know where we've been (b) we know how long the cave is (c) we can work out its relationship to the surface and this might provide clues about likely places to dig (d) the map would be really useful to other people wishing to visit the cave and (e) it would serve as a reference for people who seek, find, and add on, new bits of passage as the cave is explored and pushed further and.... (f) we might even sell a handful of copies".

You never know, if enough people thought it was a good idea it might catch on.

 

[graham]

To those of us who are interested in the hows and whys of caves:

How they are formed, when were they formed, why there, where does the water go, etc.

Surveys are utterly essential tools.

 

[cap n chris]

I'm just wondering whether the current lack of availability of a survey is having long-term conservation benefits, i.e. is it helping to limit the amount of traffic on the more popular routes in the cave? Any thoughts on this? Has anyone else been put off going there because they haven't got a survey?

Maybe; that's one way of looking at it - Conservation by Unwitting Secrecy.

However, it could also be argued that the lack of an easily available survey is resulting in people visiting the cave "blind" and attempting to route find for themselves - clearly this would result in people going off the main trade routes in the cave and wandering into delicate areas causing unnecessary damage to those quiet backwaters; since visitors using established trade routes have little additional impact to those parts of caves, it is easy to see that the lack of a survey for route-finding will result in a widening of the impact such visitors will have. QED no survey = more widespread damage.

 

[Christian_Chourot]

This reminds me of something that has concerned me lately, quite a few student members of my club this year, and not just the new ones, have seemed unwilling to go anywhere new without either a survey or someone who "knows the way" and trips to Devon and Derbyshire for next year are planned "as long as someone knows the way". What happened to the spirit of adventure?!

Pah, while I may have obsessively constructed my laminated survey to OFD, I haven't used it yet and the trips where I've gone in without someone who knows the way have been by far the best and most satisfying. My survey will remain a reference to help me get to parts of the cave I really want to see, like OFD3. I'm rarely that excited in a cave when all I'm doing is following someone's bum instead of finding my own way...although it probably depends whose bum it is...

 

[El Agreb]

Red Pointing (dogging) would perhaps be a more appropriate analogy with climbing.

I'm just wondering whether the current lack of availability of a survey is having long-term conservation benefits, i.e. is it helping to limit the amount of traffic on the more popular routes in the cave? Any thoughts on this?

Doesn't your approach increase the amount of traffic in the system if you have to build up to do a longer trip rather than accomplishing the said trip on a single visit. Carbon emissions resulting from numerous journeys from one end of a country to another will also be seriously reduced if you remain only an occasional visitor. Long term conservation is about much more than a muddied pretty.

 

[Peter Burgess]

To those of us who are interested in the hows and whys of caves:

How they are formed, when were they formed, why there, where does the water go, etc.

Surveys are utterly essential tools.

I concur. A similar case can be made for mine and quarry surveys.

An additional reason for a good survey is for coordinating search and rescue from a complex site.

 

[graham]

This reminds me of something that has concerned me lately, quite a few student members of my club this year, and not just the new ones, have seemed unwilling to go anywhere new without either a survey or someone who "knows the way" and trips to Devon and Derbyshire for next year are planned "as long as someone knows the way". What happened to the spirit of adventure?!

Pah, while I may have obsessively constructed my laminated survey to OFD, I haven't used it yet and the trips where I've gone in without someone who knows the way have been by far the best and most satisfying. My survey will remain a reference to help me get to parts of the cave I really want to see, like OFD3. I'm rarely that excited in a cave when all I'm doing is following someone's bum instead of finding my own way...although it probably depends whose bum it is...

Off topic, but, that is, sadly, a consequence of the "risk averse" conditions in which kids are brought up and of the need in college clubs to have risk assessments of every thing that you do. It is frankly impossible to do a proper risk assessment of a digging trip that would satisfy the H&S types. Fortunately our Union safety officer is far more pragmatic than some, but the attitudes persist even so.

 

[NigR]

When you do discover new stuff, do you survey it?

Yes, always (eventually).

and how do you know it is new stuff if you do not have a survey of what is already known?

If you've got to dig a choke or bolt a climb to get there then it's fairly obvious. Even in caves with very little traffic you will always come across evidence of previous visits sooner or later if there have been any although sometimes, usually depending upon the composition of the passage floor, you may have to look quite hard.

To those of us who are interested in the hows and whys of caves:

How they are formed, when were they formed, why there, where does the water go, etc.

Surveys are utterly essential tools.

I entirely agree and this is why I use them, I just do not agree with using them on a regular basis for navigating whilst underground.

This reminds me of something that has concerned me lately, quite a few student members of my club this year, and not just the new ones, have seemed unwilling to go anywhere new without either a survey or someone who "knows the way" and trips to Devon and Derbyshire for next year are planned "as long as someone knows the way". What happened to the spirit of adventure?!

This is precisely the point I am trying to make.


Just to put the record straight regarding my stance on the lack of availability of the Draenen survey as some of my earlier comments may be open to misinterpretation, I would like to emphasise that I am not in favour of the current situation - in fact I am pretty cheesed-off about it. Although I had no active involvement with the production of the Grade 5 survey, I gave over all the Grade 2 data of the passage we had discovered in good faith on the understanding that it would help produce a printed survey for everyone's benefit and I am very disappointed about the course of subsequent events.