What a great Hidden Earth!
Llangollen was an awesome place to hold the event – A picturesque town, in north east Wales so at neither extremity of the UK, and at a dedicated events venue. This meant that when I arrived to set up the CNCC stall at 6pm, the trade hall was already good-to-go as the tech-team had got in much earlier in the day. This usually isn’t possible when the venue is a school or sports centre.
The site was awesome with loads of parking and more than enough camping space right next to the venue. The trade hall, lecture rooms, bar/canteen and reception were all very close together, which avoided the challenge of some previous years where they have been more spread out. The lack of the caver-run bar meant needing to dig a bit deeper for a pint, which is one inevitable trade-off you get with a more a dedicated conference venue, but the beer was very nice.
The lecture schedule was a good mixture of techy, UK and overseas exploration, as well as some other special interest sessions such as art and caving politics. The Lecture Secretary had tried this year to align the breaks between the talks better across the three rooms, which made is easier to jump between them, and resulted in some very vibrant busy pulses in the trade hall as all lecture rooms paused for aligned breaks. People were queuing at some of the stalls (about 20 people at the UKCaving stall at one point).
The trade hall was much busier than last year with numerous equipment vendors including Starless River, Inglesport, Trogg Shop, Action Stash, Earthworm and Scurion. For anyone seeking a new suit or perhaps a new light, there were loads to choose from this year!
The video salon has been a bit of a rising star of Hidden Earth recently, and this year was no exception, with nearly two hours easily being lost in the caver ‘cinema’ booth in the trade hall. The quality and variety of video work has increase so much lately, although this sadly seems to have come at the cost of the photo salon, which had fewer submissions than usual. My feeling is that the photo salon needs a bit of a modernising shake-up to encourage more people to participate. This is something I know a few members of the team are already looking into for next year.
The quality of the lectures this year was superb, although naturally I can only comment on the ones I attended:
Tim Allen opened with a talk on Mulu, helping to put the area in perspective for people like me who are not already familiar, while showcasing some amazing extensions, including some buttock-clenching bolt climbs and audacious feats. This was followed by an equally excellent talk by Louise Korsgaard on Buda, only one mountain range along from Tim’s area, telling the story of determined exploration in what is, so far, a less well appreciated part of the wider Mulu area. The passion of the individuals involved was beautifully conveyed by Tim and Louise.
Pete Talling gave a slick and professionally delivered talk on his very recent visit to Peru, where several massive sinkhole features with enormous depth potential has encouraged them to travel to the other side of the world and trek for days through tough terrain, without even any certainty of getting underground! Such dedication! This turned into a very successful expedition indeed, in an area that we are sure to be hearing more from in future. Once again, this talk was beautifully given, and it told the story in a clear and accessible way for those less familiar with the area.
Pete’s second talk on Sunday covered the big discoveries ongoing up at Gretadale in the caves of The Stang, where as well as 7km + of quirky maze cave exists (and growing by 100s of metres with each trip) there is still huge phreatic potential too. This is a project I have been lucky to be involved in and it was great to see big discoveries close to home being showcased at Hidden Earth.
This year was very much the Forest of Dean’s year, with the connection of the long round trip in Slaughter Stream (with a top-notch new survey on display), but also Sunday brought us a talk on some major extensions in Redhouse Lane Swallet. I had heard only rumours, and it turns out that this was very hot-off-the-press indeed, with the team having finalised some of the exploration and initial surveying the weekend before the conference! This talk by Tim Nichols and two of the team, was outstanding. Not only did it tell the story of a very recent major UK breakthrough into hundreds of metres of Draenen/Easegill-sized passages, but it also conveyed the determination of the team, given the challenging nature of the earlier sections of the cave (lots of low airspace ducks and wet crawling) This talk was beautifully delivered, illustrated with photographs and beautifully produced videos, and I think is probably one of the best talks I have seen at Hidden Earth in my 15 years of attending the conference. This is UK exploration at its finest and great to see such a dedicated team being rewarded.
I also enjoyed a short talk introducing the new northern caves water tracing database, a superb and determined effort to catalogue all tracing efforts around The Dales, in a user-friendly way. The amount of work that has gone into creating this amazing resource is astonishing.
There were several other talks I wanted to attend, but I had to make some hard decisions about how to spend time.
It was an excellent conference, very well organised in a great venue, a superb selection of talks (given to a very high standard) and it felt very busy. The large number of younger cavers attending was particularly evident at the Stomp and in some of the student expedition talks. Pre-pandemic it felt like Hidden Earth was struggling to attract younger participants, but this is all change now. This could just be a natural revival of student expeditions post-pandemic, or it could be some of the fine efforts by CHECC/BCA to support youth caving, or it could be the more proactive engagement of Hidden Earth with social media including UKCaving. Whatever the reason, it’s great to see!
Thank you to all the organisers for an excellent weekend.
