"?ez Rob"*- JSPDT/ICCC Slovenia Expedition 2017


First year undergraduate Kenneth Tan prepares to descend through a hole in 'The Eyrie' back out into the sunshine, with a 1400 m drop into the valley below. Visible in the centre of this image is the ar?te from which we abseil to the Primadona entrance.

Migovec is a mountain in the Julian Alps in Slovenia, overlooking the town of Tolmin in the broad Soca valley. Since 1974, local cavers from the caving section (Jamarska Sekcija - JS) of the Tolmin alpine club (Planinskega dru?tva Tolmin - PDT) have been exploring the Migovec system. In 1994, a small group of cavers from Imperial College Caving Club (ICCC) drove across a recently redrawn Europe in search of deep alpine cave exploration, and joined up with the JSPDT to form a partnership that has grown ever stronger over time.

Since then, ICCC has returned to Migovec most summers. We have pushed new cave passages deeper and further underneath our Hollow Mountain. Notable recent discoveries include the deep connection Vrtnarija into the main Sistem Migovec cave system in 2012 to form the longest cave system in Slovenia, and the shallow connection of Primadona (the third deep system in the mountain) in 2015, bringing the total length of passage to 37.2 km, with the deepest points at -975 m. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the cave development is how densely riddled the approximate cubic kilometre of limestone we explore is.

Click for an extended elevation of the system - it's too big to embed in this post!

The ICCC side of the expedition is student led and student run, with a dozen or so students supported by alumni each year. We start with a long drive across Europe in a battered minibus to Tolmin (200 m above sea level) and then up to the hamlet of Tolminski Ravne (900 m) before carrying all of the equipment and food necessary for four weeks of expedition up to the top of Migovec (1800 m). We get special permission, organised by the local JSPDT club, to camp in the (Triglav) national park for the duration of our cave exploration. The camping is entirely wild. We collect rainwater and (when the rains fail) melt snow to drink. The base camp is our bivi in a small shakehole. From 2009-2015 we were deep-camping in Vrtnarija to further the exploration, typically spending 3-5 days underground at a time.

Last summer we moved our focus to the Primadona system. As the depths had not been re-reached since the originally exploration in 2000 and 2001, considerable cost and effort went into safely rerigging the main trunk routes, including the 150 m abseil over the cliff edge to the cave entrance! We discovered a parallel shaft series leading into a series of huge chambers, formed along a fault line. This shaft series also reconnected into the deep levels. We used over 800 m of new rope, and near the end of the expedition resort to scavenging more from unvisited parts of the system. The cave has been derigged and the ropes left coiled.

This year we will return to Primadona, and rebolt and rerig the old deep shaft series, looking to reach the bottom, where the shaft series was apparently left ongoing in 2001. Primadona also has considerable horizontal development between -200m and -300m. There are three distinct large horizontal galleries branch out of the main shaft system, heading both north and south into (as yet) blank mountain, each sporting several undescended pitches along the way, and many more question marks on the survey. We suspect these may also develop into deep shafts series, and so we again expect to use a large amount of rope. As a group of students we carefully control costs so that every home student who wants to come can join us. Any rope that we received through sponsorship would be eagerly taken to enable us to continue exploring this incredible cave system. We have been active on Twitter since 2008 (http://twitter.com/iccc ) with live expedition updates to keep everyone up to date on our progress, and we?re happy to post on UKcaving with updates and photos, as well as longer report when we get back to the UK and have had chance to have a shower.

More details of our past expeditions can be found on our website, and the expeditions from 1974-2006 have been compiled into a book, "The Hollow Mountain", the first volume of many more to come.

*Roughly: "Over the Edge", a reference to the long exposed abseil over the cliff edge to reach the cave entrance.

Exploration at its finest.  Good luck to you all.



You will have a PM

The rope is soaking, the drill batteries charged, the t-shirts have arrived and the food overflows from numerous battered green crates. Down in the ever-fragrant basement of the Imperial College Union, we are almost ready to set off on our twenty eight hour drive across Europe to Slovenia to begin four weeks of cave exploration.



As well as the organisation, we?ve been busy training and planning. Tony Seddon kindly ran a rescue workshop for us at the Wessex SRT tower, where we practiced rescuing a casualty who had lost control of their descender and ended up dangling from a rebelay. It took some doing to rig an improvised pulley, hoist them up enough to take of their descender and then descend in tandem to the ground - we found it was a lot easier if you can just cut the rope above instead!

Back in stores, we went through all the many first aid kits. These are staged at various points on the walk up the mountain, in the bivi and then underground, where we hope they won?t be needed. Tonight we?ll run a briefing session for expedition members new and old, to familiarise them with the first aid provision, basic first aid techniques and the importance of call outs, gardening and other esoteric, but essential, vocabulary.

We were very fortunate to receive a grant from the Harlington Trust to purchase three Cave Link radios, which can send SMS messages through hundreds of meters of rock. These are in wide-spread use amongst cave rescue organisations, and we will incorporate them into our safety and rescue plan, to provide updated ETAs for call outs and early notification should any issues arise underground. One unit will remain at the bivi on the surface, and another will be placed at a junction about three hours caving from the surface, with the third held in reserve as a replacement or if a new deep lead opens up.

We collected the rope from Badlad and Pegasus a couple of weekends back in the Dales, and it?s been soaking for the last couple of weeks. Three hundred metres of 9 mm is a significant addition to our supplies, and it?ll definitely see good use on exploration. In addition to this rope and 400 m of 10 mm, we have 400 m of 11 mm to re-rig the old deep route in the system, which is currently rigged on a motley mixture of home-made hangers, encrusted krabs and rope of unclear pedigree.

We?ve also been preparing to document the expedition in as much detail as possible. Many hours spent pondering drivers, LEDs and Lion batteries have lead to some exciting, bodged ultra-bright lights, which conveniently also serve as temperamental heat sources. These will illuminate the cave so that we can take video as we explore, to capture the excitement as it happens. We?re also working with the Imperial Podcast team to record audio in the cave for use in an upcoming podcast, and they?ve kindly lent us an excellent little audio recorder to capture the ambience and mood of the cave. I?ve been inspired by the BCA audio archive to try and produce a long form audio report of the expedition - this might prove easier than badgering people to write down what they actually found!



The snow has almost melted in the shake hole which we'll call home for the next four weeks, and so the expedition is ready to begin!

how much did the cavelinks set you back? I recently saw that SMWCRT were crowdfunding for a ?150 contribution towards an 8th purchase, and they reported that each unit costs ?1k. Incidently, you now have more cavelink systems than the whole of the Southern hemisphere to my knowledge. When I was in New Zealand last year, they had only just purchased 2 and they were not aware of any other countries in the South having purchased them. What do you plan to do with the cavelink systems when you are not out on expedition? Lend them to rescue organisations local to London?

Hi Everbody,

I was out for the first two weeks and am now back in London, so the honour of writing our mid-expo update falls to me!

Here is our first week (mainly expo setup). I'll try to be back later this week to writeup the second week of exploration, and to put some early photos in.

I also made a load of Video diary Vox Pops, just unedited rush currently, but might give a bit of an eyewitness view of the ICCC expedition.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXLkC01650KdfnxE4g7ayrS0wKfE0-bUt
- it's only on reviewing these that I realise I start every one with 'So!' - apologies.

And don't forget you can get your info live from the mountain via Twitter: https://twitter.com/iccc

Week 1

The ICU Union minibus hauled itself into Tolmin at midday on Saturday 8th July, as the thermometer rocketed through 30 degrees. Myself and Ben, who had come out a day early, drove our stolen shopping trolley, loaded with bread, sausage, iced-tea and booze. We converged with perfect timing at the old Jugoslav barracks, now the industrial estate, where one of our JSPDT friends has an injection-moulding factory. This was to be expedition base camp, the rack of toilets and cold water showers a perfectly match. After pizza, the van was partially unloaded into a more mountain-road friendly configuration. The smelly van-people headed off to the So?a river (10 degrees, but very clean, at least upstream of cavers) to swim and sun worship.

A crack(ed) team headed off to Tolminske Ravne (at 925 m, the trail head). There are something like 30 hair-pin bends on the single track road from Tolmin. Rather disturbingly, about half-way up, the van started belching  grey smoke out the side of the bonnet every time we braked. Not wanting to risk being stranded & blocking the single-track road halfway up, we limped our way into Ravne. Rather than our standard parking spot next to a barn recently filled with ~50 cubic metres of wood for winter, we parked on the road surrounded by only concrete. Tentatively approaching the still smoking bonnet with fire-extinguisher in hand, we quickly located the fault. The cap to the coolant had been 'repaired' with tinfoil and rubber bands, which had evidently fallen off at some point in the prior 1000 miles across Europe. The thirsty Transit drank 8 L of the best mountain water, and with a rather more heavy-duty cap improvisation constructed from a cave oversuit patch & a cable tie, was ready for more action. We unloaded the minibus. One driver drove back to Tolmin to save the rest of the team from the fleshpots.

Expo logistics revolve around the 'green crates', 60 L packing crates of which we can stack 18 in the back of the 9 seater minibus. This enables us to start tooling up months before the expedition leaves, duck-taped labelled crates marching around our caving stores as drills are fettled and items arrive from various corners of the country and the internet. Somehow such ideals of organisation are never quite realised, and so sorting, relabelling, finding and prioritising objects for carrying up the hill took up the rest of the day. The whole team united at Ravne, we took an early night, lined up on the floor of the little community common room made available for us this year.

An extreme storm started at around 10 PM. The rain was so heavy and so driven that it slipped under the door, forming a 3 m diameter lake (sleeping bags evacuated by Tikka light), before slinking off into the toilet and disappearing down a drain.

Everyone was up at dawn, keen to avoid the heat of the climb. Most people were heading up the hill at 6, and so by 10 the plateau (~1850 m) was already dotted with tents. We spent Sunday in the Bivi. This is where we store gear and food in large Daren drums and 200 L blue plastic barrels over the winter. Our advanced party had unpacked these barrels, and setup our Tarpaulins which serve both to shelter the cooking and sitting area, and channel drinking water into the barrels. In spite of no one being present to tune the guy lines, we had a good few hundred litres of water already gathered. This we we spent during the day on scrubbing and sterilising the pots, pans, containers and gear which we had left up over the winter.

The previous week a helicopter lift had been made by the Slovene cavers - bringing expedition essentials of petrol (to cook with), pasta, rice and cooking oil. It also brought luxuries. We marvelled at the string bags of potatoes and onions (fresh vegetables!). We also knew of the existence of 20 L of wine (a substance considered too lacking in proof to be worthy of a carry by human). This was then hidden, discovered, and re-hidden over the next few weeks, as various expedition members played the angels and devils of our collective conscience.

More carries on Monday and Tuesday followed. We were mostly set up for caving, and teams had been to start the chin-scratching challenge of rigging the 150 m Abseil from the plateau to the cave entrance. This is problematic as it continuously varies from about 45 degrees to sheer. A vast quantity of scree is barely held back by scraggy grass and clumps of dwarf pine. Any scree knocked loose tended to bound it's way down, making a terrifying 'thrp-thrp-thrp' as the uneven boulders tumbled their way to a terminal velocity. As well as this objective danger, the surface abseil was subjectively scary, being above the kilometre deep Polog valley. Perhaps the worst situation was when the mountain was partly enveloped in cloud. It is very strange sensation to see a house appear through the fog a long way below, while at the same time a peak of the Krn massif winked at your from above.

One problem was that we were already running low on water. Tuesday brought successively heavier rain storms. With frantic effort we tried to gather every drop, belaying the tarps by hand if necessary, siphoning water between barrels. By 4 PM, it was clear that supply was going to outstrip storage no matter what we did, and we soon had four brim full barrels, and replenished sealed 20 L containers of water. Perhaps 800 L in all - plenty for two weeks.

The weather did not get the message that we were sated, and redoubled its efforts. Along with the incredibly heavily rain, there was an increasing cacophony of thunder and lightning. Cavers arrived in the Bivi from their carries with overflowing boots. By 8PM everyone was on the mountain, fed, watered and frankly bored. People sat around on the drier side of the stone circle, drinking tea in their waterproofs.

The rain had lessened considerably, and the booming had moved off to the next set of peaks. Up on the plateau, rain was still falling, but it was pleasantly still. The occasional jagged line cut through the sky, touching the ridge many kilometres downwind. Tanguy dashed to his tent: "You can't outrun lightning!" I shouted after him. Such japes! A recurrent strike hit a mountain not so far away, and at least 500 m below us. Troubling. Soon after there was a little strike on Migovec itself, roughly our altitude and more importantly, upwind. It was time to return to the safety of the Bivi.

The event was not noise or light, but all at once.  Even the dark green dwarf pine was lit so bright it became white. It felt like I'd been hit very hard over the head with a cricket bat. This was replaced by a sense that my head and hair was on fire. Rubbing at the fire frantically, I was amazed to find all my greasy locks were still there. My hat was missing (magically to be found later in my pocket). My head was full of white noise, and horrible black puddles of amnesia. Had I hit the ground? How long had it been? I was staring at my tingling hands, amazed that they were there and functional.

As my hearing returned, I could hear the screaming - multiple voices overlayed. It gave me something to focus on. I stepped up to the Bivi and gazed down on pandemonium. I knew lightning was involved, but my first thought was that the petrol lantern we use for evening light had exploded. The stone circle we sit around was empty, people having thrown themselves backwards and outwards. About half the occupants were walking wounded, a quarter writhing on the floor screaming and clutching legs, and a quarter ominously still and quiet. Everyone had been effected.

It was impressive to see the walking wounded stagger around with numbed legs, swallowing down the stress, calmly shouting over the thunder-clapped deafness, to follow their first aid training to assess, triage and treat. Everyone was confirmed as breathing. Casualty reports of burning legs showed no surface wounds. There was nothing we could think to do to deal with the reports of leg paralysis. So those unable to move we reassured, and bodily lifted out of the rain to place them back on the insulating carry mat of the stone circle. We retreated into the driest corner of the Bivi, to wait out the lightning with fearful eyes. We sang songs and rubbed numb legs. After four hours, the lightning was long gone and we cautiously headed to bed. The two worst effected were still incapable of standing unaided. They were carried to bed between two helpers. Most people sleeping rejigged arrangements to acquire a tent fellow. The key question - how much of a Faraday cage do you reckon your tent is?

By the next morning, everyone could walk again. Some people (but not necessarily correlated with the worst effected) had amazing fern-like and starfish patterns burnt into their legs with burst capillaries. One person had an extensive pattern on their legs, and a matching mirror image in silver written in their black synthetic leggings. One expedition member left for London the next day, no longer feeling safe on the mountain top. The weather was thankfully thunder free for the next week, otherwise I suspect considerably more members would have left.

The leg numbness slowly went away over a week, people were still staggering as their nerves slowly came back on line. Everyone seems to have made a complete recovery. Our cheap 'survex' laptop did not work. One of our survey compasses (kept in a metal ammo box) had a +90 deg error. We can't be certain these were due to the lightning current, but we only discovered them after the strike.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lightning strike definitely slowed down the rate at which we got properly underground.  The main effect was, of course, psychological. I certainly found it difficult to be planning trips with people I had just a couple of days previous been uncertain whether they were dead or alive. The beautiful plateau with its adders and rock falls, and the cave with its loose choss and uncertain rigging, took on a distinctly sinister air.

Nevertheless, by the end of the first week, the first newly explored survey data was coming back from the cave.

The mountain-top life continued much as it does in any other year. Ukulele and guitar lessons were given and received. Rewording of songs to give them a caving meaning an ever popular past-time. (Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" a fitting favourite this year!) Experimental cooking took us to savoury doughnuts, filled with cheese. The helicoptered bags of potatoes were chipped and deep fried, the soft onions souped.

nobrotson said:

how much did the cavelinks set you back?

Click to expand...

We got a grant of ?2670 from the Harlington fund for three units, but have currently covered the ?490 custom charges ourselves.

The real-politick of the situation is that this was funded on the back of the rescue last summer. I would anticipate the college expecting us to maintain these units as hot spares exclusively for our expeditions.
The Slovene cave rescue organisation produced a report in English for the ECRA: http://caverescue.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/05%20Maks%20Merela%20PPT%20Cave%20Rescue%20Primadona.pdf

Unfortunately our experience with the cave links this year has not been very positive. We rushed Felix into getting them to us in time for expedition, so they may not have been through sufficient quality assurance.

One unit would simply not power up. The two working ones we attempted to deploy, but upon getting the underground unit in situ, it 'froze' when doing the antenna test, or otherwise attempting to transmit. Radios are not that useful to test when you only have one unit! It's a pity as we were hoping to test different antenna placements around potential underground camping spots in Prima Donna, and to build deployment knowledge for any future resuces. In general I would say that it's quite disappointing that at ?1000/unit, that they come in a non-peli crush proof case, without waterproof grommets for the two antennas (i.e. you have to leave the cases slightly open, and risk cutting the antenna wires).

Previously in 2013 we had a loan of two units, and found them extremely useful in underground camp logistics, effortless broadcasting through 600 vertical metres of rock.
https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=15818.0

What a great story! It must have been frightening and exciting. I've been hit by lightning once too, and I can relate to some of your descriptions. I think your strike was a lot worse though.

Really good "vox pops" too, they project you right into the heart of exploration.

After the lightning the expedition truly began.



The cliff abseil down to the Primadona entrance.

One of the biggest challenges in Primadona is the formidable cliff abseil, a 150 m descent that threads its way down an increasingly steep slope, strewn with loose rocks and dwarf pine. Last year?s route was deemed pretty awful by all who did it, as it descended straight down the middle of a gully which acted to focus any falling rocks and place any cavers directly in the firing line for a direct hit. Some concerted effort by many on the expedition resulted in a route which reduced this risk, at the cost of long, airy pitches - unlike in a cave, the daylight makes it clear exactly how far you?d fall should you make a mistake. This may explain why several teams preferred to ascend in the wee hours of the morning!

For those of us who?d been in Primadona before, the cave this year was partially unrecognisable. Arun?s rescue (a 36 hour epic by the Slovenian Cave Rescue) had utilised a large amount of explosives, widening pitch heads, rifts and tight squeezes. Everywhere we found evidence of blasted rock, rescue bolts and stashes of rope. To return to a place which had become familiar and witness the violence that had been wrought was disconcerting, and we picked our way carefully back to the pushing fronts.


Entrance to Primadona, looking up the snow-slope to the outside world.

This year we had a range of leads to explore, starting around -300 m. The junction of these leads was Senja Soba (often jokingly referred to as Sane and Sober, two things cavers rarely are). Taking the initiative, Jarv and Tanguy set up an excellent rest stop here called Mary?s Cafe, complete with a trangia for boiling water, plentiful tea bags, sugar, milk, cans of fish, a candle and a speaker system. Perfect for a quick cuppa on the way to the pushing front, and essential for a hot meal and a rest on the way out.




We use a strict call-out system on the mountain - if you miss your call out, we begin the rescue procedure, sending a party to the top of the cliff to look for lights of ascending cavers and preparing another team to go underground. This presents a conundrum for pushing teams - with no underground camp, all trips are bounces, and it takes at least 12 hours now to push the leads we have. Either you enter the cave early and return by 10 pm (before everyone is too drunk or asleep to rescue you) or you set a 7 am call out and go in the afternoon, hoping that if you suffer an accident you can survive until morning. These two strategies split the expedition into the Day train and the Night train (or the fascists and bohemians) and often the only communication between the two teams was notes scrawled in the log book.

The Night train usually pushed the extensions on the TTT branch of Primadona, which Jarv will describe in detail. I spent most of my time with the Day train, which were looking at the Gallerija branch. This is a few pitches lower than Mary?s Cafe, down a long drop called Knot Very Good, at the bottom of which Arun was injured.

The previous year we had found a pitch which had been rigged by the JSPDT, but seemed to have been left undescended (Karstaway pitch, 30 m). Although we found a huge amount of cave passage down here (Karstaway, Mighty Fine Indeed, Hall of the Mountain King, Blue Danube, Upside Down Chamber) it was eventually linked into the TTT branch via What a Coincidence and all the other leads were killed. However, the Slovenians had never descended Karstaway, and had instead free climbed into the rift above the 40 m drop and continued on. This was still a going lead, and I was keen to see what they had found.

It took an entire day to safely bolt something which the Slovenians had free climbed up and then bolted from the top (and then somehow derigged) but I was satisfied that at least we now had a safe way to explore the top. The next day we went down in a group of three, ascended the new pitch above Karstaway and then proceeded along the rift. Immediately we reached a chamber with a slope of loose rock, and at the bottom we found a tight, sharp rift which continued south. With a bit of percussive persuasion we made it through, gawping at the crystal clear pools with clear welly prints on the sediment at the bottom. After a few tens of metres we came across a pitch which was clearly undescended, and this dropped down into a wide, meandering rift. Another pitch down and we made it into good size, drippy chamber, with one wall missing.


A deep clear pool with a lead on the other side in Electric Dreams.

Through this gap we entered a large approximately 20 m deep and about the same in diameter. Passages lead off at many levels, and we had entered about half way down - Rhys quickly bolted our way down and we began to explore the way on. A nasty looking crawl off in the floor was dismissed and we pushed on through a meandering rift to a window into a huge chamber, with a tilted bedding plane at 60? to the horizontal forming one wall. Out of rope, bolts and time we surveyed out, naming the passage ?Electric Dreams? in honour of our close brush with lightning.


The obvious good lead in Electric Dreams. I didn't get to go here...

After a day or so of recovery, David and I went back to see where that vast chamber lead to, but foolishly I let David chose which lead to push first, and he declared it was best to examine the tight crawl we?d overlooked the previous trip, as it was sure to die soon. After a few hours of effort it definitely had not - the sharp, fragile rift lead to a pitch that dropped into a choked hading rift. We backtracked, followed a higher level phreatic into a boulder choke. Feeling defeated, we surveyed out, naming it Stranglehold, but at the top of the pitch we spotted another way on the far side of the chamber. A quick traverse was bolted, and we dropped into another tight, sharp meandering streamway. At the bottom of one free climb we found a cleaver shaped rock which produced a perfect clean note when tapped, taking many seconds to die away -  a remarkable experience for a cave explorer!

At the end of this meander we popped into a huge rift. Twenty minutes of vigorous gardening ensued, with coffee table sized rocks dispatched down the 30 m drop. I bolted carefully, unsure what was wall and what was merely wedged bus sized boulder. But as I descended I found myself out of maillons, bolts and strength. Unable to prevent rope rub I elected to drop the rope to check it made it to the floor, and then prussik out so that we could survey. The surveying took far longer than I expected, and we made it to the surface for 9:58 pm for a 10 pm callout. The others were sympathetic and fed us delicious food until we?d recovered enough to tell them what we?d found.


Hall of the Mountain King.

The survey data made it look as if I?d refound Hall of the Mountain King from above, and this was enough to crush my desire to go back. A week later we did an exchange between the TTT and Karstaway branches to consolidate our knowledge of the system, and the rope I?d left dangling was nowhere to be seen. Out of time on expedition I couldn?t make it myself, but I begged Tanguy and David to check it out, which they did a few days later. In what I can only imagine was an epic trip they pushed this lead, finding a new chamber perched above Hall of the Mountain King which then connected into the chamber below, and killed the other lead in Electric Dreams, linking it into Mighty Fine Indeed. With all the leads neatly wrapped up, it?s unlikely I?ll ever go back, but I had a great time - always push the grim leads!

I've made two mini-podcasts based on our exploration this year:

Exploration in Gondolin, a new cave found by Tanguy Racine, who studied some photographs of a cliff face, spotted a dark recess and then went and abseiled off the cliff to find the cave!

Galaktika Chamber was first discovered back in 1983, and is the largest chamber in the system. No one had been there since 2001, so we decided to go back and photograph it.

The audio quality on the voiceovers is poor as I haven't got hold of a decent microphone yet, but the audio from the caves was recorded on a TASCAM DR-05, and is very atmospheric.

My turn then, is it?

It was with a broad smile that Rhys told us of the new findings in the Fenestrator branch he had been pushing this year. That discovery had been serendipitous, as he and Ben had gone searching for a rigged but undescended pitch in the Smer0 gallery, at 250m depth in Primadona. Failing to find it, they fell back on their plan B: pushing the Cattlegrid pitch.

The way on was a collection of outrageous, unlikely holes , passages, windows. Wherever the cave seemed to end, looked like it would not go any further, a cursory glance would reveal an ever more obscure passage. It was never tight for long though, a hundred of metres or so of fairly easy passage would ensue, ending at yet another unlikely junction, pitchhead or squeeze. The pushing trips had progressively added more length to the branch, and it was now over 400m long, heading towards the mythical southeastern direction, into blank mountain. In Rhys?s words, ?a couple of hours round trip?, now at a stone?s throw from the underground caf?.

Accordingly there was quite a lot of interest in this new lead, but most of us had committed ourselves to completing a loop trip  deeper in Primadona, connecting the TTT branch with our 2016 finds below Galerija. There was in particular the need to photograph the (relatively) new bits of cave passage and spot possible underground camping spots close to the old deep pitch series. Jack had mooted the possibility of using a horizontal passage (What a Coincidence), while I had seen a likely spot slightly further up the cave. Neither had seen the other?s proposed site, and it was a great opportunity to see the scope of the achievement in 2016.

Two days after this, the possibility to push the new branch arose.  Rhys was flying back two days hence, so he had to carry his kit down, and Izi, who had wanted to come along was called back down the valley to Most na Soci by his 4 year old son who wanted his papa. William was first up and around in the bivi and agreed to accompany me. By this time in the expedition, we knew the route to Mary?s Caf? like the back of our hand. It spoke highly of the effort put in by all the rerigging teams up to that point that Primadona felt like a Yorkshire cave, all expedition rigging had been exterminated, replaced with friendly Y-hangs, long traverses and back-ups.  Only the sharpness of the walls, the odd colour of the rock and the conspicuous absence of a streamway reminded us that this was still an alpine cave.

I?d never been caving  down the new branch before, and quickly learned why it had taken so many trips to push and rig. The mud was the worst aspect. Where I assume the rocks had been white and glistening, with spots of ochre clay in places, was a brown, sticky mess. The pools of water, which had a beautiful blue tint before our passage were a nebulous grey.  The way on was no easy stroll: the window to glory turned out to be an awkward sideways crawl,  the next pitch hidden behind a squeeze through boulders, the aptly named Plumber?s Paradise relented at a junction where a sizeable stream came in from the right handside. Here I checked the little piece of paper Rhys gave me, followed downstream as per the instructions into the larger Hallelujah passage, whose dimensions prompted me to realise the elation its discoverers must have felt. There was a high rift passage, headed along a fault plane and away from the main Primadona network.

Soon enough, we started seeing little notes ?Unexplored? pointing in different directions off the main passage.  Again looking at the instruction sheet, we carried on into a lovely small phreatic tube, then through a sandy squeeze into the terminal chamber of ?Sweet baby Jesus?, the termination of exploration. The way on, the ?unknown? was a simple passage leading off from that small chamber. Gathering our kit, discarding what we thought would be unecessary from here, we stepped off along the stooping, white horizontal passage.

I had a little apprehension concerning what would follow: it seemed every lead my hand had touched this year degenerated or ended. I?d seen a too tight muddy squeeze, a blue sump at shallow level, a flat roofed chamber filled with scree and a drippy boulder choke with no way out. But after each corner, the passage continued, at a shallow gradient, dotted with deep pools and sharp bends where it was necessary to crouch near the water level to pass through. It continued until we hit a pitch head. It was maybe 6m, no more, bending towards the left and away from Primadona, which was a good sign.

This was quickly bolted and at the bottom we were confronted with a fault controlled passage again, which seemed to close down ahead. There was a deep trench in the floor, through which we could see another chamber of similar size. It was possible to climb down and double back underneath, which I did without great enthusiasm as I could see no way on at either end of the chamber. I cursed and went to the far side as a matter of fact to ascertain that the way on was elsewhere. To my surprise, the far rift had a continuation at right angle to the chamber, and from my vantage point, I saw another pitch head, ready for bolting.

The first couple of metres were entertaining, the walls mades of a white powdery rock, with rounded nodules protruding from all sorts of places. It looked for the first time as though it could grow to be a big find, as the pitch got spacious towards the bottom. The wall rocks, white or pale grey became more rugged and solid. At the base of the next drop, we looked around to gauge what kind of passage might lead off. We were now in a rift of respectable dimensions, the way down wide open at a larger pitch, perhaps 20m, split two-thirds of the way down by a large ledge. William also scurried off upstream of the passage to an aven (ten metres), the floor of which was a circular room with deep mud banks on either side. Where small pebbles had landed on the mud, they had shielded it from the winnowing action of the water and now stood a centimetre above the mud. All of them looked like an army of little lead soldiers, each with a distinctly coloured hat.

We set about rigging the larger drop, putting a Y-hang above a little parallel shaft which rejoined the main pitch at the ledge. Carefully feeding as much rope as I could through the knots, we managed to reach the ledge, but just. Then, out of rope, we looked at the continuing pitch. Unfortunately, there were only a few stones on the clean, white ledge and we only had a couple of attempts each at judging how far down the next pitch went.

There certainly was a storming continuation to the passage, and looking at the survey, it is still headed towards blank space, with the rest of Primadona around 150m to the west. This had been made possible by the perseverance of the previous teams who hadn?t turned back at the first hurdle or declared the passage ?terminated, too tight, dead? and gone back day after day to lengthen the branch.  Thanks to their effort, Will and I had  a really good trip and left the lead better than we found it.

Out of rope. Admittedly we hadn?t taken a huge amount (around 50m), but it was still a little frustrating to be short of finishing the pitch, especially since it was unlikely to be revisited this year.  With that in mind we pulled up the last rope, the other pitches being bone dry were left rigged, and surveyed back to ?Sweet Baby Jesus?. When we  finally tied in our survey to the PSS, it was getting late and since we had to cave the next day to start the derig, decided against further pushing.

Back on the surface, when asked by Tetley what had happenned, the description came in bullet points as exhaustion and hunger prevented me from stringing words into a sentence. We were soon presented with mess tins full of hot tasty food, and as the tiredness ebbed away we entered the survey data into the surface computer. The realisation that we were still going and had lost around 40m of elevation, with more depth to come completed the feeling of elation after what had been, for me personally, a reward after so many harder exploration trips.

The Lead That Wouldn't Die

All year a particular lead had played at my mind. Primadonna is still a bit unknown to us, we had only visited one very small branch last year, and so we have little to go on but the drawn survey. Mostly drawn by people who had never been there and based on creatively acquired surveyed data. However someone had drawn an undescended shaft. It looked like it could be 10m wide, and had no bottom drawn on so presumable a few hundred metres of pitch was sure to follow. The navigation looked easy, a wander up a large phreatic gallery until the obvious hole in the floor.


A pitch a few above Smer 0. (Diss pictured, photo by me).

So, on my first pushing trip this year I recruited fellow glory seeker Ben and off we went delighted at our machination to steal the best lead in the system. We zipped down 150m of cliff and then a further 200m down the cave. We made our way up the gallery (Smer 0), now beyond my limited knowledge of the cave, and immediately got lost.


Knot Very Good chamber, immediatley before Smer 0. (Jack and Davie pictured, photo by me).

Climbs, crawls, different levels in the passage. Mysterious ropes into the ceiling, strange markings on the wall, a countdown of survey stations scrawled in carbide. Certainly not the amble to fame and greatness that I had promised myself. My bag bulged with a drill, two lions (batteries not cats) and enough metal to get to -1000. Ben?s bag strained against the tightly packed pressure of 100m of rope (it would?ve been a pull through of course). It was a fairly unpleasant slog. After an hour or so our progress was halted by an impassably small rift with the number 39 written mockingly in huge digits on the wall implying a further 38 survey legs worth of cave somewhere beyond.

Denied our 1000m deep shaft I was unwilling to return to the surface with no metres in the book so I proposed we bail and go to a lead that I had left last year because it was too unpleasant. Back at the start of Smer 0 is a large chamber known as Knot Very Good. Two streams fall into the chamber from opposite ends, high up in the roof, and disappear under the boulder floor. Last years through a series of unpleasant wet, sharp crawls under the boulders I had found an immature streamway, which eventually led to my lead; a small undescended pitch.


Smer 0, en route to Fenestrator. (DKP pictured, photo by me)

I was not excited by it due to the general habit of all water in the system to disappear into tiny cracks, especially water in already small streamways. Still, it was close and we were desperate.

Tanguy has also explored in the same area and had found an alternate way to my crap streamway through a series of horrifically muddy crawls. I chose the mud, as it was slightly more pleasant than the sharp crawls. I went the wrong way and Ben and I ended up doing both the muddy and sharp crawls.

As well as being crap my route finding was also rather inauspicious. We ended up going right by where I assume Arun had his injury last year. I chose not to mention this to Ben at the time, keen to maintain the small amount of morale we had.

Eventually, covered in cuts and mud, we arrived at the pitch head and we got to work. This was Ben?s first time placing drill bolts. I supervised him for the first couple and then went to scout out a less shit way out / avoid dying of hyperthermia as he placed a couple more. I returned to a classic traverse out to a Y-Hang. We dropped 7 or 8m to the floor below.

At the bottom I was tragically proved right. The work-shy streamway had given up carving an anthropic passage and contented itself with a 5cm wide crack. Ben forced his way into an awful muddy tube nearby desperate to find a way on, finding only disappointment. Whilst he extracted himself I scanned the walls of the pitch. An incredibly obvious window presented itself. I did an awkward climb up to it and scraped into the awkward passage beyond. A narrow diagonally slanting tube led off. A few metres on I could see an enlargement. I popped out into a small collapsed chamber and called back for Ben to follow. ?It goes! Come up!?.

The obvious passage lead off through a couple of small chambers with crystal clear pools before, at a constriction, diving down a pitch. The angle was awkward and we couldn?t see down but it was obviously bigger than what we?d come in one. Not bad for a shit backup lead we thought. Our celebration lasted until we remembered the shit we?d crawled through to get here. Still, with an inspiring shaft to return to, we made it out eager to spread news of ?Fenestrator?.

A few days later we I returned, this time with Clare and Diss eager to show off our fantastic lead. In the spirit of the expedition we?d done a few good works on the way. Bolting some small free climbs and making them into safe little pitches. Our debts to the caving gods paid up front, we thought, we were sure to find something big. We arrived at the top of the pitch and Ben set to work. Half a bolt later the drill starting whining in a sickeningly low note. The battery was dead! We?d been lulled into a false sense security by the general reliability of the batteries and this was the first time we hadn?t brought a spare. We suspect this battery was misfiled into the full pile. Accident or sabotage? Despite my best efforts no one was interested in a witch hunt so the answer is lost to time.

If the good works were not enough then we clearly had moral deficiencies to repent for. Pushing a grim crawl is the obvious way to do so. (Un)Luckily for us there was one adjacent to our pitch head. Clare and I, connoisseurs of small passages, dived into the body sized tube. We were reluctantly followed by Diss, with Ben electing to guard the top against cave bears.

Clare lead for a few metres before stopping, giggling nervously. Ahead the passage was lined with dry mud, got tighter and turned a corner. She graciously allowed me the first go at it and I slipped down. I arrived in a delightful U-Bend and carried on. The passage continued, deliciously body sized, showing no sign of improvement. It was now my turn to giggle nervously as I approached a second u-bend almost full of soft mud. Clare?s echoey voice egged me on and I slid down. It was surprisingly dry and pleasant, and easy to wallow through. On the other side the passage continued. Another corner, a final  u-bend brought me into a chamber! I called back that it was going, encouraging Clare to join me. Then I heard Ben.
?Where are you?? I called.
?Here? he called back, helpfully.
Rounding a corner I find him standing next to our body sized tube. Two leads crossed off for the price of one then.

Another lead beckoned and this time we encouraged Diss to take the first steps. A squeeze down into a slanted stoop that gradually deteriorated to an awkward crawl. A collapsed chamber offered us no easier going and I overtook Diss eventually finding another muddy crawl with the same soft, dry mud. There was not enough airspace above the mud to fit into but it was soft enough that a sort of breast stroke motion was enough to make progress. 10 meters in I could see the passage continuing for at least as long in front of me with no sign of improvement. Visions of a hell in which I was forced to swim through mud for eternity flicked across my mind and I decided I?d had enough, despite an encouraging draught.

We surveyed out, naming our find ?Union Passage of the Year Nominee?, in recognition of a similar honour we had received from the Imperial College Union. On our way out Clare and I noticed a hole in the wall of the crawl, that popped out into a medium sized pitch and agreed that it should be checked out on our next visit. In total we?d left two undescended pitches and two going crawls. Not bad.

Ben, Clare and I returned the next day. With two batteries. Ben dropped the pitch we intended to drop the day before. Twenty metres down we landed on a rocky floor, a phreatic tube leading off behind some collapsed bits of wall. Ben had disappeared into it by the time Clare and I arrived so we scurried after him. We found him a few metres on. The tube was walking height and about the same width, very pleasant. The walls and floor were covered in the same sort of dryish mud we?d been wallowing in yesterday. We excitedly shook hands and stomped off down the passage.

Our elation was not to last though. We quickly arrived at a sump with no way on. The sump was beautifully clear, shimmering with a blue green tint but it represented the end of the lead for us so we were perhaps less awed by it than we should have been.

Ben and I surveyed out and Clare went to begin bolting the other pitch we?d found, off the crawl. Regrouping with Clare a little while later we found ourselves in a lovely clean shaft. Clare, with a classic ?how is that even attached? deviation, threaded the rope down the pitch. At the bottom an awkward climb and grim crawl under a scary boulder rewarded the keen caver with another sump. This one had a ?canal? like feel as we couldn?t see the end from our vantage point. Clare tried to encourage me to wade in and check out the end but for some reason I wasn?t too keen.

We were tired and unenthusiastic at this point. The only way on we could see was a barely human sized section in a rift halfway up on the opposite wall. I think we were all ready to call it a day but we had 4 bolts left and I?d rather stick them in the wall than carry them out. I climbed up the wall on one side and rigged a traverse into the rift, showering Clare, who was relieving herself directly below me (better than the other way round I guess), with rock dust. It was tight and the rope was mostly for protecting this initial entry. Within the anthropic level continued for 4 metres before narrowing. Just before this though the rift below opened up just enough to get through, and a larger space beyond called to me. With my final two bolts I rigged a y-hang in a place barely big enough to get the drill in horizontally. It?s really a collectors piece of a pitch head. The top is sort of hourglass shaped. You squeeze down to a sitting position below the rope, wiggle out along the rift a bit and carefully hold yourself in the widest bit as you descend. I was quite pleased when another of the expeditions experienced members said that it made him rethink what was possible to bolt.


Plumber's Paradise. DKP does his daredevil impression. (DKP and Diss pictured, photo by me).

I dropped a couple of metres to the floor and wandered forward. Another pitch! But about 10 metres down I could see water and I suspected it was the same water as the sump on the other side. I was out of bolts though and was about to turn around when I saw that the passage continued over the top of the pitch. A razor of rock sticking out from the wall as a step allowed me to carefully traverse over to it, still trailing the rope from my previous pitch behind. In front of me was another muddy phreatic tube! I was able to tie the rope off round a large pillar and called for the others to follow.

Having failed to learn from our previous mistakes we shook hands once again. We were sure this was it, hundreds of meters of easy walking passage straight to the lower entrance. We scurried along the stooping tube, excited as it enlarged to walking size. Then the sound of running water! We popped out in a stunning, white, clean streamway. About a metre wide and maybe 15 metres tall.


DKP in Hallelujah streamway (photo by me).

Here we quickly checked out upstream, finding a small muddy chamber above the stream and being unwilling to do the wet crawl required to follow the water. Then downstream. A lovely series of cascades led us to the end of our trip. The water did what it always does and disappeared into an impassable crack. Beyond the crack was a big space, and the water could be heard falling quite a distance on the other side so we consoled ourselves with the possibility of bring the plugs and feathers or heavier equipment here to break through.

We surveyed out, leaving the rope in because I promised to come back (Clare and Ben were both leaving in the next few days) and kill or continue it. As we surveyed out I pointed out that there could be ways on in the roof, it looked traversable higher up in the passage (oooh, foreshadowing). We named to streamway ?Hallelujah? and the rest ?Plumbers Paradise?.
 
I did return, several days later. Each day though weakened my resolve to break through the crack, each day it grew tighter and more impenetrable in my memory. The trip I ended up leading was a photo/derig trip as I had abandoned the plan to get through this year. Dave, Diss and I bimbled down to the pushing front taking photos along the way. As we prepared to derig I pointed out to Dave the place in the roof I thought might be traversable. Unusually he climbed the 2 metres straight away and without cajoling (he is normally very lazy). Once up there he nonchalantly called back ?It goes. I think?.

Diss and I shot up after him and, sending Diss in front, we found that it did indeed go. The ledges we climbed up on closed into form a solid floor, distinctly separating us from the streamway below. We rounded a couple of corners to confirm it didn?t die but it looked like we had a solid lead. Unfortunately we didn?t have a complete surveying kit and being the good little cave explorers we are we do not push without surveying. We were excited though. Mostly because it meant we didn?t have to carry any rope out.


Diss in Hallelujah Streamway. (photo by me).

Two days later I was back again. Diss and I, armed with drills, rope, and surveying kit were ready. I was was certainly ready for a reward for all our efforts over the past few trips. The passage continued from where we left it, consistently about 3 metres high and a couple wide. Down a small climb (which on the way back required some combined tactics and a self-destructing escape cairn to climb up) we came to a pitch.

The passage intersected a large chamber. We dropped the 5 metres to the floor. Ignoring an obvious hole in the floor (still a lead!) we walked into the chamber and followed the passage on the other side. An alcove of stunning mud formations presented itself a we walked and we eventually came to a junction. The obvious continuation of the passage veered off to the right but a pleasant looking crawl headed straight on, due South. I was more interested in the crawl. South means blank mountain. South means the lower entrance (eventually).

We popped up into the crawl. We encountered a vertical junction. Below, a lovely little canal which we elected not to explore and above a sandy squeeze. I do like a good squeeze and this was a stunning one. Smooth rock, sandy floor, just bigger than my Ecrin Rock on its side. Diss was leading up until that point but kindly let me go through first (seems to be a pattern). On the other side we found the other end of the canal (I think) and a small chamber, 1 metre high and 4 metres in diameter. Ahead the passage continued at stooping height, stunningly white and sandy, a series of stepped ledges leading off into the distance.

We turned back here. It was my last pushing trip of the expedition. One more team has been back (see Tanguy?s report above).

I don?t understand this lead at all. So many times it could have died but there was always a way through! Following an immature stream that disappeared into a crack we find a small window in a pitch. Here the obvious way on dies at a sump but a crawl has a tiny window into another pitch. The bottom of this pitch is sumped but there is just barely a passable level in a rift on the other side of the shaft. Beyond, its just possible to traverse into a passage that inexplicably becomes a muddy phreatic, which happens to join an active streamway! The streamway of course dies, but there happened to be a higher level! And straight into blank mountain!

This lead will certainly haunt my thoughts (and talk at the pub) until next year. Only 300 or so days to go.