D-Day in the Perdreau

I would be lying if I said I wasn't just a bit nervous or under pressure the night before this dive.

Our last attempt was thwarted by my failed attempt to pass the almost vertical rift in zero vizibility, which we now realised was due to a very loose, sloppy polyprop line. We had made attempts to fix it, but ultimately, it needs to come out and a heavy line put in.

We had a quick breakfast and drove over to the parking spot to meet the French from the CLPA, who were keen as ever to help us.

Beautiful hills are the backdrop to our expedition

After a lot of banter and greetings, Jean, Etienne and three others offering surface support, set off to the cave entrance and shifted the gear through the small boulder choke. this consisted of a pair of 12s, a pair of 15s, two deco bottles of oxygen, and 4 7litre bottles for Jarvist and Tim. plus all sundry bits and bobs you need for diving, like masks, fins and regs etc.

We embarked on a mammoth lowering session which involved pulley cars and 'staged' people but it worked fantastically and all the gear was at the bottom of the pitch in not much more than an hour from leaving the surface.

Rich and I dived to the airbell and Jarvist and Tim did an excellent job of helping us unkit and carefully pulling our big bottles up the slope, to get them ready for re-kitting in sump 2.

I got into the water first and with a little help, managed to kit back up again in the narrow rift and float around a bit, trying to keep warm whilst Rich went through the same process. We were handed our deco bottles and had agreed to get them to the other side of the 'annoying flop'. Sump 2 is a very short dive to another airbell which is passable by belly flopping over a narrow rock bridge which gets in the way. We passed our deco bottles over this and I found a good place at 6m to drop them, quite close to airspace.

We set off with the intention of picking up my line reel from where Oz and Joe had left it last year. The cave appeared to be going deeper, but on recent inspection, it may stay at -30m for a while at least.

Sump 1 in perdreau-Fourmi

We set off along the rift and the viz had cleared from our last dive a little, but it was not perfect despite being given 2 days to settle.

We continued for a while and were both very surprised to meet an upwards line into airspace. Somehow we had overshot the junction which takes us to the 'new' line. Confused, we went back on ourselves and realised that, in our efforts to avoid the appalling floating polyprop line which had taken off into the roof of the rift, we had swum past the clothes pegs and other general tatt. Even more surprising was that the floating line had hidden itself so far up into the roof, it was quite an effort to pull it down and put it back into the downwards rift which was looking empty.

Jean Tarrit - my hero!

We made several attempts to fix it but ultimately, polyprop sucks and it will be coming out next time.

We continued on the correct path, having wasted a few minutes.

Original survey which we extended quite a lot

Geologists! Apparently it would be good if we were to head south west and not north if at all possible!!

We very soon came across the 'new junction' and set off along Oz and Joe's line. I surveyed the last leg whilst Rich untied the line reel that had sat quiet for a year and once I had underlined the numbers in my wetnotes, Rich turned to me, reel at the ready and smiled an 'Ok?' I nodded and we set off along beautiful rift passage, horizontal and about 30m depth, dipping to 34m temporarily. The rock was sharp, pale, sculptured and pretty. the passage was 10m high and 2m wide at the widest part.

Rich made a lovely, tight line with good tie offs and I bimbled along behind, counting knots, recording the depth and the compass bearing. It was heading north and all I could think of was that poor geologist who was desperate for the cave to go in the opposite direction!

The thing is, it might yet as it has already done one weird corkscrew and we emptied the reel as the rift started to close down - a sign maybe that we should be looking elsewhere now for the continuation.

The Coudouliére is known to connect from dye tracing and that cave corkscrews considerably before settling on a path - and it goes deep. It currently lies at 1650m long and 100m depth.

We looked at the floor nervously waiting for it to engulf us into the depths - but it never did. It just started to pinch up and Rich was getting itchy feet in large 12 and 15 litre bottles. The reel emptied at just the right time.

Surfacing from sump 1

We dived back in appalling vizibility which was very patchy and were relieved to get back to our deco bottles at 6m with no deco incurred. We had spent 36 minutes in the sump with an average depth of about 20m.

We returned to expectant sherpas and delivered the empty reel and Rich was pre-occupied with the fact that he found his long lost halcyon knife!! We were helped out of the water and out of our cylinders by Jarv and Tim.

I was absolutely freezing - I had somehow managed to be the first in the sump and the last out - so I got an extra 10 minutes of coldness either end! We climbed out and I was generously given something sugary by the resident diabetic. He'll live! (probably).

We had a shivery dive out. I went ahead and Rich followed, exiting the sump at a rate of knots even I found alarming! Clearly he wanted out! We changed into warm fleecy caving undersuits - the posh element changed into fourth element underclothes!

We started packing up and getting gear ready for hauling and we were out of the cave, with our gear back at the car, by 6pm!! Unbelievable! Many thanks to the gang for their help - Elaine, Duncan and Gerick turned up later in the evening to help on the surface as well.

We retired to the campsite to shower and get tarted up for an evening meal in St Jean de Buéges - a timely place - but devoid of champagne :-(

The chic St Jean de Bueges

Disappointment and spiders

Nathan couldn’t be around today, but Elaine and Duncan kindly agreed to come and help us shift gear into the Perdreau and their help was very much appreciated. Within a couple of hours, all of our gear was assembled at the sump base and Oz and Joe were getting ready to dive.

Osama prepares to dive in the Perdreau-Fourmi

The existing survey of the Perdreau (Siphon Nord – North Sump) gets a bit flaky at sump 2. It is merely reported to be 100m long with a maximum depth of -18m. Oz and Joe were to go in and survey the sump properly with station depth, direction and distance and to survey as much of the new line as they could.

They dived a pair of 7l ‘safety’ bottles through sump 1 to allow divers to start sump 2 on fresh cylinders and also to add a bit of safety for the return journey back through sump 1 incase a diver had a problem or a cylinder go down which was unfixable.

The water is cold and we were in wetsuits, so hanging about in the cold water because of a problem wasn’t really an option here.

Joe adjusts to CDG style diving!

Joe and Oz came back with survey data confirming what we had hoped for. The length of sump 2 was indeed 100m and the new line was in addition to that. They managed to survey the first 10m of their new line before gas and cold turned them back.

Meanwhile, Rich and I sat huddled up at sump base, kitted up in wetsuits and wrapped up in suit bags and oversuits to keep warm while we waited over an hour for them to return.

After a moment of worry and ‘what happens next’ planning, Rich and I were about to leave the dive base to go and get warm on the surface and hatch an action plan when their lights could be seen returning back to dive base.

They were so cold they could barely speak – but they had done an awesome job of painstakingly surveying the sump until the new line and a third of that too.

Joe writes:

“We dived through Sump 1 with the aim of re-surveying the existing line in order to provide data on the position of the start of the new line laid in the previous dive. Although the existing line was tagged, this was very loose in places and so each section between belays was measured with a measuring stick along with depth and azimuth information.

The full data will be added to the survey held by Nathan Boinet, however the junction with the new line was measured at 83m from the start of Sump 2 putting the total distance (including the new line) at around 121m. Gas reserves prevented the full survey of all of the new line, however its overall length (from knots and tags) as well as trending direction was noted from the previous dive.

A possible further new passage was briefly investigated on the return through Sump 2 which, from the general direction and type of passage (matching the one in which the divers had laid new line) was thought might bypass the rift to connect with the new passage.”

Then it was mine and Rich’s turn to dive and hopefully extend the line in the new passage. We both had a whiff of trimix in slightly bigger cylinders to aid with the depth and clear thinking in cold water.

We warmed up and kitted up, before setting off through sump 1 without issues. We climbed out of the water and got fairly quickly into sump 2. As we set off, it was obvious that the visibility hadn't settled since our last dives here and Oz and Joe surveying had inadvertently stirred it some more.

The rift half way through the sump is narrow and it's impossible to dive through it, never mind survey it, without touching the walls which expel a powder-like dust which hangs in the water and doesn't move on as there is no flow here.

I dived through what I thought was the rift and met the junction with the airbell. I turned downslope and was now in completely zero visibility. I felt uncomfortable as the line was very, very loose in my hand and there seemed to be miles of it and no belays.

Entrance to the Perdreau-Fourmi - always smaller than we remembered!

I'm used to diving in zero visibility and it never worries me - unless the line is so poor that following it blind becomes dangerous.

At that moment, my hand followed the line into a pile of boulders and seemed to be snaking in amongst them. I couldn't feel any space around me or ahead of me and I knew the line had gone into a line trap, pinched between boulders, possibly metres from the actual way through.

I'm not playing this game! I've been here before, upside down in a boulder choke in zero viz, following slack line, with the clock ticking, only that time I was in Wookey 25 and I was trying to get home....

Not today.

I figured if I couldn't find my way into the cave, there was even less chance of finding my way out. I couldn't see what the line had done to even attempt fixing it. I backed upslope and tried to turn around. I could hear Rich bearing down on me and I felt around for his thumb and pulled it. He got hold of my thumb and pulled it back, indicating that he understood my signal to go home.

We learned a lot from this dive. With little or no flow, the cave does not clear while divers are in there so our only hope from now on is to fix that line and make it followable in the worst visibility, which is the first job for our next attempt at the project in 2012.

Disappointed, but certain that I had made the right decision, we left the cave and just managed to get all the gear out before dusk.

But not without drama!

Oz got half way through the boulder choke and I was close behind when I heard the most blood-curdling scream! Oz was wailing like a girl and I thought he'd either been squashed by a rock or had met a 'vipére' or something.

No, there was a "f***ing tarrantula" in the boulder choke and Oz was face to face with it!

I tried to belittle it with sentiments of "It's only a cave spider" and "It can't be that big"...

Anyway, I got into the choke myself and OMG!!! It was not only huge, but extremely ugly. It's eyes were shining and everything!

We scared it away - which took some doing - this thing wasn't scared of anybody…It didn't scurry or scuttle like normal spiders..this thing crawled. It was disgusting!!

We managed to get back for tea and medals and Rich and I declared that we wanted another day off tomorrow to sit on the beach, swim and sunbathe and do the square root of bugger all!

The church bar

January 2019

Cave & Wreck Night, Netherlands

We always love heading to the Netherlands for Cave & Wreck night.

This event has been running for many years and the venue has grown to now be hosted in a huge church, which is the only venue big enough to take the 400 divers who attend.

What's even more impressive is that behind the altar is a bar!

They don't muck about in the Netherlands!

I’ve spoken here several times and this time Rich Walker and I were a double act, giving a catch up on exploration in Izvor Licanke, Croatia.

Rich has always tried to get up in the pulpit to give his talks but always worried about going up in flames!

It is becoming a tradition to be fed some serious gourmet, multi course meal at JP Bresser’s boathouse and he always raises the bar to show off his culinary skills. Accompanied of course by some serious wine from the caving regions of France.

It’s great to catch up with the GUE gang who come here from all over Europe and listen to inspiring talks about diving projects all over the globe.

View from JP and Anne-Marie Bresser’s boathouse in Netherlands

From cave diving discoveries to wreck documentation, the evening is packed with updates on what the GUE community has achieved in the last 12 months.

The following day, slightly hungover, we were treated to a thai kick boxing session at JP’s local gym, Gym Suppan. I can honestly say it is the most fun I’ve had in ages!

February

The next month I went to give a talk on caving to Bradford on Avon scouts and was treated to a busy church hall full of enthusiastic children asking intelligent questions.

I love inspiring youth to give caving a go and hopefully they’ll be the next generation of cave explorers.

Bradford on Avon Scouts

In March I headed out to a small platform called the Saltire. I was covering their regular medic who had to go home, so bizarrely I was the only person on the helicopter! Apart from the pilot of course – and she was female too!

I’m not sure if women have ever outnumbered men on a North Sea helicopter but it was nice to think it could have been the first time or at least one of very few.

There was only 14 of us on board, basically keeping the place ticking over until the decommissioning process.

International Women’s Day was happening and I was asked by Women Fitness magazine to write an article. I was excited at the opportunity to write for a non-diving, non-caving audience and slightly embarrassed that I was not the typical skinny or athletic type that adorned the glossy pages.

Even as a jump jockey I was always strong and solid and never waif thin enough to maintain a career on the flat.

What the hell, I thought – and I got writing.

Women Fitness - Christine Grosart

Recce Day

Tuesday and D-Day!

It was time to see what Oz and Joe had done with my line reel in the passage Rich and I found last year, and on Oz's advice, to check it really was still going before we threw a big team and trimix at it.

We were very lucky to have Jean Tarrit and Claudine from the CLPA come along to help us underground and they did a great job of getting everything down to the sump's edge in under an hour.

Jean and Claudie

Jarvist and Tim set off into the sump wearing equipment I am too young to have ever seen before....but it seemed to work as they crossed the sump, tidied the line so that it was tight and immaculate and they preserved the visibility well.

Rich and I were to follow about 30 minutes later to give them a chance to rig a ladder to make climbing out of sump 1 much easier and to place a few bolts for ropes and general helpful tatt.

They did a great job and Rich and I kitted up whilst Jean and Claudine went up the ropes to get warm and get lunch.

We crossed the sump easily and had the luxury of walking straight up the ladder fully kitted without breaking sweat and straight down into sump 2.

Chris on the exit of sump 1

We dived to the end of the line, surveying last years new passage again as we went and hit 30m depth and my line reel.

The line had been beautifully laid by Oz and Joe and the reel was well tied off at the end.

I shone my cave hunting torch down the ongoing passage and could see large cave ongoing for at least 20m. Satisfied, we cleaned up and left, very much looking forward to the return trip on Friday, to allow the viz to settle after a couple of days. 

Caverns Measureless

A good day out…

We met up with Nathan as planned at 10am in the car park closest to the cave. He had brought a friend along to come and help, called Mario. Mario is 25, a new member of the CLPA and was clearly being given some sort of induction involving carrying diving gear half a kilometre in the heat – none of which was his!

Nathan explained that he was the first person to dive the first sump in this cave 15 years ago!

Passing dive grear through the entrance boulder choke - which is full of spiders…

We made it to the entrance with a bit of prickly bush bashing and a shin-bashing dry riverbed. Here, we gathered kit by the entrance and sent Nathan ahead to check that the boulder choke was safe (he was concerned that the winter floods might have caused it to move and become unstable). He called up that it was and we followed, ferrying ten 7 litre cylinders, 5 divers wetsuits, equipment and lead (top tip – unless you are all diving at once, share lead!!!!) fins etc and a bolting kit and rope, in case it was needed for the climb out of the water at the end of sump 1.

Rich and I were to dive first and see how far we could get. It is reported that the winter floods rip the line out of these sumps, so we had plenty of line ready to go in and loads of snoopy loops for belays, if required.

Underwater sump 2 in Perdreau-Fourmi. Image: Christine Grosart

A line was tied off at dive base and water levels were extremely low. We passed all the equipment down the ropes and Rich and I kitted up in 7mm wetsuits and sidemount gear with a little buoyancy and set off into sump 1. This is 70 metres long and has a maximum depth of 21 metres. The sump was crystal clear with a blue tint as many of these Herault sumps have. Nathan followed five minutes behind with the bolting kit and rope.

The line was there…..but very slack and we took in metres and metres of loose line. It had been laid in zig zags across the passage and every belay except one had come free. We tied up the loose stuff as best we could and surfaced in a large air chamber with the reported climb in front of us. A thick rope was already in place, to our relief and we climbed up the rock face to land on a ledge above. We started down the jagged rock through some holes which led to the start of sump 2. Again the line was in place, but this time was much slacker and was combined with old, French washing line. I tried to tie some of it together in case the visibility was decreased on the way home

We flopped into sump 2 and very soon surfaced in a bit of an airbell with the continuation ahead. Annoyingly, this meant a brief excursion above water, crawling on hands and knees and falling face first into the water on the other side of a rock barrier. Rich dived in front and I couldn’t help but giggle through my regulator as I watched this GUE technical instructor, our lord and master, crawling on his hands and knees then wallowing unceremoniously, helmet and all into the water face first, fins waggling in the air. You had to be there……

Rich dived ahead with the line reel and, after a narrow rift, soon came across the end of the white French dive line. It was tied off to a rock spike pinnacle and the line was wrapped around it several times, almost in a statement. Here we go……

Rich tied my line reel into to line and began to pay out line into the rift ahead. It was a narrow, inclined 45 degree rift and I deployed my extreme-tek backup torch to spot the way on. This long, narrow beam hunted out a widening in the passage lower down whilst Rich searched for tie-offs as he went higher. He indicated to me to tie the line off as he went and two belays later, the viz started to go. Ten metres of progression and I could hear, but not see, Rich scrabbling and scraping ahead and not finding anything to tie the line to, he wriggled back towards me. I fended off waggling fins and coiled up loose line, whilst Rich began to reel back in towards me and gave me a thumbs up and ‘turn around’ signal. I pulled a snoopy off a rock and the rock simply broke in two and fell off the wall. The whole cave is made up of porous, fragile and friable rock which simply won’t tolerate interference.

We dived back on thirds and I kicked on ahead looking for a better way on as I simply didn’t believe that this nasty rift could be it. I got ahead of Rich and deployed my extreme-tek cave spotting torch and carefully examined the wall to my right. I noticed a pile of boulders a bit above me and, using Rich on the line as a lighthouse, swam up and over to have a look. I shone my torch down a large, ongoing railway tunnel of a passage which was ongoing as far as my torch could penetrate – at least 20 metres. There it was. The lost way on was stretching out in front of us. I signalled to Rich and he came over to have a look and we stared at each other in amazement.

Then, Rich tapped his watch and I tied two snoopy loops onto the line and built a rock cairn to signal to Joe and Oz where to tie their line off and we set off home.

We surfaced between sumps 1 & 2 to explain to Nathan what we had found. I stumbled over my French in excitement but he got the idea! Nathan had surfaced in the airbell found by the British team 3 years ago and confirmed it as a ‘cloche’ – closed off airbell.

We all dived back to base and Oz and Joe kitted up. I gave them very clear instructions and directions about what we had found and what to look for. We left the line reel for them in between sumps 1 & 2.

Meanwhile, Rich and I got changed into something more comfortable and began hauling gear with the help of Nathan, back up the pitches. We got everything except Oz and Joe’s kit out of the cave by the time they returned.

They had tied into the line at the cairn and set off down the railway tunnel – which Joe declared was far bigger than any railway tunnel he had seen – and laid 36 metres of new line to a depth of 30m where gas reserves turned them around.

Osama and Joe kit up in sump 1

We hauled their gear out and began the soul destroying task of getting kit back to the cars which ended in doing so by torchlight as the moon rose steadily.

The day by far exceeded our expectations and a return trip this week is planned to resurvey sump 2 from scratch, as Nathan does not have proper data - and survey the new line and add some more, having decanted as much trimix into exploration bottles we can, in case it goes deeper.

Nobody wants to do deco in this cave in wetsuits.

Push [Poŏ SH] - by Rich Walker

It sounds a bit silly really. To push a cave. A cave is an empty void, and difficult to push in the conventional sense like you would push a car that won’t start. Pushing a cave means, to the cool kids, to extend the limit of exploration. To go further in that cave than anyone has been before. You have to be careful here as it is very easy to sound like you are lost up your own arse. I suppose that would need some sort of pushing to rectify as well.

Kit stash at the bottom of the pitch in Perdreau-Fourmi

The Perdreau Formi is a bit of everything in a cave sense. It starts with an awkward boulder choke at the entrance. For the uninitiated, a boulder choke is a pile of rocks, stuck and hopefully wedged in the passage of a cave. We are fortunate that this choke is normally dry, so we can get through it without dive gear. This often involves some pushing as well, but more like what you would do with a car. Or a turd.

Once you have got past the choke, you arrive in a large chamber at the top of a 45degree slope. The slope is slippery, but manageable. We put a rope on it though and descend down the slope well protected as at the end of the slope is a vertical drop, 20m high. If you were to loose your footing on the slope and fall off, you might be lucky to land in the sump with a splash, but you would probably bang on a few rocks on the way down, and more likely splatter somewhere in the boulder strewn area at the bottom. You might survive, but then you’d be faced with being pulled up the 20m pitch, up the slope and pushed (there’s that word again) through the boulder choke again.

Tim Webber and Jarvist Frost had done a fantastic job sorting out the vertical section of this cave. They had built a system of tensioned lines, pulleys, hauling lines and brakes that would have looked good on a Spanish galleon. Moving the equipment up and down the pitch was considerably easier than the brute force methods we’d employed last year, and made the trip run significantly faster.

Christine kits up in sump 2

The sump at the bottom of the pitch is well lined, and normally clear. We dived it last year and it was a short, but very pretty trip. The walls are white and the water has a blue tinge to it. The passage twists around, through an easy restriction to a maximum depth of 19m, where it comes up steeply into a large airbell.

It takes about 5 minutes to cross this sump, whereby you are faced with a steep wall 3m tall, at about a 70degree incline. The way on is this way. Climbing the wall is precarious, but manageable with small cylinders. The second sump is found on the other side of this wall at the bottom of a couple of round pots.

Tim and Jarvist had been hard at work in the airbell too. They had installed for us a wire ladder to climb the wall, a gear line to clip off bigger cylinders and similar assistance on the descent into sump 2. This was to be critical when we returned later in the week.

Junction formed by Christine in 2011 when she discovered the way on in the Perdreau-Fourmi sump 2

Diving in the second sump, the line is not so good. It is often loose, and many belays have come free, so the first dive this year was to check the state of this line, effect some repairs and to have a quick look to the end of the line laid by Joe Hesketh and Osama Gobara on last years project. Their line was excellent and the reel was there waiting for our return. The line ended at a depth of 29m.

The passage had dropped down 20m from the tie-in on the main line and we had been concerned about the cave heading into deep water. Spending a few minutes looking at the way on was time well spent, as it seemed that the passage levelled off, at least for as far as we could see. This was good news to us - shallow means more time exploring and less decompression.

Christine and I had a chat back at the surface about our decompression strategy. We had expected the cave to head deeper much more quickly than would now appear, which would require a more significant decompression strategy - this in simple terms meant a lot of decompression gas was needed.

Given our look at the end of the line, we decided not to pull in the big decompression cylinders, and stick with a smaller volume of oxygen, for use at 6m, rather than the big cylinder of 50% nitrox for 21m decompression. This was a gamble, but would make the logistics significantly easier. For our return dive to “push” the cave, we had mixed gas for a maximum of 60m in two large 15 & 12L cylinders each, and a small 5L cylinder filled with oxygen for decompression. We were diving in wetsuits, which in 11C water would be a push on a longer dive, but as long as we limited the dive time to an hour, we figured we’d be OK.

New passage from 2011 explorations

On the day of the dive, the gear went in very smoothly with assistance from Jean Tarrit and friends from the CLPA. These people have been so good to us in our efforts here, and never fail to turn up to help out. It’s not always the same people though, so maybe word is getting out ;-) All we needed to haul in was the cylinders, the deco gas and the wetsuits, as we’d left all of the other gear in after the first dive.

Chris and I dived through sump 1 and were ably assisted by Tim and Jarvist, and we pushed and they pulled our heavy cylinders up the rope to the start of sump 2. Kitting up in sump 2 was a bit more awkward, but again our helpers did a sterling job of pushing us into the water ready to dive. The oxygen was handed down, and we set off.

After depositing the oxygen at a suitable place to do the deco, we headed off down the line. This had come loose again and floated into the ceiling (I hate blue polyprop). We missed the junction as it had itself floated into and behind a crack in the ceiling, and we arrived at the old end of the line. Very puzzled, we backtracked, and this time spotted the junction, more visible from the other angle. We still weren’t pushed for time, so we headed off to the end of the line. Pushing on through a patch of low visibility left from our dive 3 days previously, we soon came across the start of Joe and Osama’s line. Junction marked, and away we went, soon reaching the reel that had been waiting a year for our return.

I picked it up, and looked at Chris. She had her survey gear out, and we exchanged an OK and we started to swim. I like to keep the number of tie offs to a minimum, and if possible to have spotted the next one before I leave the current one. This makes the surveyors job much easier, as the line doesn’t wave around, and tying off takes time, slowing down the act of pushing. The cave made this pretty easy, as it soon turned from large open passage into a narrow rift, 2m across at an angle of about 45degrees.

It was probably 20m high in places, pale walls with delicate mineral veins extending from the rock. It was pretty silty, and as usual in places less well travelled, percolation from your bubbles traveling up the walls quickly reduced the visibility, meaning that constant motion is preferable. I put in 6 tie-offs before the reel was empty, a total distance of around 50m. Looking ahead, the rift appeared to get narrower, although probably passable. My gut tells me that there is something else though. Maybe it surfaces at the top of the rift, or perhaps there is another connection we have missed along the new line.

I glance at Christine thimb the dive. She returns the compliment and we head for home, 25 minutes after leaving the airbell. Now it was time to see how well my line was laid and whether it was easy to follow in low visibility. My ability to write the blog says that it was good enough, I suppose.

We got back to the oxygen and given that the dive had not gone anywhere near as deep as expected, decided to not bother with any decompression and get back to the warm. We surfaced at around 40 minutes, with an empty line reel, my knife that I had found after loosing it on the first dive and a full survey of the line we’d just laid. A proper good day out!

Chris holds up the empty line reel.

Birmingham to Kendal

Christine on main stage at Diver show, Birmingham.

Following our trip in Croatia discovering yet more cave in Izvor Licanke, I was chuffed to have an article about it published in ‘Diver’ magazine and even more pleased to be asked to talk on the expedition on the Diver stage at the Birmingham Dive Show at the NEC.

The stage had hosted several of the diving world’s glitterati and it felt odd to be among them.

Signing autographs at the Birmingham Dive show

It wasn’t long before another incredible event cropped up and I was asked by Steph Dwyer to speak at the cavers session at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival.

In my lifetime I’ve dabbled in rock climbing and ventured up a few small mountains but never really progressed beyond that as caving and diving took over my life. I’m far more likely to be found crawling into a mountain than climbing up it.

I felt a little out of place at such a prestigious event. I took my copy of Sir Chris Bonington’s autobiography with me in the hope I’d get to meet him and ask him to sign it.

There we were, sitting in the VIP room and Sir Bonington and his wife were right there. Overcome by shyness (me, really?) I couldn’t bring myself to introduce myself nor ask him and I just sat there instead, head down and feeling very un-brave.

I don’t often get overcome by nerves and usually harness them to perform my best. The size of the audience really shouldn’t make a difference and I’m very much a believer that you should always put in 110% into your talk delivery whether you are talking to 4 people or 400.

The auditorium was packed and fully subscribed. There was a buzz in the air. Jason Mallinson was also talking about Thailand and as he was on later, I joked that Imogen and I were his warm up acts!

Christine, Jason, Imogen.

Imogen Furlong, whom I’d never met before was a lovely lady and excellent caver and delivered a great talk, which cannot have failed to motivate anyone to get underground.

I had the easy slot as I was showing my film premiere of ‘The Master Cave’, shot during real cave diving exploration and featuring never before seen parts of the cave thanks to the incredible Paralenz Dive Camera.

It is hard enough exploring virgin cave, never mind underwater with rebreathers, all of the team needing to dive and in 7 degrees of water. Filming exploration in action is not something that is done very often.

The evening was electric and I was proud to show the film that had been two years in the making and grateful to the whole Licanke team for helping me make it.

To be a Fellow

"Dear Miss Grosart,

I am writing to confirm your successful application for Fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)."

Well.

That's not something I ever expected!

Someone at work asked me why I explored caves. What did I get out of it?

They didn't see the attraction.

There's no money in it. In fact, it drains your own personal finances. No prestige.

No job prospects. No gold medal. Rarely any recognition other than the occasional nod of approval from your mates in the pub that night.

You get to call a piece of this planet your own for an unknown period of time - until that is, another human goes there after you. Until then, it's yours.

But honestly? Nobody really cares.

The Royal Geographical Society (RGS) is the United Kingdom's learned society and professional body for geography, founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical sciences.

Today, it is the leading centre for geographers and geographical learning.

The Society has over 16,500 members, with its work reaching the public through publications, research groups and lectures.

Through my work with Ghost Fishing UK, I had come to the attention of Paul Rose, the popular explorer, former vice president of the RGS and tv presenter.

My CV, which was rather rather unsung, showed many years of cave diving exploration in France and Croatia.

Chris preparing to push the sump at the end of the Garrel

I was mapping new, uncharted territory in stunning underwater caves across Europe but very few people knew of it and even less cared.

One of my favourite pastimes is making films about exploration. I want to share our discoveries and show the diving world what goes into virgin exploration, going literally where no other human has ever been.

I never take myself too seriously though - it is meant to be fun after all! There is usually a healthy selection of outtakes to bring me back down to earth.

It meant the world to me and that's why I do it.

The primary reason for Paul's interest was the charity Ghost Fishing UK which was ground breaking, with the largest single collective of divers in the world, the first training course in the recovery of ghost gear and a powerful database of locations, types and impact of ghost gear in British waters.

Run entirely by volunteers, it had changed the lives of over 70 divers and was starting to make a real impact on the perceptions of the marine environment and the damage ghost gear can do, to not only the diving world but the general public.

A long standing, massive issue that was largely taboo and very much hushed up and overlooked, was now being exposed.

An estimated 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear is lost into our oceans on a global scale each year. Whilst great strides and efforts had been made to manage fish stocks and sustainability, huge fuss being made about super trawlers and fighting over fishing grounds...the fact that every commercial fishing vessel has at some point lost or abandoned fishing gear to the ocean to continue ghost fishing, had not even been considered.

My role in the charity covers lots of areas. I set out as a trustee and secretary, while my underwater role tends to always be videography and photography. An image speaks a thousand words, especially to the non diving public, so this is an area I am quite devoted to. I also make films, short AVs and documentaries about Ghost Fishing. I do all the press releases and connect with the fishing communities and make hard won friends and connections who are nervous of our intentions. I call myself the charity ‘dogsbody’.

Ghost Fishing diver. Image: Christine Grosart

I've taught myself all about sound recording, underwater videography, lighting and getting the most out of Adobe Premiere Pro.

I hate not being able to do something - if I can't do it, I have to go and learn how!

It took months and months of work to build, write and test the Ghost Fishing UK training course.

Run over 3 days it is designed to turn carefully selected divers into Ghost Fishing divers, who can work safely as a tight team, in close proximity to ghost nets.

It is immensely satisfying work but very, very time consuming and I admit to struggling to combine both cave exploration with running a charity full time and holding down a high profile job for a significant company offshore.

But hey, you're only on this planet once, I believe, so it is my mission to make the most of it and record as much as I can for posterity, inspiration and creating fond memories to look back on.

Perdreau set-up day

I decided that embarking on Garrel today would be a silly move. Still with remains of a chest infection, the caving trip, though moderate, is quite long and I am still quite weak, so we decided that the Perdreau-Fourmi was a more pleasant option.

True to form, Jean Tarrit rallied a few friends from his club and they arrived to help us carry our gear in two journeys up the riverbed.

I headed through the entrance squeeze and into the cave to start rigging the 45 degree slope and 15m pitch to the sump pool.

I decided to bring walkie talkies this time and was quite surprised that I was able to communicate from the sump pool to the surface!

Job done in a few hours, I headed over to the Source de Bueges, which sadly cannot be dived. Some pretty dragon flies were in residence.

We had some nice cold pressions at the local watering hole in St Jean-de-Bueges and headed back to the campsite to sort out cameras and have dinner.

Gear stash at the bottom of the pitch in Perdreau Fourmi.

Into the Blue

New cave passage in the Event de Perdreau Fourmi, discovered 2012, Screen grab: Christine grosart

Today was an excellent day - but not without a few teething troubles to get around first.

I picked up a missed call from one of my work colleagues, who was asking where I was. France, was the reply. It seems the great shift screw up had raised its ugly head again, but I doubt I have much to worry about as I am certain I booked this leave. In fact, I booked it in January. So, I tried to forget about it and concentrate on the cave diving.

We headed up to the cave and Jean had brought more friends along to help us. They were practising their SRT in the cave which seemed as good a reason as any to come along.

Jean and Claudie helping in the dry cave

Rich and I dropped the pitch and started to get our gear together. Next problem, Rich finds the team spare mask has shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces. It had been in a pocket on one of the harnesses and not protected by a French Pot and had somehow got broken. Never mind. We can live without it and we have another anyway.

The sump is blue and inviting. I get the camera ready and Jean and friends watch us set off into sump 1, before heading out to the sunshine to await our arrival. We tell them we will be 2 hours at most.

Surfacing in the airbell shortly after passing sump 1, Rich and I can't really get our act together and we soon notice a little panting going on. Carbon dioxide. Great.

Chris at the top of the ladder beyond sump 1

We take things slowly and rig the ladder, before hauling the 12 litre bottles up and getting everything into sump 2.

Kitting up in sump 2 was fairly easy this time around and I get ready with the camera. We have a plan to shoot some video of the sump, especially our discoveries from 2011 and 2012. We don't hope for much as it is a small, fiddly sump covered in powder-like silt. But we gave it a go.

We get shooting and with plenty of time and gas, get to photograph and film everything we want to.

Kitting up in sump 2

Then, we had one last job to do.

There was one bit of a chamber left to explore. I had always had a feeling there was more to it than just a boulder pile. So, I dispatch Rich off to take a quick look and a minute later he returned to say it was "Going".

Woo hoo!

Line reel tied in and I sieze the (rare!) opportunity to film exploration in progress.

Rich swam along with his reel and made some nice tie offs and the cave started to head downslope in a fractured, friable passage. It was sculptured and pretty and the water ahead was azure blue.

Chris climbing out of sump 1

Behind Rich it was patchy, rust red and bits and pieces rained down from the roof as the first bubbles ever disturbed the rock.

As the visibility went to zero, I paused at 24m and heard Rich scratching around. I figured he wouldn't be long and steadily, hand over hand on the line, fumbled my way back to the tie off with Rich just behind me.

Happy, we thumbed the dive and had a pleasant swim home in patchy visibility. I stopped to photograph a worm, the type I had not seen before in a sump.

Surfacing back at the airbell, we de-kitted, pleased with the days work.

Not surprisingly, after a recent chest infection and a cold, I had some trouble descending back into sump 2 to get home. Fortunately my bottle of trusty Otravine got me to depth but wasn't keen on getting my sinuses back up again.

Sump 1

It's a divers worst nightmare (well, one of them anyway) and despite hanging around on the way up trying to get my sinuses to let go, it was obvious I was going to get a reverse block.

I did and it hurt a lot, making my eyes water and temporarily blind. Rich took my bottles off and I eventually heard the relieving squeak, followed by some blood and the pain subsided. Not pleasant.

Jean was at the top of the pitch waiting for us as we surfaced. He was worried as we were half an hour overdue. This was probably due to our taking our time in the CO2 ridden airbell. We apologised for worrying him but he didn't mind and we showed him our photos to cheer him up.

Chris holds the empty line reel in sump 2, Perdreau Fourmi

A gang of cavers had showed up to help carry all the gear back in one run, including a very small child who was lugging 2 tackle bags and going better up the hill than I was!

A cold beer in St Jean de Bueges followed by pizza in Laroque seemed a fitting end to a very pleasant day, all things considered. Finally things are going our way.

2011 discovery in sump 2

A Grand Day Out

It was not a pretty sight at 9am this morning!

Last year we were chased all over the French countryside by Jean Tarrit and his friend, Jean-Claude, who were desperate to find us and show us an exciting dive site in a cave called the Garrel.

Ongoing cave. We planned to dive the Siphone des Pas Perdus.

I had visited the Garrel in April 2003 and remember it as an easy, dry and pretty cave with no tackle required. I don’t recall there being a sump, but Nathan Boinet the local activist in these parts, had been dipping his toe in the sumps at the end of the system, some of which came to nothing early on and one which was looking to ‘go’ – but he was diving back mounted 7s and couldn’t fit through the etroiture (squeeze).

So, we were invited to take a look using our ‘techniques anglaise’ (sidemount) and were promised a large group of ‘slaves’ from the CLPA to carry all our equipment.

We were due to meet the French cavers at 9am near St Jean de Buéges but the troops were not to be rallied.

Tim Webber and Jarvist Frost arrived last night having made awesome time – but they were paying for it in exhaustion.

Duncan Smith and Elaine Hill also arrived yesterday – but Elaine was staying firmly between her tent and the toilet block, having eaten something dodgy.

Duncan was up and about, Rich was dragged out of his pit by me and there was no sign of life next door.

The plan was for Tim and I to take a look at this ‘squeeze’ and see if we could pass it. I would go first and sort the line and have a look, then, assuming I would be too fat to fit, as Nathan had insisted on a ‘thin diver’, I would hand over to skinny Tim to continue.

So, having had a minor epic trying to find bread for breakfast, we got on the road and Tim would show up later with Jarvist in tow.

The French team were at the side of the road, half kitted up and there was a buzz in the air. Lots of banter and greetings and introductions went around and after a degree of faff, we set off – minus SRT kits. This concerned us a little as the others all seemed to have them…….Nathan assured us that the climbing was easy and we weren’t to worry. So we didn’t.

Five minutes in to the entrance we were met with a 15m pitch!!

Never mind……The French guy ahead of me descended and Duncan behind me lent me his descender. I attached it to my belt, abseiled down the pitch and sent it back up the rope…..

Dry cave passage in Garrel on the way to the sump.

I could see this being quite a fun trip for those of us minus rope gear.! However, the French were obliging and over the course of several rope climbs and abseils, I employed just about every technique in the book – including those with red crosses through them! I used a stop, figure of 8, Italian hitch and krab, one or two jammers depending on what I could scrounge at the time, a full kit at one stage – loaned by Jean-Claude who can free climb just about anything – someone else’s cows-tail hauling me from above and quite a lot of brute force and ignorance!!

It was excellent fun and Jean was correct in his time estimation. It took 4 hours to get our teams and two sets of divers gear to the sump. There was climbing, crawling and boulder chokes by the bucket load and it was very, very hot and sweaty in there!

But the banter and morale kept everyone going with frequent breaks.

We arrived at the sump and it was large, blue and clear and very inviting. I was desperate to get in and cool down!!

Chris kits up in the sump pool

Everyone arrived on the boulder slope and began unpacking their lunch. It was a natural amphitheatre, with graded seats for the cavers to watch the divers kit up in comfort.

We treated ourselves to sausage roll, taboulé, bread and cheese. Nathan became insistent that it would be better for two people to dive together as the second diver would not get to see anything. I was unsure about this, but as he had dived it and we hadn’t, we went along with his suggestion and Tim and I kitted up together.

The line was broken at the very beginning, so we tied the reel off and set off down the sand slope in zero visibility. I went in front with the reel and we laid 20m of line until we found Nathan’s broken line in situ. We tied into it at a good belay and the water suddenly became crystal clear as we moved away from the sand slope and into a level passage with a boulder floor, about 3m high and 5m wide.

Tim Webber

We patched up the line in one place where it was needed and soon came to the end of Nathan’s line, marked with a 45m tag, just at the start of the squeeze.

I had a good look at it and it didn’t look too bad, so after a quick chat with Tim, I set off through the squeeze and passed it easily, stopping for a moment to make a good tie off at the end, before turning slightly rightwards into bigger passage.

Tim duly followed and continued tying the line off behind me. We moved forward until the passage seemed to come to a bit of a break down and spotted a higher passage so moved on up into that and went forward some more. We laid about 42m of new line altogether after the squeeze.

The biggest problem in this sump was the visibility. It is a static sump so there is no flow to help you. The silt seemed to rain down in clouds from the roof – probably because there had never been any air bubbles in there before to dislodge it.

Furthermore, the roof sloped upwards so bubbles were travelling up the roof ahead of us and raining silt clouds down like swirling mists of powder, right in front of our noses and interfering with our visibility.

This problem began to obstruct progress and I got to a bit of passage where the way on was less obvious and it looked to be breaking down. I stopped to have a good look and was engulfed in red swirling powder – so I thumbed the dive and tied the line off, cut the reel free and we set off back home in awful viz.

Following the thin line home was much easier than I anticipated and we soon arrived at the sand slope and looked up to see the dozen or so cavers lights glowing on the embankment in expectation, all staring at us through the ripples on the surface of the water.

I gave Nathan and the expectant audience a brief explanation of what we had found – in dubious French – and received a round of applause and what looked like an explosion of paparazzi!!

We cleared up, had some water and food and started the journey out en masse, which was not without amusement!

Still minus an SRT kit, I scrounged all sorts of items on the way home. The other brits were having similar epics and we ended up fighting over the sole karabiner for use with an Italian hitch!

The Garrel team 2012

The journey out was a little slicker and we stopped in the ‘Salle de dejeuné’ which Jean explained was the resting place for the original explorers.

We arrived at the last pitch and I was given an SRT kit from somebody and made my way up the pitch. Rich was also donated kit from somewhere but I have no idea how the others got out!

I arrived at the traverse line and was faced with a French caver, lying on his side looking like he wanted to die!

He said in English (cue French accent): “Christine, please can you 'elp me..? Can you take my equipment because I am very, very tired….”

I said “Of course!”

He went on to explain: “I cannot feel my arms or my legs any more!”

Poor guy!

He had left his jammer on the rope and couldn’t face the return journey of all of one metre to retrieve it!!

I offered to take his bag the last 15 metres of uphill crawling and he insisted we do it together!

We surfaced to the flashes of cameras and dusk was settling.

Garrel team 2012

A gang of us returned to the campsite for a great BBQ cooked by Rich and far too much wine!

A grand day out!

Success!

A huge thank you to the CLPA and friends for their support and images.

The Bloody French Cave

The CLPA had been keen for the last few years for us to go and visit the Event de Cambon.

Yes, that’s the entrance….

Frank Vasseur had dived the short, shallow sump about 20 years ago and to their knowledge, nobody had ever been back.

Now, even in his 20s Frank was no slouch. In fact, he was probably considerably fitter and harder than he is now.

I did make a feeble protest that I couldn’t see what we would achieve that Frank could not, but it was information that the cavers wanted rather than caverns measureless. They were intent on digging down from the top of the gorge and this cave was important to them to know if it connected or not.

We said we would take a look.

According to the description, Frank had surfaced and immediately encountered several climbs which got higher and higher. As he was alone, he made a retreat.

Nobody knows what happened after that and Frank could not remember much about the cave at all.

The CLPA wanted us to survey the sump, the dry passage beyond and get a compass direction.

How hard could it be?

So, we met up in St Maurice de Navacelles to have coffee with our sherpas – or ‘slaves’ as Jean prefers to call them and picked up a Disto-X for surveying beyond the sump.

In convoy, we set off down the twisty hairpin bends of the Cirque de Navacelles and parked up at river level by the Vis. The walk to the cave entrance was relatively flat but about 800m.

Christine kits up at the sump edge

Some enthusiastic deforestation then ensued as the French began clearing the snaggy branches and cleared away a grubby little cave entrance. It had filled with stones from the winter rains but by the time Rich and I had rigged our cylinders, the entrance was dug out again.

I went for a quick look inside.

Hmm. This was going to be a fun kitting up spot. Nowhere to stand up, nowhere really to sit. It was what we were used to in the UK but it was a long way to go to dive something like this in France. Oh well.

We passed the gear in to the cave and Rich went ahead and kitted up first. I remained just upslope of him, regularly kicking stones down at him while he thrashed about trying to get his fins on.

Frank’s old line was there but we needed to lay our own knotted line for surveying. The sump pool had gone to zero so surveying was looking less and less likely.

Chris about to dive

Once ready and crammed into the tiny muddy pool, we set off downslope through a squeeze with a rubble floor and sloping roof.

The sump was about 40m long as described and 7m deep. The water cleared after the squeeze and had better dimensions.

On surfacing, there was a near vertical rift – made of mud – and a ladder hanging down from above which was just out of reach and no means of getting to it. It looked as if Frank had dived the sump when water levels were somewhat higher.

Noses turned up, we returned to the start of the sump pool to report our findings. The viz had gone to zero and not good enough for a proper survey.

Then, as if our failure was not enough, then began the thunder. Torrential rain and thunder and lightening crashed all around us and the Cirque de Navacelles while we tried to pack our gear up.

Rich and I elected to walk back in our wetsuits as our clothes were sodden.

We got back to the van and took it in turns to get into the back and change. It was miserable and getting colder.

Jean invited everyone back to his house for a welcome cup of tea and to dry out a little. We made it up to ourselves by watching the video we shot of the new passage in the Perdreau.

Jean was in danger of having a power cut, so we headed back to our campsite to inspect the damage.

Water had infiltrated the front porch of the tent, which was not entirely unexpected and Rich had already moved electrical items to higher ground that morning.

Water had also infiltrated Rich’s Rude Nora caving torch battery which was now no longer working. Meh.

We decided to drown our sorrows in a local pizzeria – but each and every single restaurant in the region were closed. So, back to the campsite for a tin of sausage and beans and leffe beer. We’ve had better days, but that’s the nature of cave diving. It ain’t sun and stalictites all the time.

To the end of Garrel - by Rich Walker

The Garrel was first mentioned to us by Jean Tarrit back in 2011.

He told us of a sump that was at the end of a cave that the CLPA had been exploring for over 30 years. It’s a big, complex cave system and continues to lend new dry passageway even today.

However, what lay beyond the sump was a mystery to them, and could be the start of another significant area of the cave so he was keen for us to dive it. In 2012, Christine and Tim dived and laid 40m of line, finishing as the visibility was deteriorating. The sump had gone to a depth of 10m, and was heading up towards the surface at a depth of 4.5m at the end, so there was a good chance it would surface.

Garrel - team of 2012

We returned this year with thoughts of surfacing into new cave passageway, and were very excited to going back. It doesn’t seem too bad a dive, to be honest. 90m of distance, and 10m depth. How hard could it be?

Well, the cave diving is the easy bit. You see the sump is 6 hours caving from the entrance. It isn’t particularly difficult caving, lots of short vertical climbs and descents, and a particularly big and confusing boulder choke in the middle of the trip. All of this needs to be done of course with the diving gear.

Jean brings friends with him. They are never the same people, for some reason, so I can only assume he has a large pool of friends to draw from.

One of the climbs in Garrel. Best done with SRT gear!

We set off early that morning, and no less than 8 cavers showed up to help us. Jean was so excited, that he left all of his equipment at home and had to go back to get it. He caught us up a couple of hours into the trip. These helpers were young, fit and keen. At the start anyway!

I’ve been trying to find the report of the last trip here, but I can’t. I suspect that, in the way that you forget pain, the interwebs has decided that the report is too painful to be told. It just means I’ll have to recount the story here for you.

We climbed into the cave down a sloping, low bedding plane just steep enough for you to not have to work very hard. This is great on the way in, but I’m always mindful of how I might extract myself from such places. I slid down to the bottom, thinking about levitation techniques. From there on, it’s a mixture of short rope pitches. We used SRT equipment this time. In 2012 we neglected to bring any because it was a “short, easy trip”.

Christine in the Garrel, passing a squeeze apparently similar to the one she would encounter underwater.

After about an hour, or so, the large passageway stops at the base of a huge boulder choke. There are multiple ways into it. We’d become spread out over the cave due to the vertical pitches, and I found myself with a young french guy who spoke about as much English as I spoke French.

You can make what you will of that, but essentially, unless we wanted to ask each other our respective names for the next few hours, and discussing whether there is a monkey in the tree or not. Anyway, I digress.

My new friend decided that the way on was up and to the left. Well, it was his cave so I followed him.I climbed up a squeezey little hole, and then to a vertical rope pitch.

There was nobody there, and I figured that if this was the way on, then we would have caught up the other team at this point. I tried to explain that we needed to go back to the bottom of the boulders and wait. OK, he said. I went down, and he went up. Le singe est sur l’arbre.

I got found by another of the party and tried to explain. I think we made some progress, and we shouted at friend 1 to come back, which he duly did. This whole escapade took us a good 45 minutes, and we headed on through the boulder choke and caught up again.

More big rooms, vertical climbs and descents, a very precarious totter across a knife-edge of rock like something from Lord of the Rings, 6 hours and a spot of lunch later, we arrived at the sump.

Chris kits up at the sump

This was a beautiful sight. It had a gorgeous green hue to it, and we could see the line heading off into the depths. That was until I fell in kitting up. Brown soup from all of the fine silt was now covering the entrance. I just hoped it wouldn’t drift into the main cave. We were planning to survey this sump, so visibility was needed in order to do a decent job.

After some precarious balancing while gearing up, Christine and I set off into the sump. Chris went first, patching the line and looking around for the way on. I followed behind making the survey.

Pretty little cave, although I didn’t get to see too much of it, focussed as I was on my compass and wet-notes. The passage went roughly North West, and I surveyed the length of the line, and having a quick discussion with Chris at the end to the effect of “it’s all boulder choked from here on” and that was sadly the end of the dive. 20 mins in, 20 out and we were back at the pool again. We had the survey, but no new cave unfortunately. This was a great shame, but to put it in perspective, we don’t have to carry 2 sets of diving gear 6 hours into the cave again. Hopefully the survey will point to a way on on the dry side of the cave. That’s where the CLPA come into their own, and they will make good use of the data, I’m sure.

The reverse trip back to daylight (ok, it was 9pm and dark when we got out) was hard going. Bags seem to get heavier, the cave gets smaller, and the climbs more exposed. I guess it’s just the effects of concentrating for 12-13 hours. The levitation on the final slope back to fresh air worked as well as you’d expect, and I slithered my way back up, just like the “worm” dance move. But only with 20 inches of vertical space.

Typical varied caving in the Garrel. Images: CLPA

It was an exhausting trip and we all suffered for it for the next 24 hours. We got beer, as always, in the local bar. Fortunately they have an outside terrace as we definitely wouldn’t have been allowed indoors.

Our trip formally closed the next evening when we invited all of the team around to the campsite for a BBQ. Spare ribs, sausages, salad, beer, wine, vegetables, lamb chops and moules too was a lovely finish to the week.

Thanks to Jean Tarrit for taking the photos!

Trashed gear after Garrel

Longer Licanke

The team returned to Croatia for the fifth year of exploration in Izvor Licanke, as the cave just kept on giving.

This year, with the expectation that the cave would continue deep for quite some time, we tried to cut down on deco and dive times by taking scooters. Rich and I purchased a Suex XK1 each and are super grateful to Suex Scooters for helping find us appropriate machines.

Chris in sump 2. Image: Mark Burkey

In addition, my good friend Clare Pooley didn’t bat an eyelid at offering to loan us two of her own smaller scooters for use as back ups.

Rich and I dived on our rebreathers and scooters to the 2018 limit and began laying line and surveying. To our astonishment, the cave changed and turned into a big boulder wall which seemed to be trending quite steeply upwards. I was getting twitchy about my low levels of oxygen as I’d not had a complete fill and doing two ascents would leave me quite thin. At 38m depth and after 40 or so metres of line-laying we turned around to make another plan for the cave which again threatened to surface.

Fun and games trying to remove Rita from a borrowed wetsuit

We did our decompression in 7 degrees and surfaced after a 3 hour dive. I was super grateful for my Fourth Element X-Core vest and my She-P which are essential for dives like this.

The next day was Rich and Ash’s turn and the cave did exactly as we thought and surfaced in a large tunnel.

Rich didn’t have a helmet light so opted not to get out of the water while Ash made his way down the passage and located a further two sumps over the next few days.

How the cave sees us

I elected not to dive again as my preferred dive partner was Rich and he’d declared he was done for the week. I was tired after my 3 hour dive and my deco may have been a bit thin for me, so we started making plans to return in 2020.

The cave is now 1.5km long and the total amount of cave surveyed in 2019 was 601 metres. My team had explored a total of 1125 metres since we started in 2015.

Gang of 2019: Rick, Ash, Robbie, Christine, Rich, Mark, Rita, Jess.

We must 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.

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

The Epilogue

The Krnica dive team know how to throw a good BBQ.

You can’t get away with a trip to Krnica without at least one good BBQ.

Despite being in Fuzine, we kept the tradition. We spent the first day looking for this elusive BBQ and couldn’t find it. It wasn’t until several days later that we realised that the accommodation had a whole room dedicated to BBQ – decorated with various stuffed animals, of course. Robbie set to work and cooked up a storm and there were a few sore heads the next day.

We spent some time doing some interviews of the team for the forthcoming film on the project and then headed off to the local show cave which we were pretty convinced linked up somehow with Licanke.

First of all, Spilja Vrelo was downstream of Licanke – so our efforts some distance upstream were unlikely to see us popping up out of the water and terrifying the tourists. It might well link to Affluent du Charlotte, a smaller dry passage which heads south east not far from the first sump. Either way, the show cave guide didn’t know much about it.

The show cave was short but well decorated and the cool of the underground was a welcome break from the baking heat outside. We went for a drive up into the hills, almost directly north of where our survey was heading. We were met with thick forestry and a non-starter of a task to find sink holes.

Mark, Ash, Rick, Rich, Chris

We had the whole of the mountain to explore yet and it was probably easiest done underground…

We said goodbye to Rick, who had an impending date with his daughter’s ballet performance and set off via several scenic routes to Krnica. Unpacking the van was a hot and sweaty affair and we shoved various items into various bags and boxes for bringing back to the UK at various intervals.

Rich fortunately managed to get hold of some squid and chips from the café next door to Krnica dive centre as I was getting withdrawal symptoms and we headed off to pizza Kum to catch up with JP & Anne-Marie Bresser.

I decided that our last day should be spent in the sea. Ash and Mark looked a little nervous for their own reasons.

Ash did not have much experience on his rebreather in the sea and wasn’t confident in his use of a twinset, but he would give it a go.

Ash, Mark and Chris on the bow of the Lina wreck, Croatia

Mark knew this was a bit of a step up for him, but we were confident he would be OK. We sorted our gear the next morning and headed out on Santi Boat, a large and comfortable dive boat with an awning for shade and a nice bow to lie on and soak up the sun.

The two hour ride took us out to the SS Lina. She has been on the seabed for a long time and is 100 years old. She is a proper mini Titanic – completely intact, bolt upright on the seabed and the stern is 20 metres deeper than the bow, allowing divers to pick their depths. We would dive it on nitrox this time and stay in the forward area.

JP and his students jumped in first and we took our time and descended as a team. Rich and Ash headed off to play with photos and I took Mark on a gentle tour. I could tell he was enjoying himself and we spent half an hour enjoying the warm water, the view and the fish. Mark surfaced spluttering about how amazing it was and after lunch, we set off for another dive.

Mark peered down into the now empty holds and gestured if he could go and take a look. I replied “Of course” and Mark immediately went inverted and shot head down into the hold and swam about, enjoying his new environment.

I began to wonder if his ideas of finishing his diving career when he got home were founded at all. Rich took some photos and Ash had vanished into some overhead compartment to make himself feel more at home.

More sunbathing on the return journey and we cleaned up and packed, ready for another BBQ at Krnica Dive centre. We caught up with old friends, made new ones and hatched plans for the next trip. This is about as perfect as dive trips go and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

We cannot thank the team at Krnica dive enough, nor Apeks for their support and the gang who put in so much time, effort and money to support the exploration. We fully intend to come back soon with rebreathers and find out what secrets Licanke holds next.

Empty cave ahead

I had just lost Rich Walker...

Morning broke and the team were treated to myself and Rich arguing over our identical 5mm wetgloves…

This is normal. It’s pre-dive stress and we had to get rid of it somehow. Better with each other than the rest of the team.

Breakfast and coffee out of the way and normality resumed, we headed to the cave via the local shop, to get some provisions. The underground food was getting complaints, so Ash and Rick, given that we had very little to carry on this day, decided that they were going to cook hot dogs.

We ventured into the butchers to purchase some BBQ food for the evening and Rick sought out some European looking sausages in a jar from the supermarket.

But we needed buns. So, spotting some likely looking hot dog buns, Ash gathered up a good handful…

Chris and Rich ready to set off into sump 2

Myself and Rich got into our drysuits and it was a careful caving trip to sump 2, trying hard not to slip over and rip them. We took 5 minutes to ourselves whilst floating in the lakes to talk through our dive plan and deco schedule on the fly – we simply didn’t know what depth this cave would go to or where it would go next, so we opted for 60 metres maximum depth and a total run time of about 40 minutes from the bottom of the shaft.

This gave us 10 minutes to get to the end of last years line and another 10 minutes at whatever depth to lay some more. I was running the line again and Rich would be trying to jot down a survey behind me. We also knew that we needed to bridge the buried line with a spare spool, so that went in the kit list as well.

I would go in first and tie off the ‘good’, larger camera to the oxygen drop to give me something to do on deco. I’d take the go-pro all the way but, having lost the attachment which tied it to the new halcyon cordless torches, I’d have to hand hold it, which is a bit tricky really when laying line! I’d have to see how it went…

On unpacking the bags of ‘stuff’ I realised I had left the carefully cut out and laminated “Eurotek Divers Get Everywhere” cookie back at the ranch. Oh well, that was the least important item. And forget to take the glory marker…..

Kitting up was a relatively chilled affair. Rick helped me on with my 4 sidemount bottles and Ash did the same for Rich. We had lots of light from the filming lights, which was quite welcome and the promise of hot dogs when we came back. Mark had a good go at taking photos and video but the water was chilly and I was itching to get on with it, knowing how cold it was last time. We had a lot of dexterity work to do with camera, line reels, bottle juggling etc so opted for 5mm wet gloves again.

Next time we’ll definitely go dry…

Setting off the visibility was noticeably clearer than last time and we soon passed the oxygen bottles which Ash had placed. Going along the right wall we got a birds eye view of the shaft and could see that the line was not in a good place against the overhanging wall. Frank had doubtless had very little option as he’d experienced much worse visibility. I had a good look and spotted a much better route for the line which we would be replacing on a follow up trip if the cave ‘went’ this time.

The line was laid in 1998 and was thin and had been given a good battering by the winter floods every year since. Typically for Frank, it was well laid and belayed, just needed re-routing in the shaft.

The shaft was my worry. I was very pleased that Rich agreed with me that we would not hang about there decompressing, rather we would rattle through it and fix the deco at the bottom and the top. The mud on the overhanging wall turns the visibility to zero and coupled with a frail line, we were worried about it snagging on our multiple bottles and breakages. A line break in there would be a nightmare and pretty dangerous.

Chris at sump 2. Photo Mark Burkey

We soon met the 50% deco bottles and continued down the gravel slope to bridge the buried line. Rich set about doing this and we went on, enjoying the cave and its stunning visibility. It didn’t take long to reach the end of Frank’s line and the beginning of ours from last year. It was still in good condition and we carried on in gently undulating cave at an average depth of 38 metres until I recognised my last tie off. I unclipped my line reel and tried to keep relaxed.

Going into unknown cave is exciting and it takes experience to keep your cool. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, I thought. I didn’t want to waste time fumbling about, so I sorted my regulator switch and tied in the reel. I signalled to Rich and he signalled back, digging out his wetnotes and compass.

We were off! The cave, to my relief, didn’t really trend much deeper.

We did reach 50m at one stage but it stayed roughly in the 45m mark. The undulating sand dunes in the floor were rippled and pretty. The left wall continued sweeping around shallow bend and the right wall could be seen about 10 metres away. I found good tie offs every 15 metres or so.

As much as I wanted to just string out the line as fast as possible, the nature of the cave means that line breaks Unknown territory right ahead are inevitable as it takes thunderous amount of water in flood. Tie offs would make future issues easier to fix. I kept swimming. The go-pro became a pain with the line reel so I reluctantly clipped it off.

My gauges began to threaten to turn me around. I was approaching my gas margins and the cave was still going… At -43m I met a gradual slope upwards with hardly any tie offs. Typical. I went a few metres further and found a slab of rock in the floor. It wasn’t perfect but it was all we had. I wrapped the line Chris reels out the line around it, cut it free and Rich and I both thumbed the dive. The release of pressure as we turned is instant.

Of course, you’re not out of the woods. Mountain ascents don’t count if you die on the way back down. But for 10 minutes Rich and I had a fantastic dive along the new passage, especially as I was now behind him and could enjoy the view with the benefit of his silhouette behind his light.

Rich was swimming about and clearly enjoying it. We negotiated the sand slope and had some bottle juggling as we ditched the very buoyant Ali 80s and got rid of them onto a leash. We clipped the 50% bottles on and did our gas switch in deteriorating visibility. We set off up the shaft. Rich was now just behind me and all seemed to be going well.

As the shaft became more awkward, we went single file. I was just thinking that it didn’t seem as bad as last time, when the unthinkable happened.

“Oh Sh*t!” I repeated it several times in my head and also out loud to myself through my regulator. “Just keep calm, keep your head….you have loads of gas to go looking for him and he has plenty of gas too…..”

Despite loads of training and plenty of “Oh sh*t” moments over many years cave diving in less than desirable conditions in British caves….nothing quite prepares you for that moment when your boyfriend is in acute danger.

I had just lost Rich Walker.

The broken end of the line flailed behind me and I stared at it in horror. We knew this would happen. A 19 year old, thin exploration line in a slightly off-vertical shaft, which gets battered every winter by floods and melt water from the mountains above the cave entrance, with sparse, psychological belays and zero visibility…add to the mix a bouquet of spent ali 80s and there we had it. An emergency.

I gathered up the loose line to stop it forming another hazard and wrapped it around a nodule of rock on the sloping wall. Trembling, from both fear and the cold, I unclipped my exploration reel whilst staring into the fog in the hope of seeing his light. There was nothing but silence and the glow from my torch. I tied in the line reel and set off to where I had come from. Rich, doubtless thinking I was trying to assassinate him, calmly deployed his search reel and headed upwards, following the overhanging wall.

No sooner had I set off down the shaft, we ran into each other. Fear turned to overwhelming relief and the sicky feeling turned to butterflies.

Rich returns with mostly empty bottles

We tied our reels off and made our way to the 6 metre oxygen drop, shivering in the 7 degree water at the end of a 97 minute dive. We had just discovered beautiful, virgin cave passage but for 5 extremely concerning minutes, it barely seemed worth it. We finished our deco, cold but relieved.

On surfacing, Mark was at the ready with his camera. I gave him 5 minutes to get is shots. Poor guy, but I was super cold and by the time Rick waded into the sump pool to help me off with my gear, I was shivering uncontrollably.

We really, really needed those hot dogs!

Ash and Rick eating the hot dogs…with bread! Image: Mark Burkey

We climbed the small boulder pile to the make shift kitchen to be met with a very sheepish Ashley, who was poking the sausages around in the boiling water.

“The bread fell in the water…” he lied.

“You mean there is no bread?!!” I wailed.

Like two naughty school children, Rick and Ash started giggling and Mark hid.

“Well, on the upside…they were covered in sugar!”

Ash had bought the Croatian equivalent of iced buns instead of hot dog rolls and we felt a little more smug.

Rich and I scalded our fingers fishing the hot dogs out of the boiling water and ate the lot in minutes.

Ash raided Rich’s wetnotes, wanting to know how much line we had laid. We didn’t know and didn’t care. Last year we only laid 42 metres at 42m depth on our first dive in sump 2. In France we had laid 42 metres on our last dive in Fourmi Perdreau. I had laid 42 metres in Garrel in 2012……

“You’ll never guess what!” Ash called out.

“Don’t!” I said “DON’T tell me it’s 42 metres!!”

Ash laughed.

“Nawwwww…you laid 99!!!”

Bloody 3m knot intervals. That’s going to change next time…..

Rich and the empty bottle bouquet

"That was a f***ing epic dive!"

Day two, and we were on schedule.

All the bottles, harnesses and lead had arrived at the bottom of the climb. Ash replaced the rope on the climb, which was looking a bit frayed. Chris carrying a dive cylinder in the dry cave Mark wielded his camera, shooting video for our short film and this was expectedly time consuming, but it was important to get the lighting and the focusing right.

Once at sump 2, Rich decided that standing still was too difficult and somehow manage to step backwards and trip over a small, sharp lump of rock. I turned to see him doing a backwards flying angel into the streamway. Unfortunately, he landed on another, larger lump of sharp rock which caused an impressive bruise on his thigh which seemed to grow day by day.

Rich’s bruise spreading nicely…

Whilst by our standards, the caving was easy, you cannot take your eye off the ball for a moment in this cave as it is so seldom travelled and the rocks are sharp and friable.

Boulders move and hand holds sheer off. Rescue from outside isn’t really an option, so the team tried hard to exercise care.

Ash set off into the sump and returned half an hour later, spluttering about having had a “f***ing epic dive!” The visibility was crystal but as expected, had gone to zero in the 21m deep shaft where mud clings to the roof and exhalation bubbles bring it down. Ash also reported that Frank’s old line was buried for several metres on the sand slope beyond the 21m deco drop, so a spool would be needed to clear it. He’d had a go at pulling it out but it wasn’t budging. To push that amount of sand upslope, there must have been some serious flooding over the winter.

Ash with the stash of bottles

Satisfied, Ash left with his bottles and we re-grouped to take some still images and a bit more video. It took 8 flashguns to light up the main passage and the results were stunning. We stood in precarious positions, looking this way and that way, while Mark composed his shots. The dry cave is big, with sharp black rocks and boulder at foot and reddish mud walls closer to the roof. There are some decorations but not many and the boulder choke with rocks the size of cars, is hot and sweaty and slippery going. It’s always a relief to get back into the streamway again to cool off.

Main passage between sumps 1 and 2. Image: Mark Burkey

Lunch was an interesting affair.

Ash doesn’t really eat anything other than Haribo and Nutella and usually opted to go without. We found some tins of tuna salad which survive sumps quite well, but this time brought them through in the dry tube with some forks this time…. They weren’t very nice but they were edible. I bought some jaffa cakes and thought chocolate and cherry sounded pretty cool, but they soon invited complaints. It seems gastronomy is an issue underground so we definitely needed to work on something better to keep the troops happy the next day.

As we surfaced from sump 1, Robbie was there – as he always is – to pull the twinsets out of the awkward concrete pumping station. Rich looked at my twinset and picked up the go pro which had been clipped off to my harness. “Ooh, that doesn’t look good…..” Water was sloshing around in the housing. I opened it quickly, pulled the battery out and Mark gave me some silica gel to begin the possibly pointless task of drying it out. The cave had killed the second camera in as many years and I was quite annoyed. Luckily Ash had one and offered it to me to use in the second sump, for which we were very grateful.

The days were always followed up by cold beers, housed in Rick’s huge ice box. Robbie found us a nice restaurant, which served up trays of delicious food…we had pork, sauerkraut, huge balls of home made gnocci and a meat stew. The local wine was superb and we always made an effort to get out of the cave in reasonable time for tea. Nobody wants to still be in the cave late into the evening so the extra days were welcomed.

I was a little nervous about the next days dive. There is always a lot of pressure. We had brought these guys out to help us, spent 3 months training Mark to cave dive, Ash had driven 2 days to be here, Rick drove down from the Netherlands….even though they wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if we had failed, we definitely did not want to let them down.

I went through my check list in my head over and over and at some point, fell asleep.

We're gonna need more lead...

Richard Walker was already in Croatia, settling in for several weeks of teaching technical diving courses once our cave exploration was over. Ashley Hiscock drove down from the UK in remarkable time and didn’t manage to get arrested once!

He brought the larger items, such as the two dry tubes for camera gear, food, filming lights, flash bulbs and flashguns. Mark and I had tested our pelicases and ‘depth proof’ camera boxes in a local quarry and they all flooded.

We decided that the camera boxes could not be trusted, so we would dive them through flooded, dry them out the far side of the sump and re-pack the camera gear from the dry tubes into them for easier transportation through the cave.

Rick Van Dijk Rick Van Dijk drove from the Netherlands and brought some cylinders and extra gas in case we needed to top up the bottles for sump 1. Ash and Rich play ‘sink the dry tube’

Mark and I flew on a convenient new flight from Bristol to Pula. The journey was uneventful and we spent the flight going through our plan to make a short movie of the project. Mark is a superb photographer but he had never really got into shooting video, so this was a great opportunity for him to give it a whirl. We spent a day in a welsh cave practising and getting camera settings and lighting right before the trip, which was time well spent.

One important job was to get the dry tubes weighted for diving through sump 1.

No matter how much you fill them, they seem unsinkable! They need a lot of lead and Ash and Rich had fun trying to weight the ex Gavin standard body scooter with two nose cones, in the sea! At least we would need 2 kilos less in the cave. Even then, it rode like a wild animal…

Christine analyses and marks up cylinders in Krnica

Robbie from Krnica Dive Centre came with us and he was in charge of making sure logistics went smoothly. He located our accommodation and did all the Croatian speaking for us. The gite style house was warm, comfy and had the best BBQ room we’ve ever seen. It was also home to an extraordinary array of stuffed animals, from bears to fighting pheasants, stoats and deer heads. It was a bit strange but caused a few giggles.

Morning from our bedroom looked sunny and pleasant. After breakfast and a plan of the day, we headed to Licanke, a short drive from Fuzine and set off into the cave.

Rick with the stash of gear.

Mark was undertaking his first cave dive, chaperoned by Rich and myself and had no trouble at all. He thoroughly enjoyed it and surfaced on the far side of sump 1, grinning from ear to ear. We shed our twinsets and started drying out the camera boxes while the dry tubes and exploration bottles came through with Rich, Rick and Ash.

Mark dives sump 1 in Izvor Licanke. Image: Mark Burkey

The next job was to inflate the Halcyon life raft. We acquired this odd bit of kit many years ago and were never really sure what it was for. It turned out to be quite useful for cave diving projects and to date, has never been in the sea! The gear stash The deep lakes were the first obstacles in this cave. Dropping heavy bottles in here would have been a nightmare and swimming them across the lakes very cumbersome and time consuming.

We worked out that the best way to do this was to load the life raft with bottles and scooter it across the lakes. Mark set up the filming lights and shot some great video of the whole affair. We set aside 2 days for the filming and to get all the gear to sump 2. Half the job was done on day 1 and we were on schedule.

Chris moving gear across the lakes using a scooter and Halcyon life raft

Nah, he can't dive...

Mark Burkey is a caver – and a bloomin good one.

In recent years he has been making a name for himself on the cave photography circuit, winning several awards and his images are in high demand from media publications and promotions. Rich and I were on the lookout for someone who could take high quality images of the project and also shoot video for our short film idea.

Now, neither Rich, Rick nor I are bad cave photographers but our attempt at documenting the project in 2016 failed miserably. First, my DSLR flooded in it’s underwater tube which rendered it useless for the remainder of the trip. The three of us were preoccupied with getting half a dozen cylinders and other diving equipment to the sump and back in 3 days so the media took a hit and we returned with almost nothing.

Put simply, we could not carry the kit, organise the trip, dive the sumps, explore the cave and video ourselves doing it. Not in the quality we wanted anyhow. We needed someone else to take on the job.

“What about Mark Burkey?” Rich tapped away on Facebook messenger while he was in some far flung country teaching a diving class.

“Nah…he can’t dive” I replied, wishing he could.

The first sump was something of an obstacle to regular dry cavers. It was only 40 metres long and no deeper than 6 metres. But even so, it was not a free dive, the water was 6 degrees last time and the visibility deteriorates inevitably as the divers drag negative loads through the sump for transportation on the far side. “Well, you’ve got 3 months to teach him…..” Rich said. I did.

A Mark Burkey image of Rick in sump 1, Izvor Licanke.

But what were the chances?

First, he would need to be free for the trip. Then he would need to want to do it and be prepared to document the whole project, which we already knew was hard work. I had only caved with him once and he barely knew me. Then he would not only need to learn to scuba dive but cave dive too. It was a tall order and I brushed off the idea whilst struggling to think of somebody else.

I was bored at work one afternoon, which is a rare occurrence and thought to myself “Stuff it…he can only say no”. I phoned him up.

Mark had been to my talk on Croatian caves at the Hidden Earth conference a year or two ago and seemed excited about the project. He would check the dates, check the flights and all being well, would be able to come along. It wasn’t long before he called me back and said he was pretty much on.

“Oh…um…there’s just one other thing” I said. “You need to learn to cave dive by June!”

A hearty laugh came down the phone followed by a definite “OK!” The adventure had begun.

Croatia Calling

Croatia is a beautiful country and one I have been very lucky to visit many times.

My partner, Richard Walker teaches technical diving in the small fishing port of Krnica, Istria and I have been out to Croatia to dive in the sea and the caves on many occasions.

Over the last couple of years, Rich and I have been visiting a particular cave in Croatia, near Rijeka called Izvor Licanke. After a couple of reconnaissance trips, we explored completely virgin underwater cave last year and we were determined to return and continue the exploration.

The cave is a resurgence, meaning that the underwater passage meets daylight as water pours out from underground into the river and lakes downstream. There is a short, shallow ‘sump’ or flooded passage which soon surfaces in a couple of lakes and some huge passageways beyond. A high boulder climb up to almost the roof, leads back down to the river again and a short distance upstream the second sump is met.

Sump 2 was first dived by French explorer, Frank Vasseur way back in 1998 and he dived for 140 metres to a depth of -36 metres. Due to local politics the team and everyone else were denied access and the sump remained unexplored until 2016 when Richard and I, having spoken to Frank, extended his line with the efforts of only a small team of ourselves and our Dutch friend, Rick Van Dijk.

The slightly awkward cave entrance

With permissions in place, we were able to apply three days to the project; one for carrying the diving gear through the first sump and the dry cave to sump 2; one for the exploration and one for bringing all the gear out again.

Rick Van Dijk and the 2016 equipment stash This year, Rick joined us again and I also invited my ex Cave Diving Group trainee, Ashley Hiscock, who was making quite a name for himself to come along and help.

The previous year we had struggled with time to shoot any meaningful video and I flooded my DSLR camera in the first sump when a dry tube failed, so we were keen to have someone along to do the images and video for us so that we could concentrate on the task in hand.

We had just the person in mind. But there was a catch…