Wet Wookey

Christine aged 25 ish in Wookey chamber 20. Image: Clive Westlake. Image taken before a tunnel was mined through to allow public access to the chamber. At this time, the only way to see it was by cave diving.

Wookey Hole Caves will always have a very special place in my heart.

It is a weird, slightly crazy, slightly spooky tourist attraction in the middle of deepest Somerset. Many of my WetWellies caving clients have visited the 'other end' of the Wookey system, Swildons Hole, which has been dye traced to connect with Wookey Hole. When dye was tipped into the water in Swildons Hole it emerged TWENTY FOUR hours later at Wookey resurgence.

It has been the dream of every British cave diver I know to connect the two but alas, the connection has only ever been made by that dye.

Mark Burkey in Wookey Hole, right below the public gallery. Image: Christine Grosart

Swildons Hole ends at sump 12, a tight underwater passage which gets too small for humans and is a long slog to get to in any case. I've been to sump 12 twice and would take a lot or persuading to go back again...

Wookey Hole, at the bottom of the hill heading towards the city of Wells, is an impressive resurgence cave where a huge collection of water which has drained through the Mendip hills, comes rushing out of the cave mouth.

Divers conducted the very first hard hat dives in this cave in 1935 and Graham Balcombe and Penelope 'Mossy' Powell ventured upstream in Wookey Hole for the first time. It was from this underground chamber, chamber 3, now visited by tourists every day, that I made my first cave dive in Wookey Hole in 2005.

Penelope ‘Mossy’ Powell and Graham Balcombe in the 1930s, Wookey Hole Chamber 3. Image: Mendip archives.

Preparing to dive in Wookey Hole in the 1930s.

Modern day diving in Wookey Hole. Christine diving sidemount, open circuit. Image: Richard Walker.

On 17th February this year (2019) I took my Cave Diving Group trainee Mark Burkey on his first cave dive in Wookey Hole.

We were blessed with superb visibility so he could begin to get to know the place and he had the luxury of being filmed (for training feedback, of course) which meant bright video lights illuminating the large underwater passages.

Mark diving towards the 'slot' in Wookey Hole. Image: Christine Grosart

Mark is an outstanding cave photographer and I am very excited about the prospect of him being able to take photographs beyond sumps, as my mentor Clive Westlake once did, albeit mainly in black and white.

In 2009, Wookey Hole was the scene for my rather understated deep dive at the end of the system. Rick Stanton and John Volanthen of Thai Cave rescue Fame, had pushed the end of the cave signifiicantly in 2005 to 90 metres deep.

Christine preparing to dive the final 2 sumps in Wookey Hole, 2009 before her record breaking dive.

I had only just begin cave diving with the Cave Diving Group so whilst I was around to witness the aftermath of the record breaking dives, my only small part in the affair was to pick up the parachute after the run. Or rather, I was a ‘sump donkey’ bringing partially depleted exploration bailout bottles back to the show cave.

The river Axe roars through Wookey chamber 24. Image: Christine Grosart

Roll on four years and I was heading down to the new bits of the cave myself and earned a new ladies UK cave diving depth record (64 metres, solo) in the process. To this day no woman has ever been back. Now that chamber 24 (dive base for the deeper dives into the system) has had a dry route created, I wonder if any future record would count as much. I certainly did it the hard way over several days and with the help of several resolute and valued friends.

Wookey chamber 20, when it was only accessed by diving. Image: Christine Grosart

Wookey chamber 20, when it was only accessed by diving. Image: Christine Grosart

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

Not bad for a sh*thole!

Ever since my early twenties I’ve had a ‘target list’ for the year. I’ve never let a year pass me by without aiming to achieve several very cool things.

One such mission has been on my ‘target list’ for over 15 years, rolling over to the next year each time.

Keld Head is an iconic cave dive, which yielded the longest cave diving traverse in the world in 1979, conducted by Geoff Yeadon and Oliver 'Bear' Statham - a notorious duo who were also responsible for discovering several of my favourite cave diving haunts, such as Wookey Hole chamber 24 and Boreham Cave.

Geoff Crossley and Christine at Keld Head

Owing to a myriad of excuses - and I admit to have almost given up on the weather - I had never dived there. Yorkshire is a long way from my home, access to Keld had been difficult and it needed to stop raining for weeks on end. I simply found other things to do, but it never went away.

The world record traverse was eventually superseded by a dive in Florida, USA between Sullivan to Cheryl Sink, which forms part of the Wakulla Springs system.

The two systems are polar opposites in terms of atmosphere, geology and the style needed to tackle them.

I've been fortunate enough to stick my beak into both caves now. I adored Keld Head and it felt homely and familiar.

Wakulla scared the living daylights out of me - it's just a big, black hurricane and I was more than happy to mooch about in the head pool photographing manatees than go much of a distance in.

Horses for courses I guess. Olivier Isler, a record breaking cave diver himself, once said of UK caves:

"I know in England the caves are very small, the water is very cold, and you cannot see anything. Those are very difficult & dangerous conditions.”

To achieve a world record in a British cave is not to be sniffed at.

'The Underground Eiger' documenting the worlds longest cave diving traverse in 1979.

Access to Keld was fraught for many years, including those when I began cave diving and I never thought that things would change during my cave diving lifetime.

They did, a little, and members of the Cave Diving Group began to have tentative access again.

Chris, Martin and Geoff Crossley kit up while Geoff Yeadon watches on.

But that wasn’t the only problem. For most caves in the peat-ridden Yorkshire Dales to be diveable, it needs to stop raining. That’s a hoot in itself, but it doesn’t stop there.

It needs to stop raining for at least 3 weeks. Cave explorer Geoff Yeadon, responsible for both the discoveries and the record breaking first traverses from Kingsdale Master Cave and King Pot through to Keld Head, told me dryly that it was more like 3 months bone dry weather before conditions were tip top.

Given the warmer, wetter weather us humans have caused by global warming, my generation can probably shelve ‘tip top conditions’ for a while.

The longest dive, following Geoff Yeadon and Geoff Crossley as they connected King Pot to Keld Head.

Given the fast changing nature of pretty much everything thanks to Covid-19, I decided to pack my life into my Spacetourer and drive to Scotland to work on the DSV Boka Atlantis. I also threw in my sidemount cave diving kit…just in case!

Geoff and chris getting ready

It would be a shame to drive home past Yorkshire just as Keld Head was in condition - sans diving gear!

I disembarked the vessel and stopped off at my friend and fellow dive medic Danny’s house.

We jumped into St Abbs for a cheeky shore dive before it occurred to me to drop a message to Geoff Crossley, asking if on the off chance, Keld was diveable.

It was - and furthermore, he adjusted his weekend and his family at super short notice to accommodate me and join me in the cave. I’m so lucky to have just the best friends!

Geoff Crossley joined Geoff Yeadon in 1991 to complete the first traverse of King Pot to Keld Head.

As I drove the few hours down to the Dales, I was super excited to learn that Geoff Yeadon himself, now president of the CDG, was going to come along as well to supervise!

We were also joined by Martin Holroyd and after kitting up in the most idyllic setting, the perfect resurgence in the yawning, remote Kingsdale valley, we set off.

The water was typical for Yorkshire, with a yellow tinge from the peat staining. I followed Geoff who navigated the slightly complex entrance series and then headed off up some larger passages, straight into the hillside.

On some occasions I could only see one wall and not the other and before long, I couldn’t see the roof either. It was certainly spacious although the visibility prevented a good view of the whole passage.

After about 35 minutes of swimming, in 7 degrees water temperature, despite not being close to thirds my bladder pressure forced a return. In my haste to pack the car, I had forgotten my She-P. It was time to go home.

We had got about 750 metres back into the cave which is a decent day out for a British cave dive, when we turned for home.

I took a Paralenz on a tray with very bright video lights with me and managed to capture some nice footage of my first trip into Keld.

In my typical style, I’d stashed a mini bottle of prosecco in the head pool for afterwards.

Despite some covid restrictions being lifted, finding a pub that would feed us all was problematic. I was tipped off that my CDG trainee Mark Burkey was in town with his wife Jess, so after some creative phone calls we managed to find a pub that would feed us outside.

Settling down to a beer and fish and chips, surrounded by some of the best people on the planet, I began to realise just how lucky I was and after some of the darkest days of covid, began to see light again.

I pulled out the video footage of our dive for everyone to look at. Describing the dive to Mark, I commented: “And then we got to this junction where Geoff led me up some sh*thole…….”

The table fell silent.

“Some sh*thole?!!” Crossley said, outraged; “That was the main passage!!”

The table fell about laughing and muttered in there somewhere were comments of desperation from the original explorers about not being able to please some people!

Definitely something I will never live down!

Geoff Yeadon, Christine Grosart, Geoff Crossley

National Caving Conference & Thai Cave Rescue

Thai cave rescue team of cave divers.

While we were safely out of mobile phone signal with no internet in Fuzine, Croatia, a situation was unfolding in Thailand that was unparalleled in history. In June, a young male soccer team and their coach had ventured into a cave called Tham Luang in Thailand. It was a common thing to do. The boys left their push bikes by the entrance and headed off inside the cave for an adventure.

Then it rained. It rained a lot and the rain was early.

The water levels in the cave rose and the boys found themselves trapped by rapidly rising flood water and had to retreat even further into the cave to find higher ground.

There, they waited. The eyes of the world was on Tham Luang while the authorities tried to work out what to do.

I wasn’t surprised to hear that key members of the Cave Diving Group, some of whom had experience of underwater evacuations, had been called in.

The rest of the story is well known, so I won’t need to repeat it here.

It was great to see the guys back among their peers at Hidden Earth, the national caving conference and they had a very long, standing ovation from the main theatre which was overflowing.

Thai cave rescue divers from the Cave Diving Group at Hidden Earth 2018

With some help from some friends, we ran a try dive session in the pool and also won the ‘Best stand’ award of the conference for the Cave Diving Group.

Several months later I was quite surprised to receive an invitation to Westminster for one of many events celebrating the successful rescue of the 12 boys and their coach.

Confused, as despite being the CDG foreign officer, I’d been out of phone contact at the time and can safely say I’d had absolutely nothing to do with the whole affair – I replied thank you but I think the email has been sent to me in error.

I received a reply that the invitation was intended for the ‘great and good’ of the Cave Diving Group and was our opportunity to honour the guys that had rescued the children. An event for their peers, if you like.

It sounded like it would be a nice event and not something that happens every day.

I jumped on a train to London and we had all been put up in a swanky hotel before taking over the whole of Prezzos for a cracking evening and a great opportunity to catch up with friends, some of us who hadn’t seen each other for years.

The poor couple in the corner trying to have a romantic dinner for two must have wondered what was going on and how they ended up in the middle of this riff raff. I often wonder if they ever worked out who the guys were that stood together to have their photos taken.

The next day we had an invitation to drink the speakers chamber dry and eat all their food. Mr Speaker, Rt. Hon. John Bercow gave a good speech and we were given a tour of the houses of parliament before making our ways home.

Several months later, I was contacted by a member of Coventry BSAC who asked for Rick Stanton’s details as they wanted to make him an honorary member.

Rick had been unofficially “borrowing” their pool for years and now it looked like he was set up for life!

Rick graciously accepted and went to the dive club’s AGM dinner.

At one point in the evening, the compere asked what was the most unusual thing anyone had ever found underwater.

Rick put his hand up immediately and said “12 boys and a football coach!”

Emme Heron, Rick Stanton, Christine Grosart, Clive Westlake, Jim Lister.

Event de Rodel

Today we had plans to go the Event de Rodel.

This pretty little gem of a cave is one of the easier ones to access, but still requires a carry and some crawly, stoopy caving to get to the waters edge.

Andras in the Rodel

It was a much easier carry this year and all except Andras opted to dive in wetsuits. The gear was carried through scratchy scrub a short distance through bushes and up a short, dry riverbed. We then changed into caving grots and chained the five sets of diving gear to the start of the sump.

It soon became apparent that my trainee, Jarvist, was capable of shifting twice as much gear as everyone else in half the time - so we blundered along and let him get on with it!

We were a little alarmed by Andras' 10 litre cylinders, so he devised a hardcore technique for carrying them through the cave!

Even more alarming was his sidemount set-up - which had clearly been designed by someone who had never been in a dry cave in their lives, never mind had to carry diving gear through one!!

Andras watched in awe as Rich and I glided through the water easily in our minimalist UK sidemount set-up. He'll be borrowing one of ours tomorrow to see how he likes it.

The Rodel didn't disappoint and I shot some video of Rich and Andras, which had pleasing results - except the LED torch was causing red dotted stripes due to a problem with certain power settings. I couldn't fix this underwater so we had to make do with what we ended up with.

Source du Sorgues - The Picnic

Chris in the Sorgues. Image: Richard Walker

The Sorgues is in Aveyron and is a great little cave to finish the trip with.

We invited Mehdi Dighouth to come over for the day and Rich and I set off to the cave to have a picnic before diving.

Oz and Joe set off to the Durzon - because their instructions had the GPS co-ordinates mixed up!!!!!

The Sorgues is a beautiful river emerging from the cirque rockface and feeds the fish-farm just downstream. It used to be the case that divers were asked to hose off their drysuits before entering the water but now the fish-farm seem not to care and divers are welcome here.

We settled down to lunch by the weir and Mehdi produced some home-made Fois Gras and some fruit jelly thing which was amazing.

We were still waiting for the others to show up and without a mobile signal here, wondered just how long we should wait. Rich still needed fills from the compressor so couldn't dive with me until Oz and the compressor arrived. It was decided that I should go for a dive with Mehdi and Rich could dive with the others when (if) they showed up.

Mehdi and I set off through the maze of boulders and concrete tunnels which fill the entrance. I first dived here in 2007 but didn't remember much about the cave as I was pre-occupied with a top-heavy independent twinset, having moved from sidemount to backmount gear myself, without any advice or training. I was uncomfortable throughout and didn't enjoy the dive.

It was great this time to know that I could just get on with it and relax.

Chris in the Sorgues. Image: Richard Walker

We dived to what I consider the end of the cave. The main, spacious passage just ends and the way on is a small, narrow rift which goes up to about 3m depth from 31m and nobody has been any further. It is reported to be tight, nasty and a dead-end boulder choke - so we stay in the big stuff!

With loads of gas to spare, we turn round and I get the opportunity to waft my HID around and have a real good look at this cave. The geology is beautiful and there are ribbons of calcite protruding like a dragons back all along the edges and the floor. The water is typically clear, with a blue tinge and no decompression is required for such a short dive.

We surface to see that the others have arrived and Rich is getting his cylinders filled. Elaine and Duncan set off for a short dive and Elaine returns with plenty of gas, so I offer to take her in again behind the filming crew. Rich, Oz and Joe have a lengthy dive briefing for the camera work and Mehdi sneaks in for another dive behind them. Elaine and I stealthily follow them all and we are treated to a fantastic view of four divers, all with bright filming lights and HIDs, spread out down the passage. Elaine is thrilled with her dive and we call it a day.

The wonderful Sorgues. Image: Rich Walker

Mehdi returns and gives me an impromptu lesson on his Megdalon rebreather. I always said I would never go over to RB because there is so much I can do on open circuit to last me a lifetime - and I haven't got anywhere near my limit of open circuit yet. But maybe in ten years time I may think differently.

We end the day with much giggling and silliness as Joe asks Mehdi for an interview about the Esperelle. Both Joe and Mehdi are extremely professional - you get the feeling they have both done this sort of thing before....I am in the background asking Mehdi questions in French and the video looks amazing.

Then it's Rich's turn to be in front of the camera and Joe's techniques for shedding a little golden light on the subject has us in stitches.

All too soon it is time to go. Mehdi has to go and give a talk at the speleo congress and we have to shoot off as we've been invited onto the Hortus Plateau - aka middle of absolutely nowhere - by the CLPA for a pizza party!

Christine, Mehdi, Elaine, Osama, Joe, Duncan, Rich

The seven hour lunch

The impressive Millau Bridge

We arrived at the camp site in one piece yesterday. The tents are up (one for us, one for the gear....) and shopping done.

I'm still sick with some sort of chest infection off the back of a cold, so today we tried to take it easy.

I had a phone call from my good friend Jean Tarrit to tell us he was coming to our campsite and we were to have lunch at his house in Larzac to discuss plans for the two weeks.

Jean Tarrit

Fuelled with coffee and coughing like a donkey with asthma, I was driven via some stunning scenery to Larzac - the long way round as the Gourney's are closed for repair work in the Vis gorge.

The drive took ages but we finally met up with Jean and headed to his house.

It was a beautiful, typically French rustic country home with big beams and huge fireplaces.

We were spoiled from the outset with several courses, including crevettes (shrimp), magret de canard, sautee potatoes, salad, bread, cheese, tarte au poire and a 12 year old Bordeaux.

Many hours later we went for a short wander to take a look at the view over the Larzac plateau which is cave hunting heaven.

The viz gorge, Herault, France

Back at the house, we discussed the geology of the caves we were pushing, fault line directions and made plans for the week. Rich let out the occasional snore as he nodded in the armchair.

The plan is to go back to Garrel on Saturday but this depends on me being well enough and we can put it back a week if we need to.

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.

"Has anyone seen my Eagle?" by Richard Walker

The Aven de Rouet looks like a goer on the survey. A straight down shaft to about 70m, and then ongoing horizontal passage. It’s right next to the road as well, so why the hell haven’t I heard of it before? Needs a look, I think to myself.

Christine and I headed over to the site on Monday night to confirm that the cave was where we expected, and to look at how we’d need to get the gear to the water. We’ve learned that nothing is easy here.

Sure enough, 30m from the road, across some flat ground, we find a bloody great hole in the ground. It’s about 10m in diameter, and dropped to depth of about 20m, where the water was.

There was a steel gantry jutting out over the top of it, and this looked a perfect point from which to lower the gear. Two steps away was a steel ladder down to a small gravel platform perfect to stand on while suiting up.

This was looking too good to be true, so how come I’ve never heard of this place before?

Weird. Needs a look.

We got up almost before lunchtime on Tuesday and started blending gas. 15/55 for me, Christine and Andras, and a couple of deco gasses for good measure. Tim and Jarvist were going to have a play with some trimix too on a short dive after ours.

Blending was creative, as ever, in these sorts of places but we all ended up with something useable in the end. We loaded the cars, and sent Tim and Jarvist to set up the pulleys and ropes while we ate lunch. Seemed reasonable to me. All the time I’m thinking “why haven’t I heard of this place before?”.

We arrive at the cave to see Tim stood on the gantry with an elaborate network of slings, carabiners, stops and pulleys dangling over the edge, and Jarvist at the bottom explaining how things will bang into the wall as they descend.

They fiddle around a bit, make some more complications and we have a working 3:1 pulley system, with a releasable deviation, which makes it go round a corner.

It’s so easy, I still wonder why everyone doesn’t dive here, and why I haven’t heard of it.

We lowered the gear down (OK, Tim lowered the gear down) and Jarvist makes a neat pile of it in the pool, and we three head down to the water like professionals.

Andras starts screaming when he sees the toad in the water.

Apparently he doesn’t like them.

Christine wanted to kiss it, but I reminded her that it needed to be a frog for that to work...

We put on our gear and did our checks floating in the water, and remarked that the blue water had gone a bit mucky with our movements. I was sure it would clear out below us though, and said so like someone who knew what he was talking about. So far so good. I still can’t believe I’ve never heard of this place - it’s such an easy site.

Andra, Rich and Christine in the Rouet.

We descend, Christine in front, Andras and then me. Following the line through the surface muck, and sure enough, the water clears and we are treated to pale limestone walls and a vertical passage.

It’s not very big, I think.

No matter, I’m going to drop these decompression cylinders pretty soon and then the clanging will stop. The Oxygen gets dropped in a small (1.5m round passage), and hangs on the line that has a convenient loop in it. Someone has clearly been here before and understands that you need to drop gear off.

The line turns into 9mm climbing rope, and continues to drop vertically through the pretty, white, cave tunnel. Which is still no more than 1.5m across.

We are three divers, stacked vertically.

There is some difference in approach to dropping down. I prefer the head down and swim, while the others seem to prefer some sort of feet down, reverse climbing strategy. The 9mm rope gets replaced by 5mm stainless steel cable. This is an odd choice, I think. I’d hate to have to cut that if I got tangled in it.

Still, visibility is good, and the line well laid. Still don’t understand why more people don’t dive here, even though it’s a bit tight.

More gear gets deposited and we start to descend. 30m, still nice clear water, pretty passageway, small. 40m, same. 50m - the rope ends.

Quelle horreur!

There is some old thin cave line arranged into a not-so-neat birds nest, with ends trailing out of it. Christine decides that this is too deep to be arsing about laying line in a tight passage with potentially much more loose rubbish beyond, and we reverse our direction back towards the surface.

Shame, it’s a nice looking cave and I’d have liked to see more of it. Can’t understand why I’ve not heard of it before.

Bubbles. Seemingly innocuous things.

Children make them with soap and play with them for hours. They are in beer and champagne. They could be considered to be fun things in some quarters. In a cave, they tend to float up along the walls.

If those walls are covered in a fine layer of silt, such as you might find in a cave that was not well travelled, then the bubbles dislodge the silt and rapidly reduce the visibility. If that cave is vertical, then those bubbles do that all the way to the surface, getting bigger all the time.

In fact, Jarvist and Tim were watching the pool while we dived and said that it turned into a “muddy silty vortex” within minutes of our departure.

They elected to not dive.

Meanwhile, back in the water, the visibility has dropped to something like tea with a splash of milk. Never mind, it’s a vertical cave, and we have a big 9mm rope to follow. We wriggle and turn our way back up the passage and soon arrive back at the 21m stop. We all managed to switch gas, not that it was really needed given the short dive, and continue out. Lots of gear plus steel wire. Nice. Fortunately only a few minor hang ups, and we’re soon at the oxygen pickup, and ready to head out.

At this point, Christine decided that she didn’t like it anymore and managed to reverse the team order.

Exactly how, I do not know, but she and Andras got past me in a 1m wide tunnel. Andras claims that it had something to do with Chris grabbing his testicles in a modified “touch contact signal” for “move”.

He moved. Like a rat up a drainpipe.

We surfaced exchanged a few “pleasantries” and decided to get out. I’m starting to understand why I haven’t heard of this place.

Then the fun started.

I looked up to see 2 locals stood on the gantry waving. Cave diving is often a spectator sport, in the same way people like to watch car crashes or why Romans went to watch criminals get eaten by lions. Turned out that he was a local caver and had been in there before.

Best to not do it with lots of people, he said.

Visibility gets bad apparently...

Well, they were nice and we chatted for a while. They left and enter local no. 2. His communication was less easy to follow. Basil Fawlty probably taught him how to talk to foreigners. Speak louder and faster when they don’t understand. Get more frustrated. Speak louder and faster.

He wasn’t angry, although he did look like a farmer, and therefore liable to say “quitter ma terre” at any point. Probably loudly.

He mentioned that he had a similar hole on his land. Bottomless, apparently, and if we wanted to go and dive it, we’d be very welcome. “Just like this one?” we asked - “Oui” came the reply. “Merci Messieur, mais nous partons demain”. He wandered off to shoot something.

More gear came up the magical winch thing.

Then two girls get out of a car and start running over towards us. They are flapping their arms and waving at us.

“avez-vous vu mon aigle”, or “Have you seen my eagle?”

To help with translation, they were flapping their arms and cawing as well.

Seemed obvious to me. I was tempted to say that it had grabbed my pet toad and I was very upset, but my French isn’t good enough. They seemed very upset, and continued driving around, looking for their eagle.

We stopped for Pizza in Laroque on the way home, which is a lovely way to end a days diving, eating nice food watching the river run, and wondering why nobody dives in that cave.

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.

Stunning Sorgues

Chris admiring the calcite 'ridge' in the Sorgues. Image: Richard Walker

The Event du Sorgues is one of my favourite resurgence flops in the area. The only problem is that it is too short!

It is about 220m long and ends in an impenetrable, vertical rift which is too tight to pass in any kit configuration.

This is desperately frustrating as it is the major resurgence for the mighty 'Mas Raynal', 4Km upstream.

It is, however, beautiful, with no access restrictions (despite having to practically drive through somebody's living room to get to a parking spot - don't take any vehicle bigger than a Berlingo!)

Chris diving the Sorgues. Image: Rich Walker

It is heavily managed with dams and weirs built in to presumably control the water which flows through the fish farm. The water is cold, about 8 degrees and is almost always blue and clear.

I was intent on getting some photos here so we took the expensive camera kit, filled our cylinders, Rich gave me an impromptu lesson on his JJ CCR and just as my eyes began to glaze over, the bottles were ready and we went diving.

The Sorgues is geologically beautiful, with calcite ridges protruding from the floor and almost perfectly square passages with boulder strewn floors. Rippled sand catches the light as you swim mid passage, able to see your own shadow on the floor in the video lights.

The average depth is about 26m so you have just enough time to go to the 'end' and back within decompression limits. We were taking our time over photos and carrying a heavy tripod to mount the back-lights was a little tricky, so we didn't quite reach the end but we weren't far off when we turned for home.

Chris in the Sorgues. Photo: Richard Walker

Coudouliere

Jean Tarrit by the entrance of Coudouliere.

The Dutch were eager to head over to Coudouliere and make a few parts of the entrance boulder choke more Suex friendly.

This seemed like a good opportunity for me to deploy my Disto X and PDA combination and get some survey data of the dry passage leading to the sumps.

Over the last 6 months or so I’ve been trying to build up a paperless system and with help from various people, I now have a working upgraded Disto X which measures distance, compass and clinometer readings.

This talks to a basic PDA via Bluetooth and stores the data in a neat free program called Pocket Topo. This also enables the user to sketch and draw cross sections as they go.

Even better, the data can be transferred via another neat program called Top Parser (Andrew Atkinson’s genius) to Therion survey program. Therion makes my head hurt and we were fortunate to have Jan Mulder (NL) along who was far more confident with it than me.

Gour pools in Coudouliere. Photo Rick van Dijk

One advantage of Therion of other programs is the ability to tie in additional data without having to re-draw – it simply adjusts the drawing as you go.

But even so, it is not easy to learn and earlier this year I organised a weekend of all things Disto and Therion. It was oversubscribed so I should think we’ll be doing another one over the winter.

I had left my tippex in the car, which I was going to use to mark the survey stations. But we were saved by Pedro Ballordi’s pink nail varnish which Anton took a shine to…

Ash in Coudouliere

We surveyed the boulder choke down to a junction and took the right hand branch, which led to a different sump, via a steep slope which needed a rope. Pedro set about putting some bolts in and rigged up a rope. The rock was similar to the Perdreau, with poor rock for bolts and we ended up tying into a huge boulder instead.

With this part of the survey done, we headed out and were met by a scooter making it’s way up through the boulders. Now that scooters fitted, the next trip would be less problematic.

We retired to the pub in St Jean de Bueges for cold pressions all round.

Gours in Coudouliere. Image: Rick Van Dijk

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

Rodel

Andras Kuti in the Rodel. Image: Christine Grosart

There seems to be a bit of a fad about sidemount at the moment. I'm not sure why, as most 'gurus' have rarely dived caves such as the Rodel, where sidemount is absolutely necessary.

It is not just necessary for the awkward carry (walk up a riverbed for 100 metres or so and then crawl on your belly for another 70 metres or so and then crawl/stoop the rest of the way) but underwater too.

It is actually one of the easiest to access sites in the Herault, but if you don't like Trou Madame at low water, forget this one.

I love the place.

Rich in the Rodel. Image: Christine Grosart

It is easiest to chain gear to make rapid progress to the sump and knee pads are essential.

The visibility is normally very good but a second thunder storm ruined it for this trip.

It was a milky 4 metres or so, but a good experience for Ash and Rick who hadn't dived it before.

Better conditions in 2012

I took the opportunity to try some photos and more video but the visibility was nowhere near as good as 2012.

But it was fun in any case...

Rick Van Dijk in Rodel cobble squeeze (advisable to dig it open first and keep away from the line which goes through the smallest part...)

Rich in the cobble squeeze. Image: Christine Grosart

Christine enjoying the Rodel

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