Come rain or shine, we go caving. In this case mostly rain which lead to some difficulties. A Saturday trip to Giants had to be cut short due to concerns about the water level, however a successful trip to Oxlow introduced many to the delights of SRT. On Sunday our Peak Cavern permit proved useless with the cave being inaccesible due to flooding but undeterred we went to Carlswark Cavern instead. It may not be as big as Peak but it was just as fun!

This trip marked the beginning of the SRT season with a classic Lost John's exchange. We rigged Centipede and Dome, and down beyond to the main streamway. Most turned back at the Battleaxe, but a few brave souls descending a booming Valhalla and marvelled at the shuddering bulk of the waterfall. Clare's birthday was celebrated in style with candles & cake at the Battleaxe Traverse. We delved into the delights of Notts 2 on Sunday. Here a novel system of ladders, scaffolding and cinder blocks leads down the vertical entrance shaft and into the very enjoyable and pretty streamway.

Gathering together all the various results of our summer expedition is taking a long time—the complexity of the total, now connected, system is requiring a lot of effort to produce a survey on the same projection. We have thousands of photos to edit & select from, hundreds of expedition reports & stories to gather. However, motivated by some immoveable deadlines, we have managed to get together a provisional written report (as submitted to our Union as our summer tour report), and produced a provisional Extended-Elevation survey (with Slovene labels, for submission to the Jamar magazine).

We'll continue working on our surveys, extending & editing our expedition report, and try and get some of the many photos uploaded here.

As if compensating for last trip this time we ferried 18 cavers to Whitewalls in Llangattock. On Saturday we crowded into Agen Allwedd and split into two teams, one having a bimble around near the second choke and another storming up and down Turkey Streamway. Sunday saw a return to Ogof Pen Eryr with it's corkscrew climb charming many freshers. A 'crack' team also descended into Ogof Cnwc to scout the way to Daren.

Another year, another clutch of freshers to introduce to the wonders of Sports Caving! Our ranks were rather decimated by fresher flu, but we still pulled off a lovely trip to Wales getting to experience the Ogof Ffynnon Ddu Streamway in all its roaring greatness, and then sample the aquatic depths of Porth yr Ogof on the Sunday. Pizza and crumble, followed by caving games enjoyed by the cosy log fire of the WSG hut.

ICCC is 50! What better way is there for a caving club to celebrate its anniversary than by going caving? So we treked to Yorkshire to find the NPC overrun by hordes of prior members (almost unbroken back to the early 70s). On Saturday we rigged Flood, Bar and Stream, then returned to the hut (via the New Inn) to wolf a massive curry, and crack out the slide projector. A truly wonderful weekend, all the better because we just got together, like we always have, to go caving.

Our 18 year Odyssey in the Hollow Mountain (Tolminski Migovec) has reached a notable milestone with the connection of Vrtnarija to System Migovec, making it the longest cave in Slovenia!

It's difficult to put into words how much this means to the people who have spent years (even decades!) dedicating their free time to this exploration project. Clewin (first expedition 1997) put it beautifully: "Everybody has a made a contribution, from surveying hundreds of meters of horizontal passages to pushing ridiculously tight rifts or squalid muddy dead ends to feeding hungry cavers in the bivvy."

And so off to Migovec again!
We start the expedition with Vrtnarija at 11025/888 m and the recently extended Sysmig at 11846 / 970 m. Searching for the elusive connection between the two systems (and thus forging the longest cave in Slovenia) and deep camping in Vrtnarija to continue the exploration of the 2010 and 2011 finds are the main aims of this 5 week expedition. However, there are many other projects on the side, and we will be tweeting updates from our mountaintop bivouac.

This embarrasing skeleton of a trip report is published to amuse, by showing how uninformative a trip report can be.

Back to Mallorca, our first return since 2005. Sun, Sea, Sailing, Sports Climbing, Canyoning & more caves than you can shake a Stop at!