Fantastic trip to Slovenia, too much snow for much serious caving (entrances on Migovec were buried under 1.5m of snow!), but some great winter mountaineering.
Check out the Brilliant Photos, Trip report to come when it's written.
After a rather faffy start on Friday, we were finally crawling past lorries on the M4 when with a sudden 'ker-clunk' our sexy Ford Transit sounded like a WWII tank. Loitering at the Reading services while waiting for the AA was not the most auspicious start to a caving weekend, but with a bit of carefully applied wire we were soon on our way! Weekend went brilliantly; we had St Cuthberts & Shatter cave leaders to take us underground, so got to see some extremely pretty formations!
A full report of the sofa burning debauchery and how ol' sea-dog Trevor nearly ended up with an eye-patch with appear as soon as one of the usual suspects writes it...
Desperate to go deep again, ICCC returned to Yorkshire. Frigging freezing; but Yorks managed to avoid the snow that was falling across North Wales & Cornwall. Alas, no photos, but a fine report instead.
Lovely trip up to Yorkshire for the fireworks weekend; lots of rain had fallen over the previous week so we were rather restricted in our choice of cave. Gaping Ghyll, Easegill, Tatham Wife & Bull Pot were all knocked off over the weekend though!
Lovely weekend away in the Brecon Beacons, South Wales. Early start on Saturday followed by two enormous trips down the Ogof Flynnon Ddu cave system, followed by an exciting scramble through the Little Neath river cave on Sunday.
Storming day trip to the Mendips, 18 people down Swildons hole. Most of the freshers did sump 1 & explored beyond, everyone out by 6pm in time for tea!
With the help of the National Express & B.Ogbourne's Tardis golf, six of us made it down to the national caving conference being held in a school Churchill, Somerset. Rik gave a light-hearted talk about our discoveries in Slovenia this summer; many other presentations & videos were viewed, and some truly awful dancing enjoyed.
For those that missed out on the true joy of exploring Captain Kangaroo deep within mountain Migovec this summer; Richard Venn has recorded his pushin' song, set to the tune of Flowers on the wall by the mighty Statler Brothers. You may have come across it on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, or on the Underground Camp 2004 mix-tapes...
ICCC is back from their Slovenia 2005 Expedition. Captain Kangaroo, a window off the impressive Pico pitch at -150m in Gardener's World was pushed for over 200m of passage, currently ending at a squeeze before a large pitch. Though we believe this to be Concorde Pitch, there are still going leads. KK also exhibits the first clear evidence of seismic activity in the caves of Migovec - large cracks are evident in the wall of the tight but extremely interesting rift-way.
A lot of time was spent developing entrances in a new caving area, Area K. Over 15 entrances were logged, all of which offer scope for further cave development - though most require a degree of digging. Most impressive were K9 and K12/K13. K9 is a ~15m pitch into a small chamber that connects directly to a parallel shaft. From the bottom of the parallel shaft, an extensive and multiple level boulder choke exists that continues West. K12 [Victoria Coach Station] is an impressive snow-sloped cave, with a beautiful dome ~50m across with up to a ~20m high ceiling. There is an extremely drafty bedding plane dig in the north of the cave. K13 is a small passage entered on the hill above K12, it drops into a antechamber [The Arrivals Hall] above K12, which can then be descended into through a 1m across hole in the floor.
Much to type up & many stories to tell - expect a full load of information over the next couple of weeks, but for now relish the fantastic Photos!
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