Hidden Earth 2025
Ben Honan, Ben Richards, Cecilia Kan, Christopher Bradley, David Wilson, Fiona Hartley, Mike Rogerson (Goaty), James Wilson, Paul Huggins (Huggy), Rebecca Diss, Rhys Tyers, Úna Barker, Ana Teck, Chris Hayes, Julien Jean, Thurston Blount, Lamya Adam, Josie Skirrow
Friday
This year’s Hidden Earth had the biggest Imperial presence for probably the last decade (if not more!) due to the caving exploits of the past year, in three particular talks:
- The annual Slov lecture covering 2025’s expedition, Nova Meja, presented by co-presidents Thurston and Julien
- Ben Honan presenting a talk on a breakthrough in Australia’s deepest cave, Niggly, located in Tasmania
- The annual Meghalaya lecture; in 2025 Ellie Pizey, Ben Richards, and Ana Teck were instrumental to finding and exploring the 13.6km long Lungchung Khur, currently India's 10th longest cave
Not bad!
Via various methods of transportation we gathered at Llangollen Pavilion on Friday evening. This venue is probably better known as the home of the International Eisteddfod, depending on how much Welsh culture you've been exposed to. Hidden Earth used to happen in different locations around the UK (see previous reports) but in recent years there has reportedly been some trouble finding suitable venues, so for the second year in a row HE was held here. For the record it'll also be held here in 2026.
Probably the most complicated transport was Ana taking three flights to get to the UK from Sweden after some drone incursions ("how dare you accuse us!" said the Russians), then a coach to Bradford, then a car to the NPC, then to Eryri national park, thence finally to Llangollen. This enabled two days of caving (Short Drop and Rift Pot) and one mountain hike (the Glyders) prior to Hidden Earth which absolutely exhausted yours truly. Thank goodness it hadn't all been in one day because I would probably have died. It's very worthwhile to make extra time for things like this. Beats work.
We weren't the first to arrive, running into Chris H outside reception on arrival and Ben H shortly thereafter. After establishing ourselves on the smaller field of Tent City (far superior) some intense Slov debriefing immediately occurred, all while we ate cold pasta (much to Diss's disgust). Everywhere I looked there were people I recognised which was overwhelming, but also nice. Later on the Dubz arrived at almost exactly the same time despite driving separately from different places, then Rhys, ChrisB, Una and Cecilia wandered over from the finest last-minute AirBnb software money can afford. Josie appeared, Ben/Lamya/Thurston/Julien showed up, and everyone milled about in reception drinking beer and catching up until the small hours.
Fiona
My only addition to the fantastic introduction by Fiona above is a brief recount of the Cactus as it wound its way to Wales on one Friday evening.
A luxurious pickup outside my flat was delayed by a classic James W last-minute-visit-to-the-throne-room, followed by Julien's best attempt to learn from his elders immediately afterwards. After getting in the car I was informed that the distinctive aroma was in fact the better part of a bottle of milk that had been ripening with age for the better part of two weeks.
En route we stopped off at Northampton to grace with our presence a selection of our newest lags: Laura, Remi and Salwa. It turned out this plan had been made unilaterally and a very perplexed Laura and Remi appeared at their door wrapped up in dressing gowns and confused expressions of disbelief. Salwa was out having dinner with Matti who had flown over from Germany, and so Remi offered us Salwa's cake as a peace offering. Unfortunately we were so behind schedule by this point that we couldn't embarrass the couple at their romantic Nando's dinner and so we charged off into the night, making it to the unpronounceable Welsh town in the final throes of the day.
Ben
Saturday
The main day! Plenty of talks to go at before Ben's in the mid-afternoon and Thulien's Slov talk rounding up the day, as well as the trade hall full of shiny items and all of Llangollen. I've already forgotten the timetable but it was inevitably full of clashes (no discredit to the organisers).
Diss and I went to buy some supplies from Llangollen Aldi - I was asked for ID for some matches which I did not have so I incredulously declared, "I'm 34!" (christ) to great success - while the others dispersed to lots of interesting talks. David had particular interest in the "Jungles, Tin Mines, and Marble Caves: Exploring Peninsular Malaysia’s Forgotten Underground" expedition as he should be emigrating to Singapore within the next six months to finally live with his literal wife Yan Jin.
We were back well in time to attend Pete Talling's talk on his latest expedition to Canaan and Tragadero Z in Peru. They'd come back to the UK about two days before! This was a recce to a different area than his usual Peru expedition and it mostly involved agonising hiking. As I was feeling very sore from descending the red dot route off Glyder Fawr the day before, this held zero appeal for me, but I watched Ana and Diss turn to each other after listening to Pete describe hiking through shin-deep mud for hours up hundreds of metres of elevation and exclaim, "I want to go there!"
We went to a talk on the history of the Gay Outdoor Club and the caving group within, which mooted in its abstract the possibility that "perhaps its [the caving group] disappearance is the evidence that members of the LGBTQ+ community feel fully at home in "mixed" caving clubs and have no need for an organisation of their own." I was disappointed this only got a mention in the last minute while the talk was overrunning because whether society needs LGBTQ+ clubs is a whole talk and more by itself.
Because this overran we had to run upstairs to Ben's packed talk about Tasmania and squeeze in at the back. Great to see though. He opened with some discussion of Niggly cave's history and then went into the digging efforts to find a way through the terminal boulder choke. Of course they did it this year! One caver in particular had been driving the project and the other cavers filmed him entering the new stuff for the first time, which was the first highlight for me. The second was a photograph of the amount of mud on Ben's SRT kit, which silently explained why the breakthrough had taken so many years. Digging really is such a long slog and it's great when people get a reward for their hard work.
I think we had an hour to kill so maybe this was when we went to the Trade Hall. Maybe it was later. I'd already been around earlier and chatted to Ursula at Starless River and to Mary or Jenny of the BCl about the elusive LUCC journals 1 and 2. With this time we admired Ben's portfolio submission and watched some of the SpeleoOlympics. Davey beat Jimmy ("the floor at the bottom of the tube was too slippery for my shoes") but Rhys beat both. I'd bought one of the new Easegill survey buffs bcause I've lost my OFD1 buff and rarely go south anymore, and ended up shilling them to everyone whenever I saw the RRCPC seller wandering past with her box - that's how it was sold to me so obviously it works. Whether it will be a useful navigational buff is yet to be determined but it looks cool.
Then it was time for the Slov talk, which initially didn't seem well-attended, but then a lot of people ran in so I assume another lecture had overrun. I find it hard to determine how well a Slov talk is going down because I know so much about Mig already, but I haven't been out to the mountain since 2019 so I appreciate the roundup.
Fiona
Carrying on from the above - the Slov talk was very well received. The tiny room ended up being packed to capacity, and Thurston and Julien gave a great rundown followed by answering some fantastic questions from the audience.
Later in the day we had an ICCC lags pub meet with Goaty and Huggy joining us to chat all things Slov, get the latest club goss and for us to exchange wild tales from the Hollow Mountain. The time Goaty rigged M16 to Jim Evans playing a penny whistle particularly stuck in my mine - despite Goaty delighted cheers when Jim managed to break said penny whistle by sitting on it, his hopes were similarly crushed by Jim's response that he'd brought a spare.
After we were all conferenced out, the lags all headed off to a tapas place in town, which seemed to be the one location that could cater to such a large and unruly booking of about a dozen. The undergrads initially joined but rapidly bailed on the place after seeing the prices on the menu. In retrospect this was a good call since it turned out to very much be a wine bar rather than a foodie restaurant. Despite this the food was great, and the conversation even greater still.
After we were all small plated to our heart's content, we returned to see "The Stomp" starting to form. Both Dubz managed to have simultaneous thoughts of chickens, or something like that, and before long they were removing items of clothing. Many lags ran away to a quiet upstairs location to chat and fill out German citizenship questionnaires, after which the tents beckoned and the stompers apparently made for the canal in varying states of undress.
Ben
Sunday
Yes, I forgot to carry on writing my report for several days. So, Sunday. It was quite damp in the morning but very pretty with mist shrouding the surrounding hills. We started by going to Rostam's talk on Expedition Medicine, another rammed lecture. I was fortunate to get a seat on the edge of a table near the back with my legs dangling, but not really because once half an hour had passed my ankle was really protesting about hanging and I was feeling too hot so I slipped away and chatted to Kat Hawkins at reception for the remainder. Nothing wrong with the talk itself but I missed the most gruesome bits, notably somebody's nerve dangling out of their elbow.
I don't think I went to any of the other talks so I'll mention a couple of other things. If you read Descent and/or digging threads on UK Caving you probably don't need to go to the UK regional roundups as they summarise what you've already read, but you get the extra fun anecdotes and the personal touch of names to faces. I wish I'd been able to go to Kai Trusson's talk on getting younger people into caving, and Fleur's talk about writing a good GPF application also sounded like it would actually be quite useful even for clubs like ICCC who already write applications every year. I almost wanted to go on an expedition again after this weekend.
One of Ben's photos got a prize! And so did the Lungchung Khur survey! Well done Ben!
We packed up over lunchtime, which involved a lot of faff with stuff in the car; packing up all the sleeping things, dividing the caving gear that Diss and I had combined to enable Ana to go underground, consolidating the food into just one bag, making sure the identical dry bags went home with the right person. Et cetera. It would be nice to have a taller tent for things like this - certainly being able to stand up would make rain much less annoying when it comes to going to bed - but it's probably not super important. Finally, Diss and I got Ana's suitcases into James's car for a trip to London and Cave House, and left everyone to it so as to get home at very civilised times.
I'd go again if I was guaranteed to see as many friends every time.
