Pivo Mož 10-07-2015

Summary of Exploration

The 20th ICCC to Migovec, North West Slovenia took place between July 10th and August 16th 2015. A total of 23 British cavers and 4 Slovenes contributed to the exploration of the cave system, which amounts to 2.2 km of additional passage below 600 m and several metres gained on surface digs. At 30.8 km, the Migovec-Vrtnarija system is now over a symbolic 30km long and this year’s expedition further confirms its position as longest in Slovenia.

For the first time in Migovec exploration two underground camps were operational at the same time: Camp X-Ray at -650 m, a 4 berth camp set up in a central position, and Camp Deep Core II at -850 m near Red Cow, a 2 berth camp set up by divers Jarvist Frost and Connor Roe for future use as access to the Watership Down sump, and used this year by them as a staging post for the northern extensions. Camp X-Ray remained the main exploration camp. All leads however are now more than 2.5 hours away, raising the possibility of setting up another camp, closer to the southern leads in Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Worn rope was replaced in a number of areas during the expedition. Most particularly, a couple of rebelays on Pico (- 200 m) and the ultimate hang on Zimmer (- 550 m) were replaced, and considerable rebolting & rerigging was done in the lower-level phreatic section between Big Rock and Colarado Sump, and the (hitherto unprotected) climbs up into Republica (- 800 m). We had six new cavers (who only started caving in 2014) on expedition this year. Five of them managed to camp at X-Ray, all of them contributing to the exploration, by either helping with setting up or dismantling the camp, and exploring new cave themselves. A sixth fresher helped the expedition objectives with exploring the surface leads.

Prospects

Prospects for future years of exploration are as good as any other year. Although leads close to X-Ray are progressively exhausted, the possibility of a lower entrance to the cave is stronger than ever, with a shortest distance to the surface being 282m above the southern extensions. In the North, ‘new cave’ was visited by passing a partially flooded section of cave. This area appears to be the bottom of other active cave systems, which from our mapping, must correspond to cave passage beneath the area to the north of Tolminski Kuk. An unexpected succession of crawls and larger chambers - Lazarus - was also found off this deep level, and left as a going lead for 2016.

2015 Findings and Report

2015 Expedition report Github Repo