Dežela Zlatoroga
Summary
The 2023 expedition, Dežela Zlatoroga (Land of the Zlatorog, named after the legendary golden horned chamois) took place from July 1st to August 6th. Aside from the pushing aims (detailed below), this year in particular marked a generational shift, where the proportion of experienced to inexperienced or even first-time expeditionary cavers was unusually low. As such, there was a great focus on teaching vital skills such as bolting, surveying and leadership, to ensure that the know-how of running such an expedition was not lost. Despite this, many new passages were discovered and surveyed, adding to the already extensive topographical map.
Unfortunately several catastrophic storms ripped through camp, damaging and soaking equipment, rendering the planned underground camp unfeasible. As a result, the deeper locations in the system were more challenging to reach, but several were pushed nevertheless during ambitious bounce trips.
The expedition benefited from two Alex Pitcher Awards from the Ghar Parau Foundation, awarded to Astrid and Kevin.
Primadona
Below Hallelujah
The Dry Lead: Delta Blues
This branch was extensively pushed in 2022, but a small unexplored passage leading off of a major chamber within ‘The Deep Awakens’ at ~-700m was the primary focus of this effort. This lead was situated below the intended camp location, but was pushed during a bounce trip from the surface by James and Matti. Climbing into the roof of the known passage (Cantina Canyon), a large trench halted progress within a 2m x 3m passage during the previous expedition. This trench was traversed across by this year’s team. Here a short drop (Who Dies First) led into a beautiful active river, which on the downstream side formed the top of a known waterfall within ‘The Deep Awakens’.
About 40m upstream of where one drops in, a ~20m aven is reached from where the water falls in. No obvious route leads upwards to the source of the water. Moving past this, a tighter, dry passage leads away from the water, and meanders for ~60m until a short, undescended drop is reached. Part of the way along the passage a steep climb leads into a large unexplored chamber. These are two excellent future leads, as the 3D survey indicates that there is no obvious known passage below this which might be dropped into. ~116m was surveyed here (Delta Blues) this year, with great promise for more!
The Wet Lead: A Dry Place & Blossom Hill
This was the location of two remaining leads along another branch just below the would-be-underground camp location, where the goings were a little more challenging, as it required abseiling close enough to a waterfall to get wet enough for discomfort. Similarly, since there was no underground camp, it had to be pushed during a challenging bounce - Ana, Astrid and Ellie took the challenge, unfortunately killing both leads quite quickly. The first (A Dry Place) descends to a rocky slope that constricts unspectacularly until impassable. The second (Blossom Hill) is an upclimb that concludes in a small chamber with no way on. A number of metres were added from these, but it’s unlikely this will be the subject of exploration in the upcoming expeditions.
Mandare
Being relatively close to the surface and hence achievable in a bounce of comfortable length, Mandare contained an unascended aven. James and Davey, teaching themselves to bolt climb, successfully placed 3 bolts and a natural, before reaching and securing a ledge from which to continue. Chris and Astrid joined the trip to try and break through a constriction at the rift's end. Both had a great time breaking through with the hammer and chisel, despite the lead's death 2m later. The bolt climb did not lead to great new caves to explore, but provided an excellent starter trip to introduce Astrid to Slovenian Expeditionary caving.
Brezno Pod Vrhom Planje
Humpty Dumpty & House Of Cards
In October 2021 ICCC cavers visited the new cave, Vrh Planja, located on the far side of Kuk, as part of the Super Action. That first trip took them to a junction of routes in Prazen List, with one route being pushed in 2022 to Bingo Flamingo and Osmica. Another route with one up and down pitch led to a choked gallery. In the choked gallery they dug through soft mud to a boulder blockage with a space beyond.
In 2022 David W and Chris H broke through the dig from Prazen List, after about 2 hours of crowbar and rock stacking action. The initial breakthrough revealed an extension to the gallery including a large, but unstable looking pitch in a shattered chamber. Given the boulders looked like they may have a great fall, the passage was named Humpty Dumpty.
This year David, Jimmy, Chris H and Ellie returned to push. Planje is in a logistically challenging location and required a setup trip to both cairn the path and drop off some pushing gear (a drill, rope, 5L of water and some daren drums filled with food and drill batteries) at the higher entrance (Planje Jama). The entrance chamber of Planje Jama was evaluated for future camping and deemed unsuitable - only really useful as a storm shelter.
With the aid of a sherpa (Matti M) the four returned the following day. Chris and David surveyed the Humpty Dumpty Gallery, finding a 1cm gap above the mud at the end drafting into a new space beyond. A return with proper digging implements would be needed to make a trench through the mud.
Meanwhile Jimmy, with support from Ellie in a bothy bag, bolted the loose pitch at the pushing front. A 6 bolt traverse in the only good rock, the ceiling, was followed by a Y-hang to a ledge and a few rebelays to the floor. David and James surveyed this shaft (P30), calling it House of Cards due to loose rocks at the head of the pitch. There weren’t really any leads off the shaft, except beneath where the team had from which looked super loose. However at the bottom the shaft turned a corner and a small streamway rift pitch came off.
Ellie and Chris dropped down this short pitch (P6) to land in a streamway passage. A series of small passages led off, and in the floor a route through boulders led to a large pitch. Traversing this and going around the corner, the abandoned streamway was punctuated by a hole (the same pitch) and over this ended at another hole (also the same pitch). The team suspected this may be another entrance to the Bingo Flamingo rift but perhaps from higher up. Chris and Ellie exited while David and James finished surveying this cliffhanger.
Overall 89m was surveyed in Humpty Dumpty, and 103m in House of Cards.
Monatip/M16
Auld Alliance, Neu Alliance & Fool's Gold
Auld Alliance - four visits, three surveys, two alliances, and one pitch. Following the last visit by Will & Will in 2016 that left us with a tempting “big pitch, lead?” on the logbook, four cavers from Expo 2023 (Chris, Ellie, DW, and Astrid) were determined to discover what awaited down in M16. The first two visits featured rebolting, discovery of Neu Alliance, and pleasant M16 caving. The latter two trips consisted of the discovery of Fool’s Gold pitch, walking about precarious false floors, and an avalanche above Rock n Roll. We had to resurvey Auld Alliance thrice, with no/inadequate data on first two attempts. Desperate, on the last trip they surveyed up Fool's Gold pitch, Auld Alliance, and Neu Alliance in one go.
Auld Alliance has two small 10~ metre pitches that can be drippy when wet. No other lead was spotted. Chris went for a climb around a side passage and ended up in a window of one the pitches. Slight rope rubs exist at both pitch heads despite fruitless whacking, though the current rigging and bolting were significant improvements compared to what was found.
Continuing down, the Fool's Gold pitch is reached at the end of a false floor. “New cave!” was the first thought when peaking down the spacious pitch before reaching turnaround time. On return they found that the 30~m pitch drops straight down to Titanic. It did however create a route avoiding the awkward rebelay at Wishing Well and causing avalanche down Rock and Roll.
Neu Alliance opens up into a chamber with a dead end down a muddy squeeze on the left and a possible horizontal passage above a vertical climb up to the right aven. Worth visiting again.
The team also managed a quick visit to the chamber owning the NCB connection passage. Down a crawl under boulders was a howling draft, though they deemed it too sketchy to attempt without proper planning. Another reason to come back next year.
Surface Exploration
With a large number of freshers per leader, this expo had far more surface bashing than many past expeditions. Last expedition, Ben Richards began the surface atlas project, compiling one definitive source of all surface information from the various scattered sources, and re-exploring entrances with dubious data.
After the last expo, the limestone pavement was identified as the best place to focus efforts this year. With shockingly few GPS-logged entrances, few records of previous trips, and an endless number of caves to check, this area has great potential. The presence of 120m deep PF10 on the edge of the pavement is also proof that large caves are present.
Having logged 9 entrances last year on the pavement, a further 27 entrances were recorded this year. Many of these were killed, but others will be fully explored next year with more equipment and caver-power.
One of the main takeaways from surface bashing this year is that the current method of manually adding photos, GPS logs, and descriptions for every new cave is unsustainable and there needs to be a way for various independent groups to simultaneously enter data into the surface atlas, preferably on a phone given one is required for taking photos anyway. Work is now underway on creating a mobile app in time for the next expedition.
Icehorn
A previously unnoticed chamber behind a large ice plug was revealed as melting continued throughout the summer. In a chamber of about 10x10x10m, various crawls and avens were found leading off and connecting to multiple entrances on the surface, however subsequent trips killed all ongoing leads. Great surface bashing experience for many slovices.
Bonsai Pot
A re-discovery of a large, 10m long scar-shaped opening in the ground, dropping down about 5m to a series of small chambers. Old spits were found at the top of a large pitch, dashing our hopes, however, there is no known record of the cave so it was likely explored by the Slovenes many decades ago. The cave was eventually killed after a few pitches and chambers, making the cave over 50m long.
Moleman’s Handshake
A promising dig was found in the side of a shake-hole beside the notable “Jaws of Death” entrance, potentially providing a way to the source of the billowing icy draft past the impenetrable snow plug and hanging death. A tiny opening with a black void behind was enlarged enough to crawl into, only to find a human-sized tube continuing out into the next shake-hole over after 10m. This gave some good digging experience to our Slovices and a makes for a great through-trip.
PF10
Having been abandoned since the 90s as the old system went big and the obvious pitch series ended in a boulder choke, this 120m deep cave has un-pushed leads on the survey that no one has ever looked at. The cave was also incorrectly GPS tagged for many years, having only been corrected during an armchair caving session after the last expedition. The first couple of pitches were re-bolted this year as part of the focus on the limestone pavement, but relentless storms prevented us from reaching the leads nearer the bottom of the cave.
Coincidence Cave
Although once considered surface bashing, at 224m long Coincidence Cave has developed into a proper cave in its own right. After all easy leads had been killed in previous years, enthusiasm for Coincidence had dried up. The final lead remaining was a pile of boulders with a howling draught coming out of them, fortunately enough to entice Matti and Astrid to revisit the cave near the beginning of the expo. After removing the easier boulders, further progress required capping of larger rocks, and conversations with the Slovenes led to a “banging trip” together with the Slovenes. This removed many of the large boulders blocking the way, and subsequent trips by both English and Slovene cavers have now removed much of the resulting rubble, leading to a very promising dig that continues to draught strongly, with reports of a possible ongoing passage visible behind. Perry also led a bolt climbing trip to push the 1st and 2nd avens in coincidence, and although they died, the additional bolt climbing experience gained is very valuable to the expedition for the coming years.