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Expedition Plans for the Ellis Basin Mt Arthur

- SPARC is sponsoring the extreme cave team for their attempt to explore the Tomo Thyme and Exhale Air cave system down to over 1000 metres in depth   

- Cave Notes - An up to date summary of caving in NZ for the 2009 year

- Other expeditions planned for the summer 2009/2010

Cave Notes September 2009

Cave Diving is continuing in the Waitomo Headwaters with a result sump three in Slabstone being penetrated for about 30 metres. A squeeze was negotiated but at a junction on the way it was lost due to bad visibility. Sump does continue nice and big beyond the squeeze. Just need another dry summer for another attempt.

More people searching for caves and new entrances for the Millars Waterfall system. Guides from Black Water Rafting in Waitomo have been spending a lot of time searching the back of Clayton Greenes looking for extensions to the system.

New cave discovered in the Mangoataki Bluffs just out of Pio Pio.

Another 880 metres of cave has been explored in Waitomo. The cave has been known since the 70’s. It was then rediscovered by an HTG party. Kip Mandeno and Kieran Mckay returned to the cave and a way past the limit of exploration was found by Kip. Kieran then returned with some enthusiastic OPC cavers and extended the cave by 200 – 300 metres to a rockfall. A survey was due. Kieran dragged back Shannon from BWR and Chris from OPC. Over a 2 hour period they surveyed their way through the known part of the cave, its only  200 or 300 metres said Kieran. 400 metres put them at the first exploration limit, 150 metres and 2 hours later they were at the next limit and faced with what looked like an impenetrable rockfall.  Chris at the end of the tape didn’t even flinch, he just slid into the smallest hole he could find and two stations later they were looking down into a 3 metre wide 10 metre high canyon with no footprints. A couple of hours surveying added another 200 metres to the book and just when things started getting really good, i.e. big and easy the cave stopped in a nasty looking pile of rocks. Kieran

wiggled through a very small hole and found a devious way through, unfortunately the stream was flowing down through lots of small rocks. There were definitely possibilities of digging up towards black spaces but time and the fact they were a long way from home made them decide to leave it for another day. The cave does end very close to the mainstream end of Kuratahi. A trip is planned to look at all the ends of Kuratahi in the hope of a connection. The through trip would be pretty awesome but quite hard!!

More discoveries in the Puaroa forest. Small caves and some quite significant caves have been found. Cavers from the Legendary BWR co and Absolute Adventure have been exploring the bush country around Tawa Kananda and it looks like a new entrance has been discovered.

Bulmer continues to grow with the discovery of the late 08 series right at the end of the cave which is heading out under poverty basin and replica hill. Apparently there are leads everywhere..

2km added to Bulmer during the 2008/09 expedition. Most of the additions were in the Jaguar stream headwaters with a connection to the upstream part of colonial stream and a connection from Master Wrecker through to the Jaguar Stream area.

On an HTG club trip to each cave in the Pio Pio district, members getting a little bored of the crowds checked out a side passage. They followed an inlet upstream, passed what could almost be called a squeeze, climbed up a rift a bit, then found themselves looking up at daylight which was unfortunately out of reach many metres above. New entrance? Old entrance not on map? They don’t know.

Toro Toro road caves also turned up a new entrance. During a caving course being run by Kieran Mckay for Topec, the participants took a wrong bearing from the escape entrance to the most western upstream entrance, instead they ended up in a stream sink that didn’t quite fit the map, they kept going though, up and down climbs, through some squeezes. What they were going through still didn’t quite fit what was on the map then eventually they did arrive at a place that made sense, the escape entrance junction. They had just found another entrance to the system, adding another couple of hundred metres to the length of Okupata Cave in the Tongariro National park area. This has been increased in length substantially by an OPC team.

April saw two return trips to Bulmer. Kieran returned with Louisa Last and explored a dry canyon in the floor of the passage leading off from the main masterwrecker series. Pretty.

Kieran got down 50 metres and along a short section of narrow rift before running out of rope 5 metres from the bottom of a 30 metre pitch. A large stream could be heard close by.

NSG has just completed an annual expedition to the area at the head of Eyles creek. It is commonly known as the Villa Marie area and has holes like Magic Round About, Frigid Air and Villa Maria cave itself.

New passage found in the Ruakuri Cave.  

Lindsay, Marcus, Francis and Kieran retuned to the large passages found at the end of the summer expedition. A link was found through to the top of the space oddity. Lindsay did a cimb and found huge passages and a link was discovered through to the wildwest.  

Back in Bulmer the discoveries have been coming fast. Another team from the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre went back into Bulmer and stayed underground for a week. During this period they surveyed 2.3 kilometres of huge chambers, bug high canyons and very tight narrow passages. They climbed and abseiled, in fact the worked very hard for the passage they found. The normal octopus room camp was only occupied for two nights. The team set up a camp right in the middle of all the new passages so only 5 mins from their sleeping bags they were walking into virgin passage.

Lindsay then returned a week later and during a long trip, surveyed down hill from the end of a huge rift called space oddity. After many hours they found themselves in the international streamway at a point Dave Smith and Kieran Mckay had explored back in 1987. The length of Bulmer now sits around the 65 kilometre mark.