Resupplying tanks into Elk River

 Cave diving, Caving, Victoria  2 Responses »
Oct 212014
 
Resupplying tanks into Elk River

After a trip over to Eurotek to talk about Elk River, and a couple of cancelled trips where for various reasons we didn’t get in the cave, it felt like it was time to go caving rather than talk about it. Our last trip into the cave was a push trip back in winter, where high water levels led to a sporting trip home back up the waterfalls. Steve and I laid some line and we also used a lot of tanks. Too many to carry out in one go – some of those empties were still in the cave. So this trip was to both retrieve the empties and replace them with full tanks for next month’s push trip. [read more…]

Eurotek this weekend

 Cave diving, Other, Victoria  1 Response »
Sep 162014
 
Eurotek this weekend

I’m currently in the midst of a whirlwind tour of the caves of The Lot, France and taking huge numbers of photos to share with you shortly. First though, this weekend I will be in Birmingham at Eurotek. I’m speaking at 11am on Sunday morning which is hopefully enough time for the assembled company to recover from any indiscretions on Saturday evening. My talk will be covering our adventures in Elk River which you may have been following along here – exploration beyond sump 6 and into sump 7, survey and mapping, dye tracing and of course photography. If you happen to be in the area, come and say hi…I look forward to seeing you there!  

Waterfalls in Elk River

 Cave diving, Caving, Victoria  1 Response »
Aug 122014
 
Waterfalls in Elk River

I wrote about our June push dive in Elk River a few weeks back. The photo on the top of that post is one of my current favourites. It may not be artistic but it definitely captures the sentiment of the moment. The feeling of surfacing with an empty reel is not to be missed! Photos are easy to sort through and post relatively quickly after the event. Editing the video into sense and finding enough to tell a story takes a little longer. So above is the video from the same trip. Once I was sitting in a comfortable place and had a chance to look through what I’d captured, it became apparent that the video was mostly about [read more…]

Mud, mud, mud in DD4 cave

 Cave diving, Caving, Victoria  2 Responses »
Jul 012014
 
Mud, mud, mud in DD4 cave

About the cave DD4 is a streamway cave in western Victoria, close to the South Australian border. Unlike the crystal clear sinkholes of Mt Gambier DD4 is a small stream winding its way through limestone…and lots and lots of mud. There is a lot of walking passage through the cave, as well as a lot of areas where rockfall leaves you climbing over or under. And then there’s the mud. Lots of it. About the trip We visited DD4 for a reason – to follow up on sump exploration there from several years ago. Agnes Milowka put nearly 70m of line into the terminal sump of the cave and reported that it continued. It seemed about time to see how [read more…]

Exploration in Elk River

 Cave diving, Caving, Victoria  No Responses »
Jun 242014
 
Exploration in Elk River

I’ve been a little busy recently, as you might have gathered from the sporadic updates to the site. I’ve been bouncing from Victoria to Tasmania to South Australia and back again caving and diving. So instead of posting things in the order in which they happened, I’m going to start with the most recent and fill in the gaps over the next few weeks. This photo above is my favourite from this weekend just gone – the moment of triumphant return with empty reel in hand. The photo was taken (and the line was laid) in Elk River cave in eastern Victoria. As per previous posts here, here and here, we’ve been putting a bit of work into this cave [read more…]

Diving the end of Elk River

 Cave diving, Victoria  1 Response »
May 282014
 
Diving the end of Elk River

Last weekend was our twelfth trip into Elk River cave. We missed the Easter trip with a few people away (out on the Nullarbor, in my case) and it was good to be back two months after the last trip. In March Steve spent his time beyond sump 5 pinning down and re-routing the existing line to make the inevitable zero-vis exits as painless as possible. This work, and the stash of tanks staged at the end, set us up well for a push beyond the end of the line this trip. In addition to putting Andreas in sump 7 to push, I also intended to accompany him with camera in hand. On previous trips I had carried the camera [read more…]

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