Camping in Elk River

 Cave diving, Victoria  1 Response »
Nov 252013
 
Camping in Elk River

After a year of hard work and a lot of time in the cave, this was our 10th trip into Elk River for 2013. The cave has been extended both upstream and downstream and the spaces on the map have been gradually filled in. We capped off the year with Dave and Sandy carrying in some very large tanks and four of us sleeping at the far end of the cave, just above sump 5. Camping in there had been discussed a number of times but I never felt we were going to gain much by doing it while we could still reach the end and back in a single day. Then our last trip was a very efficient quick [read more…]

Elk River trip report

 Cave diving, Caving, Victoria  2 Responses »
Oct 142013
 

I’m going to have to interrupt my recounting of our Indonesia adventures (Part 1 and Part 2 so far) to bring you up to date on this weekend in Elk River. We had an epic 17 hour trip underground to achieve the stated mission of extending the line in sump 9. My last trip into Elk was back in June, when I extended invitations to a couple of interstate visitors only to be rained out by over 200mm of water the week before. The rising waters through the early parts of the cave caused us the rethink the trip at sump 1. Not wanting to repeat that disappointment I suggested postponing future push trips until the worst of winter was over. In July [read more…]

Elk River in Flood

 Cave diving, Victoria  No Responses »
Jun 172013
 
Elk River in Flood

We were back in Elk River Cave this weekend just gone, with big plans and lots of tasks on the to do list. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas with torrential rains from Thursday. We entered the cave on Saturday morning with a huge pile of gear to find the water level was only slightly raised in the first bit of the streamway – good news. After changing from dry caving gear into dive gear we headed off down the stream towards the first sump…only to find the first roof sniff had become a dive. The dry cavers left us at that point and the diving team of five continued to sump one. From the second roof sniff to sump [read more…]

Self portraits in Elk River

 Cave diving, Victoria  1 Response »
May 202013
 
Self portraits in Elk River

About the trip Although I didn’t take very many photos on our last weekend trip into Elk River, I wanted to share a couple more of them with you. Last week I talked about getting shots of Sandy coming through sumps 2 and 3 and the difficulty of staying ahead of the silt to get a shot through clear water. On the same trip I was also keen to get a shot in the first downstream sump. Jim Arundale was the first person to pass sump 1. Over a number of attempts he pushed his way through the short underwater distance to the other side. The most pertinent feature of the first sump isn’t the length though, it’s the height. [read more…]

High speed underwater photography in Elk River

 Cave diving, Victoria  3 Responses »
May 132013
 
High speed underwater photography in Elk River

About the site We were back in Elk River streamway this weekend, hoping to survey, tidy up some line and have another look at the end. Elk River currently consists of 6 downstream sumps that we have passed, and a seventh sump that surfaces twice in air bells and continues underwater. It’s over 1.5kms of hard caving to the known end. There are lots of interesting bits – crawling over gravel dragging tanks, sinking in deep mud, squeezing through vertical rift passages and lowering gear through breakdown piles. My favourite bit of the second trip was my push dive at the end into the sixth sump. Unlike the muddy soup I’d been crawling, wading and wriggling through sump 6 was [read more…]

Elk River past sump 4

 Cave diving, Victoria  8 Responses »
Apr 152013
 
Elk River past sump 4

About the cave By the looks of things, Elk River is going to be taking up a lot of my time this year. Elk (aka the Murrindal Potholes Eastern Master Cave) is the streamway system underlying the Buchan Potholes Reserve. The streamway was first discovered in 2006 by the VCLT and the sump first passed by Jim Arundale, later joined in exploration by Agnes Milowka. This weekend just gone the cave has been extended to nearly 1.7kms with a fantastic dive through sump 7 and beyond by Steve Fordyce to add 115m of line, assisted by Ken Murrey. As the end gets further and further from home, the effort required to put new cave on the map is going to increase [read more…]

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