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…]

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…]