The Bloody French Cave

Parking by the river Vis

The CLPA had been keen for the last few years for us to go and visit the Event de Cambon.
Frank Vasseur had dived the short, shallow sump about 20 years ago and to their knowledge, nobody had ever been back.
Now, even in his 20s Frank was no slouch. In fact, he was probably considerably fitter and harder than he is now. 
I did make a feeble protest that I couldn’t see what we would achieve that Frank could not, but it was information that the cavers wanted rather than caverns measureless. They were intent on digging down from the top of the gorge and this cave was important to them to know if it connected or not.
We said we would take a look.
According to the description, Frank had surfaced and immediately encountered several climbs which got higher and higher. As he was alone, he made a retreat.
Nobody knows what happened after that and Frank could not remember much about the cave at all.
The CLPA wanted us to survey the sump, the dry passage beyond and get a compass direction. 

Rich and Chris carrying gear

How hard could it be?
So, we met up in St Maurice de Navacelles to have coffee with our sherpas – or ‘slaves’ as Jean prefers to call them and picked up a Disto-X for surveying beyond the sump.
In convoy, we set off down the twisty hairpin bends of the Cirque de Navacelles and parked up at river level by the Vis. The walk to the cave entrance was relatively flat but about 800m.
Some enthusiastic deforestation then ensued as the French began clearing the snaggy branches and cleared away a grubby little cave entrance. It had filled with stones from the winter rains but by the time Rich and I had rigged our cylinders, the entrance was dug out again.
I went for a quick look inside.
Hmm. This was going to be a fun kitting up spot. Nowhere to stand up, nowhere really to sit. It was what we were used to in the UK but it was a long way to go to dive something like this in France. Oh well.
We passed the gear in to the cave and Rich went ahead and kitted up first. I remained just upslope of him, regularly kicking stones down at him while he thrashed about trying to get his fins on.
Frank’s old line was there but we needed to lay our own knotted line for surveying. The sump pool had gone to zero so surveying was looking less and less likely.
Once ready and crammed into the tiny muddy pool, we set off downslope through a squeeze with a rubble floor and sloping roof.
The sump was about 40m long as described and 7m deep. The water cleared after the squeeze and had better dimensions.

CLPA dig out the entrance to the Cambon

On surfacing, there was a near vertical rift – made of mud – and a ladder hanging down from above which was just out of reach and no means of getting to it. It looked as if Frank had dived the sump when water levels were somewhat higher.
Noses turned up, we returned to the start of the sump pool to report our findings. The viz had gone to zero and not good enough for a proper survey.
Then, as if our failure was not enough, then began the thunder. Torrential rain and thunder and lightening crashed all around us and the Cirque de Navacelles while we tried to pack our gear up.

Chris kits up

Rich and I elected to walk back in our wetsuits as our clothes were sodden.
We got back to the van and took it in turns to get into the back and change. It was miserable and getting colder.
Jean invited everyone back to his house for a welcome cup of tea and to dry out a little. We made it up to ourselves by watching the video we shot of the new passage in the Perdreau.
Jean was in danger of having a power cut, so we headed back to our campsite to inspect the damage.
Water had infiltrated the front porch of the tent, which was not entirely unexpected and Rich had already moved electrical items to higher ground that morning.
Water had also infiltrated Rich’s Rude Nora caving torch battery which was now no longer working. Meh.
We decided to drown our sorrows in a local pizzeria – but each and every single restaurant in the region were closed. So, back to the campsite for a tin of sausage and beans and leffe beer. We’ve had better days, but that’s the nature of cave diving. It ain’t sun and stalictites all the time.

Rich kitting up in the sump

Chris kits up on dry land

Chris hands Rich his helmet

Rich sorts his reel

Chris sets off into the sump

Into the Blue...

Rich in Perdreau sump 1

Today was an excellent day - but not without a few teething troubles to get around first.
I picked up a missed call from one of my work colleagues, who was asking where I was. France, was the reply. It seems the great shift screw up had raised its ugly head again, but I doubt I have much to worry about as I am certain I booked this leave. In fact, I booked it in January. So, I tried to forget about it and concentrate on the cave diving.
We headed up to the cave and Jean had brought more friends along to help us. They were practising their SRT in the cave which seemed as good a reason as any to come along. 

Pitch in Perdreau

Rich and I dropped the pitch and started to get our gear together. Next problem, Rich finds the team spare mask has shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces. It had been in a pocket on one of the harnesses and not protected by a French Pot and had somehow got broken. Never mind. We can live without it and we have another anyway.
The sump is blue and inviting. I get the camera ready and Jean and friends watch us set off into sump 1, before heading out to the sunshine to await our arrival. We tell them we will be 2 hours at most.
Surfacing in the airbell shortly after passing sump 1, Rich and I can't really get our act together and we soon notice a little panting going on. Carbon dioxide. Great.
We take things slowly and rig the ladder, before hauling the 12 litre bottles up and getting everything into sump 2.

Arianne abseiling

Kitting up in sump 2 was fairly easy this time around and I get ready with the camera. We have a plan to shoot some video of the sump, especially our discoveries from 2011 and 2012. We don't hope for much as it is a small, fiddly sump covered in powder-like silt. But we gave it a go.
We get shooting and with plenty of time and gas, get to photograph and film everything we want to.
Then, we had one last job to do.
There was one bit of a chamber left to explore. I had always had a feeling there was more to it than just a boulder pile. So, I dispatch Rich off to take a quick look and a minute later he returned to say it was "Going".
Woo hoo!

Sump 1 Perdreau

Rich kitting up

Line reel tied in and I sieze the (rare!) opportunity to film exploration in progress.
Rich swam along with his reel and made some nice tie offs and the cave started to head downslope in a fractured, friable passage. It was sculptured and pretty and the water ahead was azure blue.

Chris kitting up in sump 1

Behind Rich it was patchy, rust red and bits and pieces rained down from the roof as the first bubbles ever disturbed the rock.
As the visibility went to zero, I paused at 24m and heard Rich scratching around. I figured he wouldn't be long and steadily, hand over hand on the line, fumbled my way back to the tie off with Rich just behind me. 
Happy, we thumbed the dive and had a pleasant swim home in patchy visibility. I stopped to photograph a worm, the type I had not seen before in a sump.

Surfacing back at the airbell, we de-kitted, pleased with the days work. 
Not surprisingly, after a recent chest infection and a cold, I had some trouble descending back into sump 2 to get home. Fortunately my bottle of trusty Otravine got me to depth but wasn't keen on getting my sinuses back up again.

Chris and Rich talk cameras

It's a divers worst nightmare (well, one of them anyway) and despite hanging around on the way up trying to get my sinuses to let go, it was obvious I was going to get a reverse block.
I did and it hurt a lot, making my eyes water and temporarily blind. Rich took my bottles off and I eventually heard the relieving squeak, followed by some blood and the pain subsided. Not pleasant.
Jean was at the top of the pitch waiting for us as we surfaced. He was worried as we were half an hour overdue. This was probably due to our taking our time in the CO2 ridden airbell. We apologised for worrying him but he didn't mind and we showed him our photos to cheer him up.
A gang of cavers had showed up to help carry all the gear back in one run, including a very small child who was lugging 2 tackle bags and going better up the hill than I was!
A cold beer in St Jean de Bueges followed by pizza in Laroque seemed a fitting end to a very pleasant day, all things considered. Finally things are going our way.

Chris kits up

Rich at the 2011 junction

Chris and Rich get ready to dive

Rich in the 2011 passage

Rich in the 2011 passage, Perdreau

Rich descends into the passage he and Christine found in 2012

2012 passage which descends to 34m

Worm in sump 2 Perdreau

Perdreau set-up day

I decided that embarking on Garrel today would be a silly move. Still with remains of a chest infection, the caving trip, though moderate, is quite long and I am still quite weak, so we decided that the Perdreau-Fourmi was a more pleasant option.

Dragon flies at the Source de Bueges

True to form, Jean Tarrit rallied a few friends from his club and they arrived to help us carry our gear in two journeys up the riverbed. 
I headed through the entrance squeeze and into the cave to start rigging the 45 degree slope and 15m pitch to the sump pool. 

Fairy lights at camp centrale

I decided to bring walkie talkies this time and was quite surprised that I was able to communicate from the sump pool to the surface! 
Job done in a few hours, I headed over to the Source de Bueges, which sadly cannot be dived. Some pretty dragon flies were in residence.
We had some nice cold pressions at the local watering hole in St Jean-de-Bueges and headed back to the campsite to sort out cameras and have dinner.

Mr Bricolage, Bungee and Fairy lights...

I still sound like an asthmatic donkey..improving, but not fast enough for Garrel this Saturday. It is 8 hours of honest caving with diving gear and I'm just not well enough to do it justice.
So, I called Jean last night and we agreed to put the trip back until the 13th. Hopefully I will be bouncing around like Tigger by then. Hopefully.
The Event de Fourmi Perdreau however is a much easier trip. It is still time consuming, but it is more familiar to us and the hardest part is on the surface getting kit to the entrance. We opted for this instead on Saturday.

Knotting line. My favourite.....

Meanwhile, at camp centrale I have been getting complaints that 'It's just not the same without the fairy lights'.
I usually bring a string of outdoor fairy lights to drape around the pitch. It makes it look pretty and also helps us to see in the dark. 
We didn't have any this year so we headed off to Mr Bricolage in search of fairy lights and some bungee for our sidemount harnesses. The bungee was getting a little old, pathetic and in one instance, missing altogether.
We found the bungee OK, reeled off 5m and cut it ourselves - only to get told off at the till.
Then we asked for fairy lights. Hmm. The ones on offer were quite expensive outdoor lights a little OTT for the tent.
Once at the till getting dirty looks from the cashier wench, the shop floor woman comes trotting over to us waving some lanterns on a string. They'll do!
Then we tried to find some mozzy repellent as we are being eaten alive...
We then tried to find a nice little swimming beach for lunch, but unfortunately headed the wrong way up the Herault river towards Le Vigan. The river was shallow and grubby, so we headed back nearer the campsite and went wild swimming further downstream.
Well, I say wild swimming. We did one width of the Herault river, dodging lovely blue dragon flies and trout everywhere.
My lungs screamed in protest at being plunged into cold water and the wheezing donkey was back. 

Back 'home' and Rich has cooked a lovely spag bol. 
Our sum achievement in the last 2 days has been getting gear ready for Garrel - then undoing half of it and getting it ready for Perdreau. 
Let's hope for better luck this weekend.....

The seven hour lunch....

We arrived at the camp site in one piece yesterday. The tents are up (one for us, one for the gear....) and shopping done.
I'm still sick with some sort of chest infection off the back of a cold, so today we tried to take it easy.
I had a phone call from my good friend Jean Tarrit to tell us he was coming to our campsite and we were to have lunch at his house in Larzac to discuss plans for the two weeks.

Fuelled with coffee and coughing like a donkey with asthma, I was driven via some stunning scenery to Larzac - the long way round as the Gourney's are closed for repair work in the Vis gorge.
The drive took ages but we finally met up with Jean and headed to his house.
It was a beautiful, typically French rustic country home with big beams and huge fireplaces. 
We were spoiled from the outset with several courses, including crevettes (shrimp), magret de canard, sautee potatoes, salad, bread, cheese, tarte au poire and a 12 year old Bordeaux.
Many hours later we went for a short wander to take a look at the view over the Larzac plateau which is cave hunting heaven.
Back at the house, we discussed the geology of the caves we were pushing, fault line directions and made plans for the week. Rich let out the occasional snore as he nodded in the armchair.

The plan is to go back to Garrel on Saturday but this depends on me being well enough and we can put it back a week if we need to. 

Herault 2014 here we come.....

Well, almost......

We gave last year a miss, due to a haphazard team and being fairly disorganised re not at all ready, ourselves.
We're back this year to take a look at the end of the caves we pushed in 2012 and to maybe take a peek at some new ones the French cavers are promising us.
Our team has disintegrated - owing mainly to half of them doing responsible things like getting jobs and going to university - and Rich and I buying a house together, which meant that I wasn't exactly forthcoming on getting the trip 'out there'. 

It matters not however, as Rich and I are owed some quality time. The fact that quality time will be underwater and covered in mud, is by the by.......
We'll be met by the usual French suspects and I am very much looking forward to catching up with Jean and the gang - they always greet us like long lost friends.

Preparation began yesterday when I did a 9.5 hour round trip (not even a whole ambulance shift!!) to the Peak District to collect the CDG Derbyshire Section compressor. Last years comrade Tim Webber thankfully showed up to help me carry it up the hill to my van. 

Rich is conveniently abroad and will not show up until the day of our departure....
So today, I spent a lot of time in the garage trying to find things and make them work.
First off was the 'exploratory box'. This is a very important box.
It contains line reels, complete with knotted line which magically knots itself all afternoon at 3m intervals and has tags every 10m. It also has snoopy loops, line markers, compasses, wetnotes, waterproof pencils and so on.

Now, nobody likes a floppy helmet. Least of all Rich, who has been moaning and whining about his floppy red helmet for over a year now.
So I bought him a new one. 
Well, I actually first of all tried to glue the offending part where the cradle had snapped off, but I was concerned that after a week or so of sump bashing it may go back to how it was before = more whinging.

So, I took to the drill, made some holes - and some mistakes - but got there in the end.
One shiny new helmet. Anything for a quiet life.......

"Has anyone seen my eagle?" by Rich Walker

The Aven de Rouet looks like a goer on the survey. A straight down shaft to about 70m, and then ongoing horizontal passage. It’s right next to the road as well, so why the hell haven’t I heard of it before? Needs a look, I think to myself.

 

Christine and I headed over to the site on Monday night to confirm that the cave was where we expected, and to look at how we’d need to get the gear to the water. We’ve learned that nothing is easy here. Sure enough, 30m from the road, across some flat ground, we find a bloody great hole in the ground. It’s about 10m in diameter, and dropped to depth of about 20m, where the water was. There was a steel gantry jutting out over the top of it, and this looked a perfect point from which to lower the gear. Two steps away was a steel ladder down to a small gravel platform perfect to stand on while suiting up. This was looking too good to be true, so how come I’ve never heard of this place before? Weird. Needs a look.

We got up almost before lunchtime on Tuesday and started blending gas. 15/55 for me, Christine and Andras, and a couple of deco gasses for good measure. Tim and Jarvist were going to have a play with some trimix too on a short dive after ours. Blending was creative, as ever, in these sorts of places but we all ended up with something useable in the end. We loaded the cars, and sent Tim and Jarvist to set up the pulleys and ropes while we ate lunch. Seemed reasonable to me. All the time I’m thinking “why haven’t I heard of this place before?”.

We arrive at the cave to see Tim stood on the gantry with an elaborate network of slings, carabiners, stops and pulleys dangling over the edge, and Jarvist at the bottom explaining how things will bang into the wall as they descend. The fiddle around a bit, make some more complications and we have a working 3:1 pulley system, with a releasable deviation, which makes it go round a corner. It’s so easy, I still wonder why everyone doesn’t dive here, and why I haven’t heard of it.

We lowered the gear down (OK, Tim lowered the gear down) and Jarvist makes a neat pile of it in the pool, and we three head down to the water like professionals. Andras starts screaming when he sees the toad in the water. Apparently he doesn’t like them. Christine wanted to kiss it, but I reminded her that it needed to be a frog for that to work. We put on our gear and did our checks floating in the water, and remarked that the blue water had gone a bit mucky with our movements. I was sure it would clear out below us though, and said so like someone who knew what he was talking about. So far so good. I still can’t believe I’ve never heard of this place - it’s such an easy site.

We descend, Christine in front, Andras and then me. Following the line through the surface muck, and sure enough, the water clears and we are treated to pale limestone walls and a vertical passage. It’s not very big, I think. No matter, I’m going to drop these decompression cylinders pretty soon and then the clanging will stop. The Oxygen gets dropped in a small (1.5m round passage), and hangs on the line that has a convenient loop in it. Someone has clearly been here before and understands that you need to drop gear off. The line turns into 9mm climbing rope, and continues to drop vertically through the pretty, white, cave tunnel. Which is still no more than 1.5m across. We are three divers, stacked vertically. There is some difference in approach to dropping down. I prefer the head down and swim, while the others seem to prefer some sort of feet down, reverse climbing strategy. The 9mm rope gets replaced by 5mm stainless steel cable. This is an odd choice, I think. I’d hate to have to cut that if I got tangled in it. Still, visibility is good, and the line well laid. Still don’t understand why more people don’t dive here, even though it’s a bit tight. More gear gets deposited and we start to descend. 30m, still nice clear water, pretty passageway, small. 40m, same. 50m - the rope ends. Quelle horreur! There is some old thin cave line arranged into a not-so-neat birds nest, with ends trailing out of it. Christine decides that this is too deep to be arsing about laying line in a tight passage with potentially much more loose rubbish beyond, and we reverse our direction back towards the surface. Shame, it’s a nice looking cave and I’d have liked to see more of it. Can’t understand why I’ve not heard of it before.

Bubbles. Seemingly innocuous things. Children make them with soap and play with them for hours. They are in beer and champagne. They could be considered to be fun things in some quarters. In a cave, they tend to float up along the walls. If those walls are covered in a fine layer of silt, such as you might find in a cave that was not well travelled, then the bubbles dislodge the silt and rapidly reduce the visibility. If that cave is vertical, then those bubbles do that all the way to the surface, getting bigger all the time. In fact, Jarvist and Tim were watching the pool while we dived and said that it turned into a “muddy silty vortex” within minutes of our departure. They elected to not dive.

Meanwhile, back in the water, the visibility has dropped to something like tea with a splash of milk. Never mind, it’s a vertical cave, and we have a big 9mm rope to follow. We wriggle and turn our way back up the passage and soon arrive back at the 21m stop. We all managed to switch gas, not that it was really needed given the short dive, and continue out. Lots of gear plus steel wire. Nice. Fortunately only a few minor hang ups, and we’re soon at the oxygen pickup, and ready to head out. At this point, Christine decided that she didn’t like it anymore and managed to reverse the team order. Exactly how, I do not know, but she and Andras got past me in a 1m wide tunnel. Andras claims that it had something to do with Chris grabbing his testicles in a modified “touch contact signal” for “move”. He moved. Like a rat up a drainpipe. We surfaced exchanged a few “pleasantries” and decided to get out. I’m starting to understand why I haven’t heard of this place.

Then the fun started. I looked up to see 2 locals stood on the gantry waving. Cave diving is often a spectator sport, in the same way people like to watch car crashes or why Romans went to watch criminals get eaten by lions. Turned out that he was a local caver and had been in there before. Best to not do it with lots of people, he said. Visibility gets bad apparently. Well, they were nice and we chatted for a while. They left and enter local no. 2. His communication was less easy to follow. Basil Fawlty probably taught him how to talk to foreigners. Speak louder and faster when they don’t understand. Get more frustrated. Speak louder and faster. He wasn’t angry, although he did look like a farmer, and therefore liable to say “quitter ma terre” at any point. Probably loudly. He mentioned that he had a similar hole on his land. Bottomless, apparently, and if we wanted to go and dive it, we’d be very welcome. “Just like this one?” we asked - “Oui” came the reply. “Merci Messieur, mais nous partons demain”. He wandered off to shoot something. More gear came up the magical winch thing. Then two girls get out of a car and start running over towards us. They are flapping their arms and waving at us. “avez-vous vu mon aigle”, or “Have you seen my eagle?” To help with translation, they were flapping their arms and cawing as well. Seemed obvious to me. I was tempted to say that it had grabbed my pet toad and I was very upset, but my French isn’t good enough. They seemed very upset, and continued driving around, looking for their eagle.

We stopped for Pizza in Laroque on the way home, which is a lovely way to end a days diving, eating nice food watching the river run, and wondering why nobody dives in that cave.