A Certain Spring,
(Click to enlarge pictures)
This
cave is located in…mmm, rather a sensitive area.
Permission can be obtained to visit
under certain conditions, unfortunately I don’t think
we met them. Still, we were there not to fish, but instead to explore the cave,
as my t-shirt notes…
The pictures on this page are
the work of one Chris Anderson, who at the time was quite the caving madman. He
is somewhat saner now and continues
to work with water and rock. He is also an amazingly talented photographer, as
these works show. More examples of his art can be found at his website, Darklight Imagery.
Pierre and I trying to look cavalier before suiting up. We
knew what was on the line here. The water-cut rock wall—a
“karst head”—behind us is quite impressive, evidence
of vast quantities of water that has issued from it over the millennia.
After splashing through the entrance you reach a Y
junction. To the right lie this amazing set of rimstone dams, pretty much the only speleothem
to be seen in the cave. You must climb these to reach your next objective…
…which is this sump (being defined as a place where
the water meets the ceiling.) It is a little awkward but if you keep your cool
it’s not nearly as frightening as it sounds. Okay, so maybe it is, but I was young and dumb then. Now
I’m just dumb.
I have a
“glamour shot” of this (in glorious black and white!) hanging on my wall at
home. Yes, I’m smiling here, but in that shot I have a wild-eyed look more
appropriate for the situation. The big book in those days was Stephen King’s It, and the catchphrase from it was, “…we all float down here. And when you get
here, you’ll float too!” And it’s true too…
You exit
the sump kind of abruptly where things open into a very large passage. Nice!
And this is that passage, Holmes Hall. It
is broad, airy, and, for the area it’s in, pretty remarkable just for its
existence. Leads take off from various spots, not all of which have been
thoroughly explored. Some of these are pretty grim—imagine being laid out on your back in a passage
eight feet wide but only a foot high and you get the idea. An ill-timed sneeze
can set off ripples that would drown a hapless explorer. But the leads blow
lots of air, so they go somewhere…someday
perhaps we shall know where.
Holmes Hall goes quite a way in this
fashion. No, it doesn’t have stalactites or stalagmites or dripstone pretties,
but it does have great lengths of superbly sculpted water-cut passage, and
often that’s enough. The downside is that to get to it, you do have to pass a
couple of sumps, which means wetsuits are an absolute must, which itself means
that dry cave exploring is uncomfortable at best unless you pack dry clothes.
We quickly returned to the water, back through the sump, down the rimstone, and then explored left of the Y junction.
The passage beyond the Y is enormous, but
water-filled in at least one spot, which is passed by pulling oneself through
the flooded passage by means of a fixed rope. Past a series of low-ceilinged
wallows, things open up again…quite massively too. There is about a half mile swimway which is amazingly eerie—imagine bobbing along in
what feels like zero gravity, headlamps barely illuminating the walls, they’re
that far away and so very dark. Such an amazing gallery should lead to great
lengths of virgin cave, but, alas, it ends in a whopping great breakdown fill.
And then of course you must leave the same
way you came in. It is…well, sporting. I don’t mind admitting I almost drowned
coming out, but there you go. Another “True Life Adventure”, I guess. And of
course once it’s over there is the glory of remembering, of the warm sun drying
your waterlogged bodies, of just being
alive. It is an experience that, while intrinsically singular, can be repeated, just not in quite the same manner. I have
not been back…which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to, under the right
conditions. I still own that wetsuit, after all…
Back to the
Pictures
Page
Back to the
Home Page