Last week the international team lead by Gigi Casati broke the record in Matka Vrelo cave, and reached a depth of -212m underwater! The team consisted of macedonians, belgians, greeks, and italians.You can find more information, and diary of the expedition on their site.
The ten italian cavers busy beetween the 3 and the 23 of July in the Prokletije mountains in Montenegro near the Albanian border are back. This year 45 new entrances were discovered, 9 in exploration, 12 must be explored interly and the rest is already surveyed. The Grotta dei Liberi is passed from -313 to -412 with 745 meters lenght. Two new important caves are in exploration with deep pit and enormous rooms: Abisso della Mazza di Delia is a -142m in depth, and 260 meters in lenght Abisso dell’Ombra is more than 200 meters in depth, and 430 meters in lenght. Next year the group will go back to continue the exploration and add new question mark.
Guido Baroncini Turricchia
Centro Hispano-luso de Investigaciones Agrarias (CIALE)
Universidad de Salamanca
coprolog@yahoo.com
The fourth Balkan Camp organized by the Balkan Speleological Union in Padis, Romania, ended with success. Hundred of cavers meeted from nearly all the countries of balkans, with participiants from Hungary and Poland, too. The participants visited some of the most famous caves in the area, and saturday had a giant rescue traning in Cetate Ponorului cave (more than 80 rescuers from more than 5 countries).
A group of eight italian cavers explored one kilometer of new gallerie in Grotta Lovettecannas in Sardegna, during a 15 hour sporting trip this weekend. They discovered a gigantic chamber named after their friend who left, Salone MARCO MATTU. They discoverd a pit deeper than 100 meter, which will probably make this cave the deepest one in Sardegna. The exploration stopped because of lack of time, but will continue in the following weeks. Original here.
Preliminary expedition information from Belic, Lepinia site. An Italian interclub expedition with spanish cavers pushed Grotta di Leberi to 500m of depth, from last years -325m limit. Also other prospecting entrances were found. The cave is located in Belic plateau, Prokletije mountains, Montenegro. The international / interclub camp which is located at 2000m asl altitude, will end at 23rd of July.
Here you can read about the latest results from Velebit, Munizaba cave (Croatia). During the eight-day stay in Munižaba between 19-27.6.2010, the PDS Velebit team surveyed 1184 m of new passages (954 m horizontal). The new total length of the cave is 8479 m.
Here you can see the effect of a fall of factor 1 on a rope, when using ascenders.
On espeleo you can read a nice article about caver figure dolls from Madelman. It is quite interesting that these dolls exists from the 1970s years, and still manufactured in this decade.
On espeleo i aigua there is a short article about this new type of remoeable anchor by ClimbTech. It is load is rated 22 Kn, but unfortunately you have to drill at least 0,75 inch’ wide and 3 inch deep (approx 19mm wide and 75mm deep). You can see a fascinating video about testing the gear here and here. Does any one know a smaller version?
The sixth Iranian caving gathering will be hold in Ghar Qalaichi-Bookan-West Azarbaijan-Iran.
8-11th July 2010
Ghar Qalaichi owns the deepest pit in Iran- about 100 m.
The objectives:
1- Coordination among Iranian cavers and the previous members of international expeditions
2- Revision of the caving techniques based on UIS manuals
3- Building cooperation and close friendship among all Iranian cavers to improve caving and speleology in Iran
4- Protecting caves and their environment
5- Training novices and familiarizing them with SRT techniques for safe caving
6- Visiting the deepest pit in Iran-Ghar Qalaichi- and Ghar Doukchi
here you can see the report from the 5th gathering
information from Persian Cavers