Grottes et karsts de Chine
Sur les traces de Xu Xiake

Xiao Shui Dong – ‘Deep Vein Dong’- 24.988267°, 105.592140°

South East of An Long County Town, Xiao Shui Dong was investigated. This proved to have an impressive entrance shaft of 246m and was further explored to a depth of 432m before rope ran out. This cave continues and is of great interest as the presumed resurgence is 12km away to the south west and over 200m deeper. Further exploration may reveal significant discoveries in this area.

The first trip down Xiao Shui Dong was a day trip from Dushan, with little idea of what to expect apart from vertical. It turned out this was all we needed to expect. The entrance requires navigation to the (hopefully) dry river bed, the debris present and the scale of which indicate that a significant quantity of water disappears there in the wet season. A stick is pretty vital to avoid being snared in the large spiders webs, and attracting attention from their pretty significant guardians.

Belaying at the right hand side of the entrance led down to an obvious ledge about 30 m down, immediately dropping off into blackness below. Given the scale of the shaft, it’s remarkably featureless, but a series of about 7 rebelays of roughly equal spacing finally lead to another ledge large enough to stand on. Further rebelays allow progress down the last short section to the floor, and the welcome relief of being able to walk around, 250 m below the surface.

The smooth boulders on the floor indicate the scale of the water that must be present during part of the year, and it certainly wouldn’t be a place to be when anything more than drips are falling down the shaft. After initially looking like a blind shaft, a large phreatic-looking continuation was soon found with a significant draught blowing out towards the entrance of the cave, which remained the case throughout the exploration. This passage soon dropped away, and marked the limit of the exploration on the first trip, given we had to be derigged and back up at the road by 5:30, which we managed. Just.

Further exploration obviously wasn’t possible during day trips from Dushan, and we were grateful to Zhang Hai for arranging for accommodation for a team of three of us, which served us very well, but wasn’t exactly what we were used to!

Continuing from the previous limit, the pitch was dropped past some remarkably sharp flakes on the wall into a boulder-floored chamber with impressive calcite veins in the wall. Two shorter pitches followed in what felt like a large rift, before the passage took a sharp left turn at a rock lip. This rift section had a fair amount of debris from the surface, particularly shoes, again indicating the volume of water that must be present at some point during the year.

The short drop that followed proved to be a bit of an obstacle in the exploration as it was immediately evident that swimming would be required to cross the pool at the bottom. Only one of the team needed to subject themselves to the somewhat chilly water, and the exploration of the second day down Xiao Shui Dong ended at this point, once more at the head of another pitch.

The third and final trip descended this pitch to a muddy floored chamber with more shoes, crickets, and a pool in which a crab was briefly seen. The floor of the cave immediately dropped away beyond the pool to an unknown depth, with the ceiling rising out of sight above the drop. This was the limit of exploration in 2014, but it is certainly a cave worthy of a return.

The cave holds little prospect of development for tourism due to the huge vertical entrance, but the final depth of 432 m reached, with ongoing passage and a strong draught means it is likely there is a lot of passage beyond, given the possible resurgence locations.