Grottes et karsts de Chine
Sur les traces de Xu Xiake

Houping winter 2018 BEC

• Détail
• Grottes explorées
• Bibliographie
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Résumé :

The BEC China 2018 Expedition

The BEC China 2018 Expedition ran from the 20-12-2018 to 12-01-2019 and was based at the Hong Mei Gui club hut in Tongzi Zhen, Wulong County Chongqing Province, China. The focus of the expedition was to continue exploration of 48H-H12-365 Yanzi 1 Dong and a number of leads in the west of Sanwang Dong from based from Tomb Sweeper camp. Despite very cold and snow conditions causing a number of down days, electrical problems with the club hut, a total of 1.3km of new passage found, but more importantly resulting in a number of new and very interesting leads.

Key Highlights

Yanzi Dong

Yanzi Dong was discovered in Dec 2017 and explored to a length of 584m and an depth of 275m, where it was left with a number of good drafting leads generally heading in the direction of Queen of the Nile near tomb sweeper camp in Sanwang Dong system where it was expected to connect. A further 969m of passage being surveyed and pushing the cave to 453m deep and now 1553m long. Surprisingly the cave has not yet been connected into the Sanwang Dong system, the deep shaft system missing the expected passage and now is only 50m above the lowest passages in the Sanwang Dong System where is expected to connect, the passages are still drafting strongly. A lead traversing over the main shaft system within the cave was also pushed and yielded a interesting continuation of the main upper level passage ending in a undescended 150m (estimated) pitch, the pitch head being fractured mudstone, common at this elevation and will require some delicate rigging to descend.

Sanwangdong- Tomb Sweeper Camp

The team spent a 4 day camp in the Tomb sweeper camp and three leads were looked at:-

"Not my Fault", due to snow melt the pitches were rendered very wet and the pushing front was not reached and no further progress was made.

The far end of ​"Topdog​". Here the original plan was to bolt climb at the far end chamber a 4-5 hour trip from camp with exceptionally dry passage and no water making this exploration particularly difficult. Due to the exceptionally cold conditions outside, a good draft was present in the final passage (not experienced before) and it was discovered that the final chamber was not drafting strongly but heading upwards in the area of two 30m avens with possible passage above. One aven was climbed but disappointingly the draft was not found and can only be heading up the other. 120m of large reasonably pretty fossil passage was found before dry mud chokes rendered passages impassable.

"Not for Fatties" ​an original very tight drafting dig was pushed in Jun 2015 to a choked pitch and a tight rift (not pushed). Due to the strong drafts in the cave, this passage was drafting in strongly. Its location was also in close approximate to Yanzi Dong (described above) and thus a second look at this passage was taken and the tight rift was pushed and found to opened up after 15m to a low 150m crawl to a p chamber system with a pitch down to a a flowing stream and other fossil passage leads (left undecided /not pushed due to time). A total of 221m passage being surveyed. Surprisingly again, after data analysis, it is unlikely that this is part of the Yanzi Dong system and is another unknown stream in the system.

[Phil Rowsell]

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