Résumé :
From April 27 to May 10, a speleological project continued in the Chinese province of Shaanxi in cooperation with the Czech Speleological Society and the Geological Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences with the support of the Institute of Karst Geology from Guilin and the Geological Institute of Shaanxi Province.
The expedition operated in the karst area near the city of Hanzhong, where it continued the discovery, exploration and documentation of karst phenomena, which it started here in 2016. This time, it focused its efforts on continuing the exploration in the difficult Boniukeng and Diao Dong caves, which are characterized by a number of waterfalls and underground lakes. Thanks to the favorable water condition, it was possible to penetrate the vast areas of the largest underground water source in the area in the Guanyin Cave.
To learn about the course of underground water, they conducted a tracking experiment between the furthest known sinkhole and the four main springs and took two dozen samples of local water for chemical analysis.
Undoubtedly, the greatest success of the expedition is the discovery of the 6244 m long and 220 m deep Tianxingyan cave, where after overcoming technically demanding passages, a gigantic underground river passage, more than 3 km long and a giant dome measuring 150 x 200 m was found!
In total, the members of the expedition managed to discover and document more than 8 km of new cave spaces.
Zdeněk Motyčka
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