Grottes et karsts de Chine
Sur les traces de Xu Xiake

RATCHET CAVE By Bruce Bensley

(Also known as Ratshit Cave, more precisely.)

We arrived at Dung Lee Village, a small collection of houses with some new buildings under construction. It seemed like the hub of the village was the small grocery store. Amongst a gathering of villagers was the head man, who greeted us and invited us to sit down on small wooden stools outside the shop. From here, a track led up to the far end of a closed valley. We followed a handful of villagers a short way along this and then cut left across dry paddy fields to the foot of a slope. Scrambling up the cultivated bank a little way, we reached a small entrance on the edge of the natural vegetation.

As our hosts looked on, Bruce climbed down the entrance ramp into a little alcove from which a narrow channel stepped downward to the right. This looked uninviting, being littered with leaf debris and peppered with spiders’ webs. Although cool, there was no obvious draught at this point, but within a few metres, a pitch dropped 20m into a chamber below.

A rope was rigged off a small tree and passed down. We hadn’t brought a drill with us but had our trusty bolting kit, or so we thought. An awkward spit was placed and a bolt and hanger was requested. “Er, bloke who packed the bolting kit – we’ve got the wrong bolts!” This crack team of “Foreign Cave Experts”, who had been welcomed to Fengshan with loud banners across the streets, was in danger of looking like a bunch of amateurs. Fortunately, the situation was expertly recovered by craftily adapting a thru bolt from our plentiful supply. By locking two nuts together on a thru bolt and inverting it, a satisfactory bolt was made to fix the hanger to the wall.

The short abseil dropped into the middle of a small chamber and Bruce, Dave and Jun assembled at the bottom. The lowest part of the chamber, at one end, was our first choice for investigation. Between two large rocks part way along was a stone chute which was a little loose and crumbly, but a delicate traverse to the right and a small climb down avoided being dumped on unceremoniously below. Scampering over rocks and boulders the perimeter of the chamber was searched. It was possible to drop into flowstone carpeted chimneys between the wall and the boulders, but none of these resulted in any draughty continuations. In one such place, a musty and pungent smell was evident which led down to a flat bed of tree leaves and home, we presumed to a rat. Several insect and millipede samples were taken from around this noxious location.

Retreating back towards the pitch, we noticed a small family of non-glowing glow worms whose threads dangled beneath the undercuts on a large rock beside the rope. Jun was commissioned to photograph these using the soft glow of our carbide lamps. In addition to these finds were a few interesting insects that had dropped in with the leaf litter. These included a large wasp and an insect whose armour resembled a leaf.

At the other end of the chamber was a more promising descent that was accessed by squeezing past a teetering block that threatened to squash a passer-by against the wall. Although more spacious than the other continuations, it again closed down rapidly.

We made our way out, surveying as we went and then headed up the valley where we hoped the winding streamway would flow into a more substantial cave entrance.

[Bruce Bensley]