Cueva del Nacimiento

The rising roaring noise in the distance marks the arrival at the Hole in the Wall, a small hole in the side of the cave passage that channels all the air coming down through the cave. Looking into the hole, is like sticking your head out of a car window…. with a face full of grit for good measure.

A small pitch soon follows and then once more the cave climbs up, until leveling out briefly at the sump. It’s at this point that I notice my chest harness has snapped, bit of a sobering thought as I’d just been pruskking up the last few climbs. The sump is more of a duck now, and the level has remained the same as last year, so we get through relatively dry. A couple more pitches and we reach Consort Hall, it’s taken about 4 hours, so quicker than we were expecting but a slow dawning of realization to the task we have undertaken.

Lunch is eaten and we set off once more, heading toward the back of the cave. The next few parts of the cave are probably the best, large, well decorated passages that slowly head up through some more climbs into Dan’s Big Room. From here we gradually climb down once more towards the start of the climbs for the Teeth of Satan and the route onto the stream way.

None of us have been to the stream way before, so armed with a 1979 map and various contradictory descriptions we climb up and over an obvious calcite blockage and into a large passage heading downwards. Gradually a rumbling can be heard in the distance and we pop out into a large stream way with deep pools. It’s great to be at the stream way, but it becomes quite obvious we cannot move up the stream way to the sump without full on immersion in the water.

We try a few different routes around the stream but they all lead to more deep pools. Eventually we backtrack around 50m up the passage to what initially looks like a rope coming in from the ceiling, but turns out to be 6mm dive line. Martin and madPhil make a start on climbing the wall once more while myself and Dave return to the calcite climb to fetch the rope and drill.

On returning to the climb, the others have returned having reached the sump via this route. The drill and rope is hauled up so that they can get down! Diving lead is dumped at the foot of the climb and we start the slow trip back out. The landmarks pass quickly and we are back at Consort Hall in about an hour and half. A bit more food and we set off for the entrance. It all seems a lot quicker on the way out and we reach the entrance at 9:30PM. Total cave time of 12 hours 30 minutes. Slog up the hill and dinner just before going to bed.