If nothing else - Inangahua

If nothing else.

A Canterbury Caving Group cave prospecting trip to Coal Flat, New Creek, Inangahua.

‘If nothing else, Mark remarked, ‘it’s been a nice walk in the bush’. 

We’d been bashing about in the tangled cut-over scrub for 4 or 5 hours by this stage. We’d found nothing and it had been drizzling with incrementally increased enthusiasm for that whole time. The shrouded sun was sinking low, hailing the Western horizon with the imminent expectation of getting together for a short how-do-you-do. We were a fair old hike from base camp and thoroughly soaked through. All of which might sound a tad morose, yet Mark’s comment was met with a chorus of cheerful agreement. We were enjoying ourselves immensely and were convinced that at any moment a magnificent prospect was about to hove into view…

Caramel-coloured stalactites

          Earlier in the year the CCG had conducted a prospecting trip here with little or no result. Then Mark had come back on a solo trip and found a respectable addition to Eggers Cave. This discovery of course made it essential to return once more. The weather forecast was lousy but, hoping that the meteorologist’s crystal-ball was putting for a triple bogey we forged ahead irregardless. In a spectacle of precise timing (Mark and Hamish travelling from Christchurch and myself from Westport) we spontaneously merged into convoy at Inangahua Junction.

          The road in (the ‘Mackley’) had been much improved on from the first CCG trip and thus the journey to the carpark campsite was a comparative doddle – no chainsaws required this time. As the weather was already misty with clearly more in store, we immediately set up the tents. From here we togged up, each after their own fashion (cave overalls on or off, raincoat on or off, gumboots or tramping boots etc.) and made off up the track. The entrance to Egger’s Cave clocked in 15 minutes later, but we swept past making for the wild frontiers that lay ahead. That is to say the area of best potential as evaluated across a number of different criteria - where we believed there to be limestone, where we thought others hadn’t been and how far we could go to and get back from in the remaining hours of daylight etc.

'Jaw-bone' curtain speleothem

          Male bonding may not be the correct term for what I have in mind, but it will suffice I think to put you and me on the same page. I had been caving with one of the guys once before and the other two had been caving together, but of course the great thing with groups is that there is a different dynamic whenever the membership changes. It’s important to stress too, that caving is not a desperately competitive sport and that the three of us were willingly undertaking a recreational activity together. Thus there were no prizes on offer for being the best of or first at anything particular. However, is seems inevitable that when blokes hangout for the first time, there are certain understandings that need to be sorted out between them. A mature jostling for bragging rights as it were, a subtle tete-a-tete of sorts for hierarchical ascendency. As an example of one aspect of this custom, topics get discussed with an unnecessary level of detail.  Sparring adroitly to see who will back down first, admitting that they’re out of their depth. Thus:

‘Talking of rigging techniques, I’ve gone to the using the 7mm Donut-Guys for the Schwabisch prusik now.’ Male A casually mentions.

‘Of course, 7mm Donut-Guys is the only way to go.’ Male B concurs but adds, ‘I see Bretzl have bought out a new Tweddle recently.’

‘Yeh, I’ve tried using that too, but only as a single underhand.’ Male A says, demonstrating that he knows exactly where Male B is coming from.

‘When we’re rigging a 7mm Donut-Guys Schwabisch prusik I always include a tandem overhand Tweddle.’ Male B ventures out further still. Only to be countered in a bold move by Male A with,

‘Of course, and I always used to do that until I realised that the under-cordage was at risk of a severe plural-wedgie if the Schwabisch prusik were ever installed with the wrong colour preference, so I never use that technique now.’ Whereupon the Male B, without so much as pausing to look flummoxed, parrys with the classic ‘topic-renewal’ strategy and says,

‘Yeh? Well… we had such a good time hydrofoil pseudo-skating across the Sahara inland autonomous Mountains last weekend with the current World Champion who we’d bumped into on the flight over. Great fun, if you ever get the opportunity you really should take it.’

All complete rubbish of course (even I know there’s no such thing as a Schwabisch prusik!), but all completely true in principle none-the-less. Being the gentlemen that we are however, no shirt sleeves were ever rolled elbow-ward. All that remains to be said on the subject is that all matters of import and interest were conducted along standard democratic lines, that and, that I was right more often...

          Thus it was several hours later that Mark made his ‘If nothing else’ observation. We had tracked along a bulldozer line, shot off to locate a nearby stream shown on the map and then decided to make some altitude gains on a handy hillside. The contour lines on the map lied to us straight-faced that the going was smooth and easy. Whereas in reality we found an unswerving succession of valleys and dolines. This is of course the good and the bad of it when you're a caver. After umpteen dozen of these small and mostly dry valleys, the worm turned and the ground started to open up at intervals. Now, just on dark we found blackness that we couldn’t see to the bottom of and decided rig up a rope. As I’d plumbed the squeezy interior of a short rift earlier in the day, Hamish took the initiative here. Rope number one sufficed for the first pitch then came the call for an extension. In the gloaming I retrieved the grimy rope and mangled together two lengths before posting them back into the earth’s innards. Mud ruled the day though and Hamish came to a sticky end. Mark meanwhile had rigged a related shaft close by and thrown himself into his work. After appearing promising for a time this too closed down in a grotty dead end. By the time they’d both got topside again the night had fallen about us with a cave-like obscurity – and the weather had renounced its drizzly former-self and had converted to a new ecstatic regime of rampant precipitation.

          As we stumbled along in the slippery dark, leaping tentatively over a myriad of mossy grikes (narrow slits in the rock) that now littered the area it felt like we were in one of those video games where you have to cross a vast pool of seething lava by means of a worryingly insufficient number of erratically mobile stepping stones. We had decided to make for the top entrance of Eggers Cave. By the time we got there it seemed a splendid idea indeed to pop underground out of the weather and take a short and safe route back to the road. 

Mud-stalagmite

Interior of mud-stalagmite

          I think we must have got back to camp around 7-7:30. The rain was by now consistently persistent. I opted to stay in wet clothes and immediately set about cooking my tea. An hour later I was comfortably full but uncomfortably cold with bath-wrinkles on my bath-wrinkles. I huddled in my tent’s microscopic portico and stripped off my raincoat and cave overalls as Houdini might have done if he’d recently taken up Yoga, before plomping inside and peeling off the remaining sodden veneers. One small but sad detail that had transpired during the prep for this trip, was the demise of my sleeping mat. Thus; whilst up Nuggety Creek with Neil and Lindsay earlier this year, I had noticed I wasn’t sleeping with exceptional contentedness yet my sleeping mat appeared to be inflated as per instructions. Slowly it dawned on me that appearances can indeed be deceiving and that while my mat looked fat and snuggly it was in fact as flaccid and floppy as a soggy tissue. Of course I attended to the fault immediately as one should. Immediately prior to heading away on this trip that is. I pumped up the impaired rug and dunked it in a large receptacle of water only to be greeted with, not a single stream of chirpy little bubblelets as expected but with a shower of them, as if the mat were filled with champagne and was effervescing. I am suspicious of the cat’s proclaimed innocence and am also holding Gorse as a suspect of unprincipled repute. So, repairs were off and replacement was on. As I drove out of town on the Saturday morning I called in at my preferred local sports shop. No, none there. Off to the second sports shop then. No, none there either. I phoned my brother for a loan of his. No, no answer there. ‘Oh well, I can tough it out’ I thought.

          The ‘thinking’ of toughing it out and the ‘practice’ of toughing it out are of course uneasy bed-fellows. My initial attacking strategy was to kip down on my eviscerated backpack, ‘good thermal properties’, I thought, ‘if slightly lacking in soft-cushy ones’. Systematically picking out the buckles as each one in turn offered me a kidney biopsy, I very soon had a passable solution. At this point the rain came pelting down and thus was a suitable distraction from the bedding quandary. I dozed. I woke to a still night, overheating and feeling cloyingly claustrophobic. Adding to my usual dislike of first-night-in-a-sleeping-bag, I had slipped the foot of my sleeping bag into a snug-fitting dry bag, just in case the tent was inundated with surging floodwaters. Apparently this is a bad thing to do. The end of the sleeping bag was now wringing wet. I extracted my damp extremities from their dry-bag shackles, hauled the backpack out from under my aching, lacerated back and attempted to build a better mousetrap, or in this specific case a better surrogate sleeping mat. Spare clothes over dry bags were next up for assessment. Definitely inferior in thermal qualities but bonus points for being non-fatal in the comfort stakes. If you’ve ever been in doubt as to whether the ground is an effective heat-sink or not, take it from me, it is.

Exterior of 2nd mud-stalagmite

           Sunday emerged as a delicate seedling might germinate. Clouds scudded hurriedly and the temperature remained stand-offish, unwilling to lend any warmth to the anaemic sunrise. I breakfasted from within my cocoon of polyester or whatever materials comprise the manufacture of my tent and sleeping bag. Leaping forth into the new day was as well to be delayed a modicum. Subsequently however I wrapped my chilled limbs/torso/etc. in every lick of thermal goodness I had had the forethought to bring with me, unzipped the embryonic veil that was my tent and dipped a toe in the waters of the morning, metaphorically and the residual waters of last night’s storm, literally.

          Some discussion was had re. the day’s proceedings. Indeed there were about as many options open to us as we had the time and imagination to come up with. In the end we elected to begin with a replay the latter part of the previous day but in reverse. Back to Eggers Cave we marched and up the slippery slides therein we scrambled ’til we emerged top side once more. From here we re-covered the ground we’d blindly floated over the day before. Mother Earth yielded us two prospects and much frustration. We located a small streamway and tracked it downstream in the hopes of it bearing munificent fruit. We did uncover one or two strategic submergences but were unable to follow them. 

Exterior of 3rd mud-stalagmite

Detail of top of 3rd mud-stalagmite

From here we headed for the cave that Mark had found on his solo trip. As this involved passing by a prospect that Hamish and I had noted the day before, and as I had yet to get underground for the day, we stopped by and took a look-see. It fairly soon became apparent that I was not the first nor even the second intruder. A number of Moa bones had been gathered into a tidy pattern and “Gilly” had autographed the wall. This cave may go further but it’ll take a slimmer more committed caver than I to find out. We named it 'Gilly’s Folly', not to be mistaken for 'Filly’s Golly' of course, which will be the name of the spectacular cavernous new passage nearby – when we find it.

Mark’s cave has as picturesque a front door as you could wish for and will be worth surveying, but it does crouch down quite quickly while, simultaneously, the mud grows in both extent and confidence, threatening to swallow you whole should you linger.

Horizontal 'jaw-bone' curtain speleothem

It was by now mid-afternoon and time to think about homeward bound trails. We trekked merrily alongside the road for a few hundred metres unaware we were at a short off-set from it until finally converging with it and thence made our way back to camp in the rain which had been widening its repertoire of intensities for the past hour or so. Packing up camp in the damp is a despondent business, staying in saturated clothes doubly so (why I never think to take a dry drive-home set I don’t know), but in short order we were tidied away and all aboard. Another successful undertaking with another modest titbit added to the knowledge/database of caves in the area.