Queens Birthday

Queen's Birthday weekend is a statutory holiday in New Zealand, nominally to celebrate the ruling Monarch’s (observed) birthday, but as with a lot of things these days for the most part it has devolved to simply a day off work and maybe the chance to get away for a long weekend. How long the Canterbury Caving Group have been holding their Cave Fest over this weekend I'm not sure, but it does seem to have accrued a healthy following. As I started caving less than two years ago this is only the second of these weekends for me. Last year as I recall I was seconded to a surveying party for the weekend – which is not quite the norm, as the weekend is primarily designed as an opportunity to introduce friends and family to the world of caving. 

This year I conformed like a good little boy. I raised my hand at the request for volunteers and informed the organisers that there were at least one and half caves in the area I felt I could ‘lead’ a trip to. Well, you could jolly well think so, the Cave Fest is held in my karst backyard! Secretly I was hoping that my offer wouldn’t be taken up or be necessary and that I’d then be at liberty to join a trip myself and get to see a couple of the many caves that I have yet to visit in the area.

Not so, even before the weekend officially kicked off I had been assigned responsibility for a cave. But wait…! Would there be any takers, perhaps no-one would want to visit this cave, it was after all a commonly frequented one, perhaps no-one would want to go on a trip with a freshman like me, perhaps they’d heard about my appalling sense of direction in the bush (forest) or how I can get lost in a cave whilst sitting down to lunch. Odds were on that I’d escape my duties very lightly indeed... Alas it was not to be, despite all these clear and obvious failings a raft of people blithely signed up. In fact there were so many enthusiasts that after 8 names had been listed under mine another 2 trips were arranged.

Cavers have a bit of reputation for being somewhat independently minded at times and thus a tad awkward and slow to get organised and lined up beside the right car and anywhere near the right time. When you add youngsters into this mix and adults who have not done much (sometimes any) caving before things move from simply going downhill quickly into a care-free, day-dreaming, coffee-sipping freefall. 

So it is that the 20 metres from the sign-in board to the waiting vehicles takes well over an hour to be covered. If you hustle one person who looks packed and ready to go toward a particular vehicle and then merely turn your head slightly to one side in order to find another person to herd, the first one will vapourise whilst still in your periphery vision. If you then set your mind to re-find that same candidate and get at least them back to the vehicle, you will then invariably and simultaneously have several others of your group telling you that they’re ready and could you please show them which vehicle they should put their gear into. It is at this moment that you suddenly spy your quarry tracking toward the coffee making facilities and you realise that you in fact have no leadership skills whatsoever. Happily and in direct inverse proportion to the amount of conscientious effort you exert, eventually your group are tucked in behind the requisite number of seatbelts and have all confirmed the existence of headlamps and lunch boxes packed in bags ready for action.

So cavers do like squeezes

Cavers one and all

  

Company vehicles really do go anywhere - end of Limestone Rd

 There were 8 in my group, which is really too many for one person to manage actively, but as most of the group were accomplished cavers the ratio became less important. What remained important were bottle necks. As there were two other groups made up of equally hard-to-herd individuals no-one had managed to get a head start on any of the other groups. As we all shuffled for car parking space on the side of the old logging road, it began to look like a hikoi (long parade of marching protestors or in this case protesting marchers) was on the cards.

Some find it easy, others...

 The cave we were off to (as will surprise no-one who has read any of my previous posts) was of course Golf Course, that most favourite (most frequented, more like) cave. At the entrance is an 8m rift (slot) that some people just find flat-out intimidating. So while some of the team slide down the rift without even touching the handline on offer like firemen down a greased pole, others need their full rope descending kit, lots of encouragement, a lengthy run-up to the edge, a step by step tutorial along the traverse, a one-on-one coach for the transition, a personal attendant for the actual descent, and oodles of time and a couple of snack-breaks to finally make it to the bottom end of the rope.


 Thus is was that whatever gaps had opened up between the three groups we inevitably re-gathered here to queue as one might at the most popular ride at the fairground. Lights dance off the walls, shouts of terror, encouragement and impatience all ring out echoing off the surrounding cliffs. There's the bright cherry smells of someone’s snack being munched to restore sagging energy levels. Queue jumping, horse trading and general mayhem are commonplace. Again this is where strong leadership shines through, revealing its wisdom and cunning, maintaining order, keeping everyone safe and mollifying the mortified. At least so I’m told…

Once we had congregated inside the cave I thought it would be a fine idea to take a little side trip (little being the operative word) where you drop into a hole off to the side back-track some 5m, climb up a gravelly in-fill mound and then slide back down to the main thoroughfare through a deliciously snug worm-hole. You wave your hands above your head and gravity pretty much sucks you through, unless you’re a little more generous about the girth like me in which case a fair amount of wriggling is required, just to give gravity a helping hand you understand.

Going, going, gone

Most of the rest of the cave ran smoothly enough and soon we were lunching topside with only a 2 hour hike back to the cars in front of us. This, I think, went well for the others, I however managed to lacerate both knees on multiple occasions with and on the fresh crops of bush lawyer (vine with short scalpels arrayed along its length) that were everywhere to be found in recently opened-up bush. Serves me right for wearing shorts and not ordering a subordinate to find all these barbarous assailants by going on ahead of me.

There was a meeting on the Saturday evening, which as interesting as it was being centred on cave conservation, dragged on rather long. Thus I was also late back to the cave hut for the Sunday morning start (I need my beautiful sleep). No sooner had I arrived than I was assigned to a waiting team (which included a first-time caver) who wanted to get to Te Tahi Cave. What are the animals that have a belated sting in the tail? Dragon, scorpion or something, whatever it is Te Tahi reminds me of one of them. It is easy to find, fairly easy to get started in and then just when you could be tempted to feeling a little smug about having made it 7/8 of the way through the system the tail turns and bites you in the toosh.

Te Tahi Team

I feel uncomfortable about leading a team in here (including a first-time caver) without telling them that I don’t actually know how to get out. Kerry, my good friend and very kind mentor, has always said it’s only a matter of nutting it out. But I’m less optimistic, maintaining a robust confidence that I could die here in the dreaded ‘bedding planes’ without trying overly hard. In the end I shut my mouth and focus on making sure all of the team get through the wet, tight entrance series safely, bearing in mind that our intrepid cave-virgin might decide that caving is only for the certifiably insane and want to retreat back to warm blue skies.

Enjoying a wet squeeze in the entrance series

As so often with worries, they are found ultimately to be hollow and groundless. The team monster the climbs, squeezes and soggy passages with ease. They enjoy the Iron Room and the White Room immensely. They are geologically articulate, they are speleothemically savvy and they are apparently all avid claustrophiles. Nothing scares them, nothing dissuades them and nothing is too much trouble. They are deeply appreciative of my sacrifice of a Sunday to bring them here and show them such marvels. They leap down the waterfalls with glee, scale vertical walls with heads tossed back and a hearty chuckle, and choose the more challenging routes where available just to ramp things up a bit. If we'd been there any longer they'd probably all have turned their lights out just for a laugh and carried on caving. For the most part they led the way and I merely trotted along behind them and fretted not a little on what lay ahead.

I grossly over-estimated the time required to get through the whole system and thus suggested to the team while we lunched at the Y Junction that we really didn’t have time to back-track to the Hihi Tomo. Sorry guys, in hind sight we had heaps of time. From the Y Junction of course it doesn’t take long to get to the 

       'Bedding Planes of the Inescapable Maze of Well-Trodden Paths' 

– as I like to call them. As we climbed out of the streamway I gathered the team in closer, and in my least alarmed-sounding voice quietly told them I had no idea how to get out alive let alone before tea time. But for them not panic or lose heart completely as, who knew, we could fluke it yet and if we did happen upon the mythical Smoko Room there was a chance.

Such is the power of imagination I guess, we had only just gotten started with our way-finding in these Bedding Planes, spreading out and assessing each option tentatively, when we tumbled into the Smoko Room. ‘Ahh, good,’ says I, trying desperately not to sound utterly gob-smacked, ‘the next section starts from here.’ We cruised along the Rat Race cheerfully with a short stop over at the Whale Passage before all of a sudden the worm really did turn. 


   When we got to the Haha Tomo I somehow managed to completely forget that you have to go up underneath the tomo and then back down to the Rebirth Canal. My recollection said the Rat Race ran straight through into the Rebirth Canal, sadly I took quite some convincing by the others that all straight-on passages were dead ends and that by a simple process of elimination the way on, must by necessity, be up. The good news of course was that once we had come up under the Haha Tomo mound and gotten back down again it was but a short sprint to the finish. The Canal lived fully up to its best and worst expectations rendering the team members indistinguishable one from the other, until after we’d all splashed about in the Nile River for some time.

Even North Islanders can cave!

The aptly named Rebirth Canal

First time caver still smiling

Which one are you? All cavers look alike after the Rebirth Canal!

Yes, that is fresh water he's floating in...

I also got to meet the author Moira Lipyeat for the first time. She asked my name and then looked at me sufficiently blankly that I thought she probably hadn’t heard me over the cacophony that filled the room at the time. I then mentioned that I was a member of the CCG and her eyes lit up and exclaimed ‘Oh you’re Brett Sandford! You write for the Cavity’ (our club newsletter).  She proceeded to tell me how she enjoyed reading my articles, as I attempted to conceal my surprise that anyone read them in the first place.
Of course Queen's Birthday weekend is a three day weekend, but we spent the Monday climbing and ain't no-one interested in that...