Fantastica notizia da Kieran McKay, girata da Giovanni Badino a Scintilena inviata da Paul Williams sulla mailing list della UIS:
Sono tornato da 7 giorni dalla Grotta Bettlebed.
Le grotte Stormy Pot e Nettleded sono diventate una sola adesso! Abbiamo un sistema carsico di 1200 metri di profondità nell’emisfero sud del mondo!
Il punto di giunzione è alla fine del passaggio giallo, dove abbiamo scavato tra cumuli di roccia, trovando una piccola diramazione in salita. Mi sono arrampicato arrivando ad una stretta fessura interessata da una forte corrente d’aria. Ho scavato per circa un ora per allargare la strettoia e una volta passato mi sono ritrovato in una saletta che ho riconosciuto subito come il luogo del secondo campo interno nella Storm Pot.
Questo è il momento culminante di molte migliaia di uomo/ora di esplorazione durata per 40 anni, nella Nettlebed, fino alle recenti esplorazioni di Stormy Pot fatte da Troy Watson, Neil Silverwood, Aaron Gillespie, Chris Whitehouse and me (Kieran McKay N.d.R.)
Nota della redazione: Seguono ringraziamenti … che potranno essere tradotti dalla versione inglese che ripubblico integralmente qui sotto.
Dear UIS members
Remember it is summer in the Southern Hemisphere. The time for caving
expeditions. I’ve just received this report from a New Zealand
Speleological Society expedition (leader Kieran McKay) in the Southern
Alps and I thought you’d be interested:
Fantastic news from Kieran McKay this morning.
Have just arrived back from our 7 day Nettlebed [Cave] epic. Well I
won’t
drag this out….we have done it!! Stormy Pot and Nettlebed are now one,
we have a cave system 1200 metres deep and the deepest in the southern
hemisphere!! The connection point is at the end of the yellow passage,
we
dug into a rock pile there, found a small shaft going up, I climbed
this,
and at the top there was a very narrow crack with a strong draught
blowing
through. I dug at this crack for an hour or so and eventually managed to
squeeze through. One the other side I found myself in a small chamber I
instantly recognised as the spot we used as ……second camp in Stormy Pot,
the Rovers Return camp at the end of Coralation Street. At last!! We
were
pretty ‘stoked’ that’s for sure!! This is the culmination of many
thousands of man hours over 40 years with the exploration of Nettlebed,
then more recently with the exploration of Stormy Pot itself by Troy
Watson, Neil Silverwood, Aaron Gillespie, Chris Whitehouse and I. A big
thanks to Toby Reid from Reid/Heslop helicopters, Andrew Mckenzie from
Absolute Wilderness, Sport NZ who helped to start this process back in
2010 when they gave us a grant which helped us find Stormy Pot, then NZ
geographic [magazine] came on board and sponsored an expedition that
helped to put another piece of the puzzle in place and got us closer to
Nettlebed. In October Red Bull Media house supported an expedition that
resulted in a positive dye trace and a smoke connection between the two
caves. On the results of this Red Bull expedition we knew exactly where
to
look and made the connection. In the next few weeks the team will be
getting together for the first through trip after which we will be more
than happy to take others….
Wish I was young enough to join them on the next through
trip……………..
Paul Williams