YRC JOURNAL The Yorkshire Ramblers Club Mountaineering, caving etc. Series 13 - Issue 8 Winter 2009 PARILUNGBI FROM ADVANCED CAMP LHAKHANG - 2008 MEET PHOTO MICK BORROFF Articles CAVING IN THE LEVANT ice CLIMBING IN NORWAY GREAT WALKERS OF THE PAST Rock climbing at Kalymnos Tramping in new zealand lakeland tarns Stubaital, austria rock climbing at El chorro, spain 1 The Yorkshire Ramblers Club Established 1892 - www.yrc.org.uk The mountaineering and caving club The Club’s aim is to organise caving, mountaineering, walking and skiing expeditions, to encourage the exploration of caves and potholes and the more remote parts of the world and to gather and promote knowledge of natural history, archaeology, folklore and kindred subjects Editor Roy Denney, 33 Clovelly Road, Glenfield, Leicestershire LE3 8AE [email protected] Secretary Richard Kirby, 9 Whittam Road, Whalley, Lancs. BB7 9SB The opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the YRC or its Officers. The YRC Journal is published twice a year and is free to members and certain kindred clubs. First published July 1899 Club Properties Low Hall Garth Little Langdale Cumbria Lowstern Clapham North Yorkshire Lodged with the British Library - Publisher ID L-42592 Printed by Alfred Willday & Son Ltd, Unit 1, Dunns Lane, Leicester LE3 5LX - 0116 251 8478 YRC JOURNAL - SERIES 13 EDITION 8 - winter 2009 CONTENTS 3 Caving in the Levant 6 Ice climbing in Norway Tim Bateman 10 Great Walkers in the Lakes Jeff Hooper 14 The Lass Wi’ no ‘Ed Tom Wise 15 Kalymnos John & Valerie Middleton 17 A near miss David Handley 18 New Zealand Phil Dover & Roy Denney 24 Book revues Steve Craven & Roy Denney 27 Tarns and other Water 29 El Chorro, Spain Brian Stamper 31 Natural history 35 Chippings 44 Hebden Roy Denney 46 Stubaital , Austria Mick Borroff 50 Other Meets 55 2009 in pictures Adrian Bridge 56 Club proceedings 65 Useful web sites Additional copies of this journal can be provided at a nominal cost whilst stocks last. Articles or the entire publication can be provided in electronic form and may be reproduced providing that the author and the club are given proper acknowledgement. The same applies to any photographs provided. Requests can be addressed to the Club’s Honorary Secretary through the Club web site who will advise on costs etc. The journals occasionally include material from non-members who are happy for us to reproduce their work but we cannot pass these on in electronic form due to copyright considerations. Similarly where members wish to retain copyright it will be indicated and may not be reproduced without their express permission. Members can be contacted via the Secretary. The current series of journals goes back to Summer 2006. Series 12 goes back to summer 1994 and is held in electronic form. Series 12 were under the title of the ‘Yorkshire Rambler’. Earlier journals can be accessed for information and go back to the formation of the club in 1892 YRC journal Page 2 This is just one gallery in the wonderful cave system all of CAVING IN THE LEVANT which contains wonderful features, not least the Maxwell Column named after an expedition leader in 1873. This column stands 50 feet tall. Speleo Club du Liban (SCL - Lebanese Caving Club). John Middleton was one of the party visiting in each of We have now received the 15th edition of their journal. It 1968 and 1969. If we turn up our journals of that period is in full colour giving detailed surveys and superb there are fairly comprehensive reports. In 1968 the party photographs and is available in our library at Lowstern. included Trevor Salmon, Tony Dunford and David R Smith and the following year Bill Woodward. This latest edition highlights some wonderful prospects for going somewhere really different . Amongst the tales related, when they were near to the end of their trip in 1969 one Sami Karkabi suggested they There appears to be plenty to go at in the Lebanon if you look at Mgharet Al-Kassarat. Bill and John went down can overcome the logistical difficulties and the political with Georges Srouji and Sami, expecting a rather easy and unrest. Over the past 5 years there have been 3 small unexciting trip. First they went to the upper end and teams of British cavers that have visited the Lebanon and surveyed back, arriving in about four hours at the place they have turned up some more interesting discoveries. where the siphon should have been, but it was no longer there, it had completely dried up. They stopped puzzled, Our club are no strangers to this area and first made but in the silence, heard the dull roar of a distant river. liaison with the Lebanese back in the sixties. They dropped everything and ran into the empty siphon, up the other side, over a mud bank, round a corner, into According to the Lebanese Club the longest caves to be a large chamber and there they were - by the side of the found are raging Faouar Dara river. To their left it vanished down 1 Mgharet Jiita 10,050 m two impassable shoots but upstream there was nothing 2 Mgharet Roueiss 5,411 m but an enormous passage challenging them to follow. 3 Mgharet Afqa 5,260 m They took up the challenge and after wading through the 4 Mgharet Al-Kassarat 4,648 m river over a much eroded floor for 140 metres, came to a 5 Mgharet Ain al-Libne 4,560 m and 195 m deep lake. Sami took off his clothes and swam round a corner 6 Mgharet Nabaa al-Shatawie 4,130 m for about 40 metres to where he could hear a cascade 7 Faouar Dara 3,500 m and 622 m deep and when he came back they decided that they would 8 Houet Qattine Azar 3,100 m and 515 m deep need dinghies, ropes and other equipment before they 9 Mgharet Dahr al-Ain 1,500 m could safely cross this lake. 10 Mgharet Nabaa al-Moutrane 1,200 m They returned next day laden with four kit bags and There are some smaller caves reaching nearly 300 m in quickly made their way to the lake. Georges and John set depth but many are shallow systems. off with two bags in the first dinghy and made easy progress for 70 metres to a constriction where the water Back in the sixties the YRC visited nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7. gushed through with considerable force. The star of the show is of course Jiita and this is featured With their minds only on all the new ground still to be at length in their latest journal. discovered they pulled their way up the right hand wall to a calmer section - as they imagined, but in the next It covers recent exploration and discoveries and the moment their boat swung sideways and they were historic record and includes much serious scientific thrown into the cold torrent. Luckily they were both information. The system is one of contrasts with its swept to either side but it was a terrible blackness until extremely colourful Red Gallery and the more recently Georges managed to get his light going again. explored White Gallery. This latter gallery was only accessed properly in 2005 although its presence was When they found that the bag containing the ladders and recorded 45 years earlier. It is a truly amazing pure white rope had irretrievably sunk it meant a rather dismal with large numbers of superb calcite speleothems. return, surveying as they went and it was whilst doing this that they discovered the utterly fantastic `Upper Gallery', They take many forms, mainly large cave cones of various reached by a mud slope climb from the river. The gallery sizes but including stalactites, stalagmites, war-club was dry and its entire 120 metre length was crammed bulbous stalactites, columns, flow stones, soda straws, with every formation imaginable from monstrous rafts coralloids and two features the writer is unfamiliar stalagmites to delicate crystal flowers and helictites. with described as moonmilk and popcorn. All in all the gallery of over 2000 square metres is completely covered; As their last day day dawned they again attacked; Sami walls, ceiling and floor by this glistening array and must diving with his aqualung and surfacing first time with the be quite incredibly impressive. missing bag - a good omen. YRC Journal Page 3 Within half an hour they had fixed a line round the wall their `educational' outings to teach newcomers a little bit and to the top of the cascade and were continuing their of speleology and what it entails to be a caver from the pursuit of more passage; fifty, a hundred, two hundred adventurous, the scientific, as well as protection aspects. and twenty metres of gloriously meandering stream passage, to a boulder choke. Roueiss Cave is not as beautiful as Jiita Cave but it has a unique feel to it with its varied assortment of cave They climbed this into a large oxbow where they features ranging from wide and tight passages, discovered two delightful grottoes amidst a chaos of marvellous speleogens, underground rivers, mazes, house-sized boulders. The way then descended to a large balconies, upper passages, lower passages etc. We hold sand-covered passage gradually increasing to 35 metres an A2 copy of the new survey. wide and 15 metres high; a small stream entered from the left, crossed the sand and joined the main river which The cave systems are still not fully explored and the local had re-appeared only to race down a narrow channel into cavers still dream of climbing into some roof area to look a siphon.