raggles.kiwi

Harwoods Hole & Hobbit Hole

Anxious to make the most of my shiny new 200m rope, I called round a few friends to see if I could get a team together for a trip down Harwoods Hole.  I got a couple of takers, and the three of us met at the carpark early on Saturday, woke up all of the tourists that were camping there with our excitable banter and headed off towards the hole.  None of us had been through Harwoods before, but we had a map and lots of advice from others so we felt pretty confident.

It took about two hours to rig the rope and get the three of us down the hole, the relative inexperience of the group meant that we would take slightly longer than some to do the rigging and negotiate the rebelay.  We had a quick snack at the bottom, and headed off through Starlight Cave.  The cave itself is mostly quite large, with plenty of abseils down small waterfalls, and many crystal clear pools of water that you had to be careful not to step into as they were quite deceiving!

At one point we had to check the map as it looked like the way forward was blocked by a large pool of water.  However there didn't seam any other way so after some careful bridging we were able to carry on, only to come to another large pool.  This point is marked on the map as shorties terror, as the bridging involved to get across is such that short people must find creative methods in order to stay dry!  A short climb leads up to the nice and dry Starlight passage, then its around and through the lake at the Starlight entrance onto the big blocky scree slope that leads back up to the top of the hill.  It was a very warm day so we took the time to have second lunch and dry all our gear before heading back up the hill.  Finding the track back up wasn't as obvious as we were hoping (be sure to head directly across the scree and then up in order to see the markers), but once we found it, it was well flagged to the top of the hill.  I was nominated to derig the rebelay (no one else was particularly interested in fetching my rope for me!) which I found to be quite an experience.  I thought that I was pretty ok with heights but I found myself constantly checking everything, just to make sure nothing was going to go wrong!  We made it back to the car for a total round trip time of 11 hours.

After Harwoods we decided to head down to Riwaka to pick up a couple of litres of beer to bring back to the Nelson club hut where we met a number of local cavers, including a group that was heading down Harwoods the next day.  After some discussion we decided to go down the Hobbit Hole entrance to Middle Earth - we didn't have any maps for this trip so we were just going to have a look around for a few hours and then come back the same way.

The Hobbit Hole entrance involved a ~15m abseil (we used the end of my 200m rope and left the rest coiled at the top) followed by a couple of tight sections through a rockfall then mostly big passage.  The cave was already rigged and well flagged so we had no trouble finding the way.

We went down several pitches including a shaft which seemed about 40m before coming to a nice wall of flowstone, and the start of a rift - I followed this for a short way but came to some pretty stuff that I didn't feel inclined to climb all over so we headed back up.  I still have no idea which part of the cave we explored as I haven't seen the newer surveys of this cave, and I can't wait to go back there.