raggles.kiwi

Takaka Hill Sarex and Corkscrew Cave

After being convinced that I ought to attend a cavesar sarex on Takaka Hill, I left Christchurch at 11pm after having attended Alan Davis's standup gig (excellent), and headed north.  I made it to Ngati Moti before deciding that I was a danger to myself by continuing to drive any further, so I pulled over at 4am for a nap.  3 hours later and nap complete, I nipped up to the Ngarua Caves carpark to meet up with the 50 or so cavers that had come to attend the sarex.

We were split up into 5 groups of about 8-9, and given different exercises to do inside Kairuru Cave, rotating every 90 minutes.  The first exercise for my group was patient care, and by the end of the session I had already learned more than I could probably hope to remember in one day!

We followed on with communications (including the new cavelink system), stretchers, tracking lines and rigging/hauling.  By the end of the day my brain was well and truly saturated with new information.

Upon hearing a rumor during the festivities at the NSG hut the night before that Corkscrew was rigged, on Sunday a group of 5 of us from the CCG disappeared off to find it.  With none of us actually having been there before, all we had to go on was a vague description and a black and white aerial photo from 1984 that we looked at in the hut.  Surprisingly we more or less walked straight to the entrance!  Corkscrew is a good 200m deep, spread over at least a dozen pitches (I lost count).  We managed to make it to the bottom of the cave, where it joins a stream way but had little time to explore as we needed to be out and head back to Christchurch before it got too late. After a quick bite, it was back to the surface which took much less time than anticipated, for a total trip time of perhaps 5 hours.