06-07/12/2003 - photos - report
Participants: Liz Edye, Chris Stephens, Charles Blumer, Gill Fowler, Tom Brennan
Cramming five people and gear into the car early on Saturday morning was a bit of a challenge, but we soon got ourselves sorted. Even with a couple of stops we reached Wee Jasper before midday. We set up camp first, and then headed for Dip Series.
Dropping in to the Main Chamber, we spent quite a while exploring the top series, including the disturbing feel of hundreds of bent-wing bats flying at us. Everyone did the V-squeeze, with Chris getting the most volume, grunting his way up the other side. After several hours of exploring, we dropped through the Rathole. We had a couple of issues with the 17m rope not reaching the ground for the abseil. Liz went down first on single, and it turned out to be just long enough that you could abseil off the bottom on to solid ground.
We did a little more exploring, but then headed for the exit. Before heading for camp, we searched around to try and find the entrance to the Gong Chamber, further down the hill. After wading through fields of thistles, nettles and other prickly things we found it, noting it for the next day.
Late nights on Friday for most people meant that the camp fire was a quiet affair. After dinner and a couple of bottles of wine everyone drifted off to bed.
A slow start on Sunday saw us back to check out the Gong Chamber. This was quite spectacular, with numerous large shawls in interesting colours. The others amused themselves for a while trying out a number of squeezes in the chamber.
Prussiking back up, we headed quickly to Daylight Chamber, doing the large drop, and exiting straight away. This was so we'd have time to visit Carey's Cave.
We had a record quick pack up, and drove down the road to Carey's. We were the only group that turned up for the 3 o'clock session, so we got the personalised tour from Geoff, the guide. The tour was only supposed to be an hour, but after Geoff realised we were really interested, we got shown all sorts of fascinating things. By the time we left it was over two and a half hours later, and Geoff was bemoaning the lost opportunity to do anything else
We hit the road back to Sydney, a great weekend behind us.