OLIERO SYSTEM 2005
Cogol dei Veci
On February, the 6th,
I’m again to the Oliero System to go beyond the Cogol dei Veci’s syphon with
Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, two english cave diver.
We spend the day preparing the equipment that we’ll place in the water for
emergency. Each one of us will be autonomous, so each one will carry his own
emergency equipment.
Because of I’m using a ccr,
I decide to place in the syphon three 15 l deco tanks that I’ll leave near the
entry, three 20 l tanks with gas mixes that I can breath from 0 to -60m; two of
them will stay with me, the other one and a dpv with 2km of autonomy, will be
placed at 1600-1700m from the entry.
English guys, who are using a double ccr, leave some 10 and 20 l taks and a dpv
in the syphon.
On Monday, the 7th,
we dive to place materials where we decided and to check that the line is in
good conditions; I’m the last of the group, because I’ve dived in this source
just for 200m from the entry, and I can see that in some zones there’s no yarn
or it’s in very bad conditions. Edoardo and Marc make some short movies Rick
places of the
galleries, and Antonello takes some pictures. John fixes the line, and the
farest yarn. I have to go on slowly because of John’s dpv isn’t as fast as mine,
so I take my time to watch around. Fabrizio places for me the emergency bottle.
Dimensions of the gallery are more regular then the one of Cogol dei Siori, also
the visibility seems better. The maximum depth reached is –57m, but just for a
while, then the gallery goes up and it’s depth is between –40m and –50m for
about 900-1000m. At 800m, the steel line placed by the swiss cave divers, seems
to be safe. I pass John and go to set the second dpv and a 20 l tank at 1600m. I
go ahead for 100 m. just to see another part of the cave and then, after 70’ I
decide to come back. I go out of the water after 170’, John and Rick come out
about one hour after me. Rick reached the 1900m, and John stopped at 1700m to
leave his material.
On Tuesday, the 8th,
we prepare the things for the day after dive, when we’ll spend two nights inside
the cave. Everyone will bring his own equipment: sleeping bag, mattress, camp
stove, pot, food, batteries for the lamps and so on...
On Wednesday, the 9th,
we meet at noon for the last preparations, I check the dpv, the helmet, the ccr,
the lamps... english guys came earlier then me, so they start their dive at
2.00 pm, I take my time and go into the water at 3.00 pm. Inside the cave I can
see that there are some side galleries, there’s always the line, but there’re no
indications for the exit direction, so I decide to stop and place some rubber
bands to indicate the exit. If I have to get out in emergency breathing from
tanks, I won’t waste time trying to find the right line to follow, in this
situation the mind should be busy to work out other problems, and memory should
deceive making me take a wrong direction.
After 57’ of dive, I see my
yarn near Rick’s one: now I know the place where I arrived in this source. I go
ahead for a few metres and suddenly the visibilty gets wonderful: there must be
a some water that comes from a different place; after 30m from the connection I
can see the air over my head, and there’s still some yarn placed by Oliver Isler
in 1994. I go up after 63’ with the other guys. In this situation a big dpv is,
a fine advantage. When we come out, we store our equipment and share opinions:
unfortunately my english isn’t so good, then we prepare our camp. The stones in
the gallery are very slippery: we climb over the rocks until we arrive in front
of a wall, on the right of wich there’s a small lake (about 7m wide). We climb
the wall and walk into the gallery that’s 15m wide and 10 high. Then we walk 20m
long and we arrive to a beach that will recover us during the night. Over our
heads there’s a fracture, whose ceiling really high is about 20m. The beach is a
3x3m space placed on the right side of the gallery. From a side gallery, on the
right, there’s a stream, water of which will be used to make soups and tea. We
leave there the bivouac cans, we take off the suit and the undersuit, I put on
my climbing boots, and a cave suit, the others wear a pair of hard socks with
rubber sole. We carry the diving equipment from the end of the first syphon to
the camp. We stop to have a cup of tea, then we carry the equipment to the
second syphon. From here the gallery is very beautiful: the bottom is full of
stones, but after 50 m there’s a lake, we pass over it, on its left there’s a
small gallery of 2x2m that after a few meters gets smaller and arrives to a
stream.
Now we are in front of a
kind of a natural stairway, it’s 15m wide and goes on with some steps for a few
metres; on its top I can see the lights of the others lighting the intended
erosions over the lake. From here the gallery goes on for 30m, with a medium
width of 15m and 5m high; the bottom is made with smooth light brown stones and
it’s full of erosions; I have enough time watching and comparing the forms that
I see. Then we reach a very different place: a fracture cuts the gallery and in
front of us there’s a well of 10m, on the left there’s a gallery 4x4m filled
with mud and 10m long; on the right there’s another tunnel 5m wide, and the
ceiling is 15m high. We start to go down without ropes, with our bags on the
shoulders; it’s not difficult but it’s really slippery, and we know that just a
dislocation, here, could be a very big problem. At the end of the well, off the
lake we see rags of yarn: probably it’s has been take there during the floods;
we go up for a while, and finally we can see the final lake, it’s the second
syphon: the lake is 15m wide, and 20m long, the ceiling is 20m over our heads
and there is a fracture turned of 90° then the one that we saw over the well. We
finish to carry all the equipment, then we go into the gallery over the well
that during the return is on the left; we walk to the camp, and also we walk
around there to see other tunnels full of mud and water: we give up, because we
can’t dip our undersuit. Anyway we explored about 500m of dry galleries.
“What time is it?” I ask, because I don’t have the clock. John watch his, but
it’s still on the english time, so Rick says that it’s 9.30pm. Time for dinner!
And we are in late, everyone cook dried soups. After dinner we go to sleep: I’m
using a matress, sleeping bag and a thermic sheet. The others are using a
bivouac kit. Before swiching off the led lights on the helmet, I look at the
dark ceiling where light makes strange reflexes; sometimes I feel some drops on
my sleeping bag, I close my eyes, swich off the light and my friends do the
same. We are now in the black dark, and the only sound we can hear, is the the
water running in the stream.
We wake up at 10.00am in
the dark. My knee hurts because of an inflamed ligament due to yesterday fallen,
during the equipment carriage. We have breakfast toghether and then go on, each
one will do something different: english guys go to the second syphon, and I,
with my painful knee, come back to the first one, to see some galleries in the
union of the syphons of the Siori and Veci. Fortunately I close the dry suit
without problems, here there’s none to help me; before to put on the equipment I
check the oxygen sensors. Everything is ok: I put on everything and swimming, I
reach the dpv. Now I am by the yarn that I placed some week before entering from
the Siori: I follow it and arrive to a big window. As the last time I can see a
lot of proteus here, I get off from the dpv, knot the yarn and start swimming.
After 10m I see again Rick’s line, this mean that I’m in the Veci’s gallery.
Then I go to the second zone of exploration, but it’s another connection with
the Veci. I decide to come back taking my time to study walls, but there’re no
passages. Coming back I meet Edoardo finishing the deco, who came here to look
at us. After we get out from the water, we chat, and then we go together to the
camp.
Edoardo has two beers for
us, and I decide to make a tea for him. Then John arrives and talks about his
dive; Edoardo realizes that’s is late, so he says goodbye and goes to the syphon
alone while we start to cook our dinner. Rick isn’t still come back, so we
decide to wait for him into our sleeping bag. While we are already asleep, we
hear some steps, then we see Rick. He talks about his dive first in spoken
english, and then he tries to explain to me what he said before, talking slowly
and easy. The second syphon is 1.090 m long (and sometimes it’s wider then the
first one), the maximum depth is -50m, and the medium is about -30m; off the
syphon he found out, about 200m of dry galleries 8m wide, he climbed a couple of
small waterfalls and then he stopped under a big well where there’s some water
that falls down, and there’s a strong cold air current. Into the second syphon,
both, John and him saw a kind of crustacean, they have never seen somewhere
else; at the end of the second syphon also he saw 4 or 5 proteus. There’s no
prosecution, so we wonder where does come from the water that comes out from the
cave during the floods. The only thing that we can wonder about is that these
dry galleries, during the floods desappear under the water. Rick eats something
and get into his sleeping bag: we are ready for our last night here, tasting the
sound of silence and the dark. As usual, we wake up not too early, about 09.00
am, here there’s no dawn. We have breakfast and then we carry the equipment from
the second syphon to the first; my knee hurts and I have to limping. My cans are
ready, so when I finish helping my friend, I put on my equipment and go into the
water.
I pass the syphon with two cave bags where inside there are cans as a tow. The
two 20 l tanks are on my side, and when I get the dpv and the other tank, I put
there at the end of the tow and go on. After 75’ I go out taking the other three
15 l deco bottles. At the exit I meet Ennio, the Firemen team from Vicenza who
came to visit me, and when I take off my equipment comes Jean Jacques.
While I’m storing my material, Francesco takes the equipment that is still in
the water.
The english guys come out after a lot of time, their dive took 150’.
We finish this great exploration having a dinner to Decimo’s restaurant, where
we eat a very good food and drink good wine and after the cake we taste his
famous strawberry brandy.
The Team:
Antonello Paone - Italy
Domiziana Troiani - Italy
Edoardo Pavia - Italy
Fabrizio Capaldo - Italy
Federico Reggimenti - Italy
Francesco Boaria - Italy
Luigi Casati - Italy
Marc Elliot - England
John Volanthen - England
Josè Lamblelet - Switzerland
Rick Stanton - England
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