South Wales

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDY TORBET

Chris Jewell and I had many great plans for exploratory cave-diving trips in 2020. There were possibilities in the crystal-clear cave of Bosnia-Herzegovina, some very long, deep passageways in France, some sumps with horrendous profiles and no end in sight in Spain and even some unmapped sea caves in Greece.

However, as some of you may be aware, 2020 proved a difficult year for international trips. Frankly, national trips proved impossible for a great deal of the year. But between breaks in the lockdowns, we did manage to achieve some genuine exploration. In Wales… For those unfamiliar with the famous Emergence du Ressel cave-diving site in France, it begins as a hole in a riverbed. You wade into the river and swim upstream, disappearing into the cave mouth and another world. Well, the Welsh equivalent is Pyll y Cwm. This pool lies to one side of the Clydach River in South Wales and the entrance drops vertically down to about 20m. Here one is met by a low, horizontal slot which is usually choked up with small boulders. If one was to get through that, it’s another 700 metres of swimming before you reach the surface inside the Daren Cilau cave system.

And if trying to squeeze a load of caving, diving and camping equipment through the boulder choke seemed like a bad idea, dragging it through hundreds of metres of underwater cave is even more work. But if one was to attempt any serious exploration on the other side, spending three days and two nights underground, that’s exactly what you’d have to do. And it’s exactly what we did. The potential for exploration lay at the end of a series of sumps (submerged cave passageways), all of which were connected by long, dry cave systems. We’d need time and equipment to reach the far end and spend time investigating any possible ways on. But the effort began long before the first dive.

To reach the river required five trips each, our team having expanded to three with the inclusion of George Linnane, to move the equipment down the side of a steep gorge to the riverbed. Our kit lists were similar and mine consisted off two 15-litre cylinders, two seven-litre cylinders, a three-litre cylinder, a large dry tube holding my sleeping bag, bivi, food, stove, camping accessories and med kit, a caving bag and tool, two cameras, tripods and light.

I wore a drysuit to dive in the initial sump with all this gear clipped to me, but had a two-piece wetsuit wrapped around the 15-litre cylinders to wear for the subsequent caving and sumps. Once we finally had this mound of stuff on the river bank, we dressed up, to the sound of metallic snapping as dozens of clips were attached to D-rings on our harnesses. Then we’d left the forest light of the surface and descended. To make this trip easier, Chris had visited the week before and cleared the initial squeeze of boulders and cobbles.

The negotiation of this part of the cave still required us to remove most of the cylinders, bags and tube and push them in front of us, but it proved a straightforward operation. Then you enter the long swim. This part takes about an hour to cover, slowed by the excess equipment you’re carrying. But, after the physical efforts of the previous few hours, it’s a chance to relax and appreciate the sudden weightlessness of it all. The permanent line is marked every 50 metres, without which I think I would lose all sense of time and space. It is one of the longest stretches of continuously underwater cave in Britain and when you surface into the Dive Base Chamber of Daren Cilau, you feel like you’ve truly left the world behind you. Trips like these are all about efficiency. It’s hard enough as it is without wasting effort needlessly. While still at the water’s edge, we switch our regulators off our 15-litre cylinders onto our sevens and threes and leave the 15s here along with anything else we won’t need inside the cave. This includes the lead weight strapped to our dry-tubes of camping gear, as this kit won’t be taken into any further sumps. Everything else we carry up to a spacious, dry part of the cave call Dive Base. The passage on lay to our left, but a second passage went towards our campsite known as the ‘Hard Rock Café’ (which is probably copyrighted, but before the owners of the US restaurant chain sue the British caving community, they should visit the campsite for themselves… best of luck with that). So, we dump all our diving and caving kit here, unpack our camping kit into a lightweight bag (the dry-tubes are heavy) and head the 15 minutes to the campsite.

Upon arrival we choose a bed space, drop our gear and carry on into the cave. We need to move further upstream to collect fresh water for the next two nights of brews, dinners and breakfasts. It takes around an hour but upon our return we can finally sit in our undersuits, get a food on and rest in

Happy as pigs in the proverbial George ready to explore

Loaded up with necessities

‘Stop faffing with that camera and get ready to dive!’

Rigging up to enter the system Andy exploring in the cave

preparation for the long day ahead. We wake, having slept on a rock ledge, and fire up the stoves, getting the fuel into our bodies as we’ll have little chance to eat again for about 12 hours. With all that done we head back to dive base, gear up and head along the other passageway.

This time we’re dressed in wetsuits. The sumps are all much shorter with a lot of dry caving, involving walking, climbing and crawling through the tunnel network, so is much easier in a wetsuit - and the odd tear isn’t a problem. On our haul backs we each carry two cylinders with regulators, diving harness and wing, fins, masks, reels, torches, camera, helmets tools and spares. In my case I also carry a filter bottle so we can all safely drink the water for the sumps. It’s thirsty work, but carrying fresh water is unnecessary weight.

The first dry section is short and leads to St David’s Sump. This is only about 40 metres long and shallow. The next section of dry passageway is less than a kilometre of walking and scrambling, which would be relatively easy but the extra weight of dive kit adds to the effort. This part finishes with a hands and knees crawl across dry sandy mud to the dive base for The Gloom Room Sump. At the base care must be taken too when kitting up to keep equipment as clean as possible. It’s impossible. Once we’re ready, we enter the water by scrambling down a steep, ten-metre mud slope which inevitably becomes a slide.

Andy getting a brew on

Cave diving can be extremely tiring work

The dive itself in the longest and deepest of the inner sumps at around 250 metres in length and 17m depth. The visibility is rarely good at the start, nil if you’re the second or third diver through. After a slight squeeze in the first minute, the passageway opens enough for normal swimming and you follow the line as it switches back and forth to emerge in The San Augustin Way. This begins similar to the previous dry cave but finishes in a climb up into a narrow gorge of unreliable rock. Negotiating this often requires us to span the gap with hands, with holds breaking off unpredictably.

I suffer a few bumps and bruises but thankfully nothing more serious. Regardless of actual geography in terms of a rescuing a casualty from here, it would be easier and faster if you’d broken your leg in the middle of the Bolivian jungle. But finally, after twisting and turning, wading and brachiating above or in the deep streamway, we make it to Sump Four. Imaginatively called, Sump Four. This is quickly followed by Sump Five, named in the same fashion as the previous one, and a chance to finally dump our dive kit.

As we leave Sump Five we enter the final part of the cave. The reason we’ve come this far. This final chamber is the current extent of exploration and we begin our search for possible ways on. I was aware of a narrow, vertical crack through which I can see another chamber above. After clearing loose rock and making the space a little larger, I wriggle my way upwards and into a space no one has been in before. There are some beautiful formations and the room is quiet and peaceful, cut off from the noise of the streamway. Chris joins me and, after a quick confirmatory discussion, we head back down.

As pleasant as this part of the cave is, it’s clear there is no way on. Chris follows the streamway and finds another potential route. The three of us leapfrog each other, taking turns to clear rock and investigating high or low routes through. We make perhaps ten metres progress and can see further, narrow passageway, half-filled with water and completely filled with rubble.

It was tight to get into the underground base camp

The passageway continues, but it will take more time and effort to clear more and make further progress.

Of course, this was only half the story. We headed back to camp, now tired and without the motivation of potential exploration to energise us. In the morning we dived out. I left earlier than the other two. I had to exit, get all the gear back up and out of the gorge (without doubt physically the single hardest part of the entire three days) and get back in time to pick my boys from school - under the Earth, the real world may seem a distant planet, but life continues on and you have to catch back up. Our exploration may seem limited, only one small chamber and a few metres of new passageway, but this was Britain in 2020. Where one had to be grateful for any opportunities of freedom and to judge one’s achievements with perspective. It was a year to appreciate any chance to dive, explore and adventure. No matter how small. n