Trip report
| 2005-11-12 | Caving - Survey trip 1 with NHVSS at Timor |
| Trip report: | |
| A Surveying Weekend helping out NHVSS with the new TIMOR BOOK. Hills undertook to survey Hill Cave and this is our first trip of a few to carry out this task. Jo and Mike arrived early evening on Friday and welcomed the rest of us in at the Pumpkin hour after doing battle with the bouncing kamikaze mammalian wildlife. Jody and Michael from NVHSS arrived on Saturday morning and after introductions we head off to our respective work holes. Ours is a short stroll away across open paddock and up through some outcropping limestone to a smallish horizontal entrance, one of two for Hill Cave, TR7 and TR8. Jodie also lent us a "Disto". Not a bad bit of kit. We really should get one of these. After a brief poke around the upper level to sort out all the good survey stations, we start surveying from the tag to a nice point on the floor of the first room. We start doing radials to pick up the wall extents and Jo starts to learn the 'inside cave' difficulties of mapping. A far cry from our theory nite spent mapping a tunnel made of chairs and sheets! In the second room Jo takes over the sketching for a while and does a good job in the low sloping chamber with a few small side passages. After lunch we wander up to Main Cave and have a look around. Quite a few bats and almost nil litter, totally opposite to 20 odd years ago. Later in the arvo we drive up onto the Adjoining property and locate the tag for a spring and its tufa dam deposits. A unique spot. On the way up the valley we visit a small cave newly found by NHVSS which contains an old ladder down the tight entrance. A pleasant evening is spent around the campfire solving all sorts of world issues and technical problems until we gradually succumb to the delicate flavours of our fart sacs. As usual the weather is dark with patches of light towards dawn. On Sunday we manage to knock off the top level of Hill Cave and we have a survey station at the top of the inclined squeeze. If you know the cave then you know the survey station.... its the one that removes the genitals as you slip over the edge to the inclined squeeze. After a late lunch we wander off home having achieved some nice mapping results. Rick | |