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| Aven des Calles - France, WW | |
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| | Aven des Calles - France, WW | | | |
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Aven des Calles - France, WW
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| Hiking | 2.80 Miles |
747 AEG |
| | Hiking | 2.80 Miles | | | |
| 747 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no linked trail guides |
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| no partners | | One of the guys I met the day before, Serge, took me caving. He brought along another person since if there were issues he wanted to have a third person to help out. Imagine taking someone you’ve only just met vertical caving and neither person is able to speak fully speak each other’s language. Lucky for me I’m a capable and careful caver. And come to find out Serge’s, English wasn’t too bad!
On our way to the cave it was pouring rain. Then some hail. But it cleared as we started to hike.
On this adventure, I learned the French cavers will hike in their underwear to the cave. Then put on their cave suits when they arrive to the cave.
Serge was one of the people that found the cave. On their first visit, about 20 years ago, they dove a spring to access it. Later they found a better entrance after snow fell and they could see where the snow wasn’t sticking due to the cave breathing.
We hiked up to an entrance that they had later found. They had expanded the entrance to allow for human passage. We had to crawl a little bit and then we were at a 12 meter drop. They rigged the drop using some rebelays so we could get over to the drop without falling off the cliff.
The cavern we rappelled into was large 50 m x 50 m x 50 m. Along the walls were beautiful formations but the middle was full of breakdown. We went to the other side and climbed up a rope using mechanical ascenders. From there we entered what was even a bigger cavern. It was 100 m x50 m x50 m.
On one side of it was a huge stalagmite.
We had our lunch near the stalagmite. My French cheese, baguette, and apple lunch seemed perfect in my mind but when I saw that they had that plus a main course I was thinking in the future I might have to step up my lunch game! Especially when they pulled out a hot thermos of espresso to share after lunch was over.
We reversed our trip rappelling what we ascended and then ascending the first rappel.
On the hike out we scree ran down a slope. I wasn’t going fast enough so one of the guys grabbed my arm to get me moving. It was fun!
Afterwards we visited the spring that they dove. At this point in time the spring didn’t have any visible flow coming out. But it would have still had been an adventure to access the sump - no thank you! |
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Route Editor
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