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March 2012

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The Caves of Tolminski Migovec - Expedition Talk @ 18:30, Tues 20th March
by Imperial College Caving Club 16 Mar '12

16 Mar '12

Dear Cavers, Well, nearly at the end of two terms of caving! And what a fantastic load of trips it's been. Check the website for the results of the AGM, and for announcements of trips in the summer term: http://union.ic.ac.uk/rcc/caving/ You may also know that we have a long term exploration project in Slovenia. Next Tuesday instead of meeting in the union bar, we are presenting a talk for the Exploration society on its recent history: *The Caves of Tolminski Migovec - An IC Caving Society Expedition Talk Elec LT 408 at 18:30 on Tuesday 20th March* Since 1994, Imperial College Caving Club has been organising summer expeditions to explore the cave passage within Tolminski Migovec in western Slovenia. Exploration over the last three years has focused on connecting the Migovec System (11.49km long, 970m deep) to the more recently explored Vrtnarija (11.03km long, 888m deep), which would jointly become the longest cave in Slovenia. In pursuit of this goal, exploration in Vrtnarija has been pursued at considerable depth during multiple day underground camps. In 2010 we discovered massive horizontal phreatic levels that had lain untouched since their formation millions of years ago, before the mountains themselves existed. During 2011 we pushed Vrtnarija to a new maximum depth of 888m, discovering over 2km of passage in the process. The area of closest approach between the two systems has been explored to within our survey error. The connection of the systems & the promotion of Migovec to the top of the 'leader board' of Slovenian caves would be all the more remarkable due to the deep and challenging nature of the cave we've discovered, in a country where the top ten is dominated by the warm shallow caves of the classic Karst. Our exploration is carried out on a shoestring budget, involves a majority of students, yet is very much world class cave exploration. In this talk I will aim to give a general introduction to alpine caving and modern cave exploration, and discuss our recent exploration. Best, Jarvist -- Imperial College Caving Club http://union.ic.ac.uk/rcc/caving ic.caving [AT] gmail.com

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