Cave Party Having Trouble With Gear

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32077, 27 August 1969, Page 26

Cave Party Having Trouble With Gear

(New Zealand Press Association)

HAMILTON, August 26.

Members of the Hamilton Torn© Group attempting to set a New Zealand record of 350 hours underground in Gardner’s Gut cave, Waitomo, were today reported to be warm and dry but having some trouble with their equipment.

Mr P. Dimond, of Waitomo, today collected two messages from the party at the mouth of Gardner’s Gut The first, from 18-year-old Mr L. Bell, of Hamilton, said the four-member group had arrived at their camping spot on Saturday without difficulty, but bad broken their two thermometers in the descent. They had slept well, and everybody was warm and dry. Mr D. Barthow, also aged 18, from Auckland, left a message that the group’s ehart recorder had stopped. The recorder was a clock mechanism which did not tell the time, but gave them a relative idea by feeding out a roll of paper on which they

marked when they went to sleep, got up again, and had meals.

Mr Barthow also reported that the party had discovered a new loop passage in the cave and had spent about two hours digging most of the mud o,ut Of it to determine its shape.

The group also planned to extend another passage which had been partially filled with mud and was unexplored, he said.

Mr Dimond said he would return to the cave late today to take the, party two more

thermometers and to collect any further messages. He expected the group to send up some photographs soon.