‘Darkness and roaring water’

Press, 11 July 1980, Page 1

‘Darkness and roaring water’

“It will be dreadful down there after this long. They will be without lights and' completely disoriented.” That was how Chris Smith, w’ho has been caving many times with the three trapped youths, saw the plight of his friends last evening. Mr Smith, aged 19, was to have joined them on the trip, but withdrew at the last minute because he had to sit a university physics test today. After more than 50 hours in the flooded Profanity Cave, the three missing youths would be surrounded by pitch blackness and the echoing roar of rushing water, said Mr Smith, who has explored the cave with them in the past. “It is a terrible sensation without lights, and theirs must have run out by now,” said Mr Smith. "Your balance goes after a few minutes and vou tend to think you are falling over all the time. You lose all track of time and get completely disoriented,” he said. He said the absolute darkness deep underground would probably make it too dangerous for the trio to move far from the spot where their carbide lamps had petered out.

“The cave is very noisy at the best of times, so it must be worse in a flood,” said Mr Smith. Water was

still gushing from the cave mouth yesterday, preventing would-be rescuers from reaching the youths that way. The temperature inside the 3km-long cavern is estimated at 3deg C, and Mr Smith said exposure would probably be the biggest threat to the three. He said Profanity was a resurgence cave which led steadily uphill to its inner-

most reaches, which were still unexplored. A resurgence cave leads uphill and has water running down through it, as opposed to a subsidence cave, which leads downhill from the entrance. The first stretch inside the ’ entrance was tight, straight tubing, and apart from the noise of the water, relatively, easy going, said Mr Smith. Half an hour inside the cave came the first tricky part, where cavers had to negotiate rift passages, at right angles to each other, which were barely wide enough 1 for a person to squeeze through. Cavers had to crawl in many places from there on, climbing all the time. The easiest going was round several deep pools topped by waterfalls. About two hours in from the entrance, according to Mr Smith, is Profanity’s main feature, a deep lake about 10m wide and more than 100 m long. Rock walls rise steeply from the sides of the lake, and cavers have to use tyre tubes to cross it. “If they are in past the lake there are plenty of big caverns where they could stay safely,” said Mr Smith. “If the}’ are in the lower part they would have to climb to a ledge to get away from the water,” he said.