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| Home > Expeditions > Mount Parnassus, Greece 1997 | |
Amazon Pot... Location: Mount Parnassus, towards Kali via from camp Download the Survey (Adobe Acrobat Required) Of the four of us, Dave was the only one who had been on the prospecting trip that found the entrance to this cave. He told stories of a rift in the corner of a huge shake hole, into which they had abseiled. The prospecting party had returned to camp via the road so the pushing team was dropped off about a mile down the road towards Kali via and set off back up the hill through the forest, towards where Dave thought the cave was. After several wrong shake holes, and quite a lot of trudging, we eventually found the correct shake hole; by now it was starting to rain. The shake hole was quite impressive, being about 20 m across with sheer, fluted limestone walls all round. After we had changed into caving garb, Dave started rigging from a tree near the lip of the shake hole. From the tree, the rope led down a slope onto a rocky pier that stretched about a quarter of the way across the shake hole. The end of the rocky pier held a few large boulders, and a rebelay was set up from one of these, allowing the final twelve metres to be descended to the floor of the shake hole. The plan was for Dave and I to bolt the actual rift, while Vicky and Mima put in a few bolts between the tree and the rebelay; I followed Dave to the edge of the rift and looked down into the darkness. Dave had told us previously that when they had thrown rocks down this rift, a few days previously, they had not heard them hit the bottom. Morale was high: this was going to be a deep one! Dave banged a bolt into the wall at the pitch head; on the easy side! Then it was my turn to hang on Dave's fresh bolt, swinging around above a black rift of unknown depth, as I banged in a second bolt for a Y-hang. Meanwhile, Vicky and Mima had descended into the shake hole and they added another bolt a bit further back as a back-up. After a brief lunch break, it was time to descend into the depths of Parnassus. For some reason, I volunteered to rig the rest of the cave. Rigging a cave can have a few interesting' bits such as knots tightening as they are loaded, rigging from bolts that had only just been inserted was even more disconcerting; especially as this was the first bolt that I had done for real'! Rather than having a Y-hang, I tensioned the rope to the back-up, just in case! It certainly was an odd feeling, descending into somewhere where no one, except for an errant sheep, had gone before. Unfortunately, the reason that Dave had not heard rocks hitting the floor was the presence of a huge snow plug at the bottom of the shaft. The pitch was a pleasant 25-m free hang down a shaft with a diameter of about 3 m. At the bottom was a small climb down to the ice plug. The other three followed and we frantically searched for a way on but none was to be found. Vicky forced her way into a parallel shaft but that went nowhere; each of us crawled round the back of the snow plug but found no evidence for a way on. Slightly disheartened, we exited the cave, surveying as we went. The walk back to camp was by a similar route to that taken on the way to the cave: none of us fancied getting lost trying to find a short cut back to camp up the hill. Farmer Giles Cave (a.k.a. Farmer Spiros Cave)... Location: In an olive grove, just East of Idea Download the Survey (Adobe Acrobat Required) After shopping (and scoffing) in Idea, we drove Eastwards out of Idea along the coast road. We had seen some large looking holes in the distant cliff faces when driving into Itea and wanted to check them out. The best area seemed to be just up from an olive grove so we turned onto a dirt track leading through the olive plantation. We are pretty sure that it wasn't a public road but there were no obvious keep out' signs or barriers! After climbing up the hill side and examining a couple of holes we eventually parked below a large, decent looking hole in the hill side. The surrounding hills appeared to be made from some type of sandstone so we were not expecting a great depth. There was some litter just inside the entrance, indicating that the local lads probably went there from time to time for a few quiet tinnies! The entrance was about four metres high leading to a large passage about eight metres long. The floor had a small channel in the centre, which was probably a dried-up stream bed. At the end of the passage, there was a T-junction. At this junction was a large boss below a shaft disappearing upwards. Mark climbed up but the shaft didn't seem to go anywhere. The left-hand route from the T-junction was a steadily narrowing tube that climbed slowly upwards, ending after about twenty metres; the far reaches of this tube was infested with thousands of tiny flies. Part of the way along this passage was a small tube disappearing up from the left-hand wall. Vicky and I investigated but it went nowhere. Just to the right of the T-junction was a large rock bridge, which one could go either underneath or climb up and over the top. Both routes ended at a second entrance to the cave, slightly higher than the main entrance. As we were surveying the cave, we saw another car driving along the dirt track through the olive grove towards our car. We watched from the cave entrance, as the car stopped and the farmer jumped out. He looked at our car and then looked suspiciously round his olive grove. We shrank back into the cave, out of sight. The farmer went back to his car and started doing something in his boot. We were convinced that it was a shot gun but that was probably our imagination! At this point we grabbed all of our stuff from near the entrance to the cave and put it further into the depths of the cave. Surveying then was completed quite quietly! Luckily, when we had finished, Farmer Giles (Farmer Spiros could be the Greek equivalent!) had driven further down the track, so we could get back to the car in safety. We left the olive grove rapidly. The walk back to the car led us past the decomposing body of a dog. Maybe Farmer Giles was using is as a strange type of fertiliser for his olives! Whatever, it was truly festering and stank! Not the biggest of caves but significantly more interesting than those we found on the way back, which involved climbing up stupidly steep, and stupidly high scree slopes. There was also a photo opportunity involving Dave, a tortoise, and a caving helmet!
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