When exploring caves you almost never know what you are going to get. Some times you get lucky and the unknown rewards you, other times it teases you with lots of effort for nothing. This ended up being a fairly classic cave trip that found me asking myself "why bother?" at one point and then at a later point in the trip answering myself with "THIS!!!" With me showing up on Rob's doorstep the afternoon before he managed to hastily arrange a trip with another local caver Phil into Sycamore Sink, a bottom of the mountain overflow resurgence system they had discovered less than a year before and were still actively exploring. The cave had an excellent draft at its entrance and several kilometers of known cave. Virtually all of the known cave clearly floods and so this was a good weather, dry season only cave. The goal was to continue exploration through this lower flood maze with the hope of working our way up and into more organized passages within Takaka Hill.
Phil showed up right at 10am for our civilized start. We packed quite light with a survey kit, a couple digging tools, and some snacks. We drove less than 10 minutes from Rob's place and then a 10 minute walk to the modest crawl entrance emitting a cold draft of air. The entrance series was a slow 30 meters of crawling and tight clambering through a sharp partially dug, partially blasted tunnel. Once through, the bulk of the cave we saw was either sandy floored walking passage or bedrock floored rifts. All evidence I saw pointed to passages that regularly flood. At one point on the way in Phil led me up a short climb to show me the start of a very nice formation room they had found on a previous trip. We then continued on, the cave sufficiently mazy that I am not sure my brain was able to keep up with the routefinding as Rob and Phil steadily plowed through junction after junction with a specific destination in mind. A little more than an hour from the entrance they led me to the "sand dig" that we reported on a previous trip that they hoped would be the way forward into the mountain. Upon arrival my first dip of the trowel revealed not sandy by clay-rich mud in the awkwardly tight passage. Progress was very hard to make in these conditions but wanting to be a good sport I attacked the mud for over a half-hour while Rob and Phil surveyed up to me. This was pretty grim and I remember thinking not worth getting my cave suit dirty over. I made a little progress but Rob had a look and agreed that this dig should probably be a low priority and so we backtracked and decided to have a look at a few climbing leads instead.
While I played around trying my phone's lidar scanner, Rob and Phil climbed about 30m or so up an aven finding an elliptical shaped passage that seemed too dense with formations to continue. We tried a second greasy climb where Rob and Phil acted as step-ladder to boost me up into an offshooting passage. I very soon got to a point where I thought a belay would be warranted to continue up the mixed rock and mud continuation of the climb and so retreated back down to the floor. We then tried a third easier greasy mud climb that led up into some breakdown. Some of the breakdown blocks were larger than cars and so the three of us split off to explore different gaps between the boulders. My leads all pinched out but towards the top of breakdown pile Rob and Phil spotted a very curious feature: underneath an SUV-sized boulder was a rear-view-mirror-sized portal that we could look through and see an open space with a real wall. It seemed highly likely that this would put us past the breakdown pile if we could only get through. Attacking the gap with a trowel seemed like it was solid rock beneath and we would not be able to break through. A few meters to the left I spotted another gap between rocks that looked more promising as an upward angling squeeze. I wasn't thrilled by the sharp look of it but thought I might as well give it a try. It was tight enough that I popped my helmet off but the real constriction grinded my chest and pubic bone. It was also tight enough that I paused- was it worth? how hard would it be to get back through? I pushed through the pain and made it out the other side. There was no way the other two would be able to fit through that gap.
Almost immediately I spotted a nicely decorated alcove in front of me. Then getting up to my feet and working to the right I spotted the portal at my foot-level with Phil beyond (Rob was off surveying up the rockfall passage). Looking upward I could see a slightly tricky but very reasonable climb leading through a hallway-sized gap completely framed by excellent draperies and stalactites. I boosted the brightness up on my light to see beyond a vast room completely filled with stunning formations, a major find! Eager to try to allow the other two to come through and join me to explore and almost as eager to not repeat the tight squeeze I had just done, I attacked at the portal from above while Phil attacked it from below. The situation seemed less grim than before as I now realized the floor of the gap was layers of calcite and rocks that could be pried out with mud in between. Phil and I steadily made progress, shifting the lead digger back and forth between us both, the void getting larger without seeming to destabilize the large rocks. It took probably 20 minutes of solid work but Phil and I managed to open it up to something that was now a very reasonable squeeze for him. Phil joined me on the other side and was equally enthused by the look of the decorated room up above us.
Phil helped boost me up the start of the climb (afterward he was able to follow without help), and I led the way into the unknown. Every step I took and turn of the head revealed some beautiful new formation seeing light for the first time. The chamber was only about 10-15m wide but at least 25m tall and at least 50m long. The room was not flat but rather ascended such that we had to climb our way upward to the back. After the first part we reached an area where everything, floor included was formations and so Phil and I switched to boots off to continue. All we had was my phone so I furiously snapped photos at every turn, something a lot better than nothing. All of the photos on this post were from this room, which we will probably called the Loft Gallery or something similar. Phil and I worked our way to back marveling at the variety of formations- draperies, bacon, stals, crystal pools, helictites, sparkling flowstone. Rob soon surveyed up to the squeeze and we had him join us for a second pass through this room. This time we took suits off in addition to boots, wanting to protect this significant find. Rob and Phil were both in agreement that this was the most significant formation room anywhere in the Takaka region. Rob explored a possible lead at the back of the room. I noticed quite a bit of rat droppings on the flowstone, which suggests we must be close to an entrance at this higher level, a small entrance at least. We were all enthused and riding high at this redeeming find! It was certainly the nicest cave passage I had found in several years.
The day was now getting on and so the survey of this room would have to wait another day. We worked our way back out of the cave without incident and did a quick clean in the nearby Takaka River while the sandflies swarmed. After parting with Phil, Rob, Michelle and I had a tasty Thai dinner in Takaka and I ended up staying another night at their place instead of driving up to the caver's hut. All in all an easy highlight of my New Zealand trip.
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