Expedition to the “Root Of the Moa.” When I answered Chris Stevenson’s appeal on facebook for help to explore his new discovery on Takaka Hill, considering the potential I was expecting to be one of many wanting to have a look down this new cave. However, after I had signed up for the trip I did a little research and came up with stories of overall shredding rifts and never ending tight passages and squeezes that took hours and hours to negotiate. It truly sounded awful so with this picture in my mind I was not surprised when only Chris and Ben turned up at the summit walkway carpark. Ben was in fact late and I did wonder if he had done a last minute bunk. While waiting for Ben I quizzed Chris…”Surely it can’t be that bad?” “Well,” he replied, “Ben is the only one that has come back more than once!” The entrance was well hidden amongst the sharp karst and scrub about 10 minutes walk from the car park along the ridge towards the NSG hut. As I descended the 25 metre entrance pitch Chris in a happy tone informed me that it will take us 2 hours to get to the end of the cave. Two hours? It is only 500 metres! I called back. He made no comment, just smiled. Had I been conned? I had been lured in by the prospect of diving a sump at the bottom and had been told that the sump may be quite short as the roof seemed to be rising on the far side. So this trip for me was a recce really to have a look at this potential dive site; my dive kit was very light weight consisting of just a mask and a neoprene hood. I reasoned that I didn’t need a wetsuit Chris had written that the sump was “warm” so my plan was to just strip, hold my breath and dive in to have a look. At the bottom of the entrance was the first obstacle, a vertical squeeze that Chris had dug out through calcite and boulders. Pretty amazing effort! Today a very strong draught was blowing out of the squeeze. A tight wriggle down followed by a short climb and we were in nice big passage. “Don’t get used to it, it doesn’t last very long”, said Chris. He was right, a few minutes later we were squeezing through some awkward rifts, sliding head first down through little cracks, easing ourselves around 90 degree bends and sliding down tight climbs. It was all good fun and there was nothing too difficult or tight. One squeeze of note involved dropping headfirst into a rift and wriggling around a 90 degree bend while lying on our sides. As I was lifting up my legs to get around the corner I found myself at the top of a 1 1/2 metre drop. “We call this squeeze a Rush of blood to the Head”, called Chris from behind. No kidding I thought as I hung head down while trying to free my legs that where stuck in the rift somewhere behind me. Following a series of short pitches the cave got bigger and the travel a little easier. Even though the walls moved apart a bit we still spent a lot of time on our knees ducking under low bits or crawling over rocks. An hour after we left the entrance we arrived at the sump. Before the sweat started to chill me, I quickly stripped off a layer of poly pro off my top, put on my hood and mask, did up my overalls up and dived into the cold water...it was definitely not a warm sump! A couple of seconds later I emerged up out of the sump into new passage. It looked nice and big and from somewhere in the darkness ahead I could hear the exciting sound of loud rushing water. It was I admit with a fair amount of haste that I moved down the streamway. The tall rift became a very low rift and the passage split, then after a crawl it split again, down a waterfall I came upon another split. The passages were not very big and to get further I needed to immerse myself in water again. I was getting cold and even the exploration buzz was not keeping my body warm; I needed to get some dry clothes on. Retracing my steps I found there were a couple of junctions I had not seen which caused a few moments of indecision and a little concern which in turn meant I had to travel a lot slower which again meant that the cold seeped deeper into my body, I was on the verge of shivering by the time I made it back to the sump, however on the other side Ben had a very welcoming cup of tea waiting. There was one more passage to look at before we headed back to the surface. 100 metres upstream from the sump we had a look at a small upper level hoping to find another way downstream. This passage ended in a tight crack. As with any tight crack we come across, out comes the hammer and we bash away at the rock until we can get through. Took about an hour of hammering before enough of the wall had been pulverized to allow entry into the passage beyond. Well it wasn’t worth the effort. It choked in a pile of rocks that looked like they would be difficult to get through. So that was that for us and we headed out. An hour later we were stumbling as fast as we could across the Karst in an effort to stay warm…I was freezing, took the rest of the afternoon in the Hut beside the fire to warm up. Conclusion; Root of the Moa is still going. It is sporty and not a cave you can move quickly through. Fun though and it is heading towards the Riwaka....
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 09:32:51 +0000
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