Gouffre Berger

At -1122m the Gouffre Berger was regarded as the deepest cave in the world until 1963 it is still the 28th deepest known cave and the 4th deepest in the France. It has been on my personal hit list pretty much from the day I started caving – A little personal history here; when Pete & I first showed up at WMCEG some 15 years ago comments were made that the thin one (Pete) would make a good caver but the fat one (me) would never make it. At the time WMCEG had some plans that never came to pass to descend the Gouffre Berger when I asked if I could get involved I was all but laughed from the room probably with some justification – so I jumped at the chance to descend it with the WRPC & NPC.

One thing I have always enjoyed about caving is just how much of a team activity it is even when compared to other outdoor activities such as climbing (please don’t flame me I am sure big wall climbing and mountaineering require a lot of team work too but I’ve not had any experience of these), descending a deep cave like the Gouffre Berger really emphasises the importance of the team. With 20 people we were regarded as a small team for a bottoming trip and everyone really had to work hard to make it possible, even those that would not be actually going for the push to the bottom contributed a great deal to the overall effort.

In fact the work started long before setting off for France the permit was applied for back Autumn 2008, weekends were spent checking equipment and packing the 1000 or so meters of rope that would be required.

Just getting to the entrance involved lugging 20 rope bags, a boat, two bags of gear for the entrance camp, a further two bags for Camp 1 and all of this an hours walk from the carpark to the entrance 200 meters below.

Several days were then spent rigging the entrance series, installing the boat at Lac Cadoux – this is essentially a precaution as after a storm the lake fills up quickly but takes days to drain again.Setting up the Nicola Radio system and ferrying gear to Camp 1 as a staging post for the push to the bottom of the cave.

In all I myself joined three trips into the cave, two trips were essentially sherpa trips to carry gear to Camp 1 & just beyond. The first one of these a team of three undertook a “short” 13 hour trip carried two tackle bags each as far as Lac Cadoux. This gave me a flavour of the cave, the entrance series to Lac Cadoux is where the pitches come thickest and fastest, there were large quantities of ice down the first three all of which came down by the end of the 10 day permit some of it assisted to make the cave safer. The roped sections here are broken only by a couple of sections of traverses along the Meanders, this requires mostly unroped easy bridging across some deepish drops for around 50-100 meters a number of old stemples and even a dodgy looking bridge provide obstacles rather than making the traverse easier.

The final pitch in the entrance series is Aldo’s and is one of the known danger areas in the cave, the cave has an active stream for much of its length and with a large water catchment area it can respond dramatically and rapidly to rainfall. Aldo’s has an inlet about 15m down that, without warning, after a couple of hours of heavy rain dumps vast quantities of water it has been described as like tipping a swimming pool on end – not a place to hang around. A short distance from here is Lac Cadoux – our turning point for trip 1.

On Trip 2 we ferried another rope bag plus personal camping gear (sleeping bag, warm clothes, food and WAG bags ) to Camp 1. We also did a bit of rigging adjustment in the entrance series, double rigging Aldos and making some of the get offs easier for tired cavers exiting the cave. From Lac Cadoux there is a longish walk down to camp 1 broken by a couple of short pitches and enourmous boulder strewn slopes. Camp 1 itself is were the Nicola radio is installed which allowed us to get weather updates and relay information to the surface team. We had a brief stop for tea, dumped our overnight bags and then carried on down via the stunning hall of thirteen to the canals. Now is a good time to mention my lack of pictures from the trip this is for two reasons – 1) the amount of camera equipment needed to photograph these vast caverns is far more than any of us had brought, 2) I decided even carrying my snapshot camera was a piece of gear too much for the bottoming trip – more on that later. The hall of thirteen is amazing with huge skyscraper like stalagmite bosses.

The canals are pretty strenuous – IF you follow all the rigging – as it essentially involves long clipped on traverses very via-ferrata style – however we soon discovered that much of the rigging could be avoided with easier ledges or waist deep wading – I’m told water levels were exceptionally low and the rigging is essential to avoid drowning if the water levels are higher. There were still a couple of tyrolean style traverses that had to be followed, not alpine style tyrolean but caving style – were the caver descends a main rope whilst clipping into a tensioned second rope as a guide line to avoid water. About halfway down the canals I announced I was exhausted and we dumped our rope bags and returned to camp 1 for a sleep – exiting the following day almost exactly 24 hours after entering the cave.

Trip 3 – the bottoming trip – I elected to be on the derigging team, we had 6 people rigging in and Our initial plan was to get to camp 1 have a sleep/rest and get up early, passing the riggers heading out for a round trip to the bottom and back to camp 1 de-rigging. There would be six of us, however thunder storms were forecast for the following evening which with the level of uncertainity on the time of arrival of the rain could have put us right in one of the main danger areas when the floods hit – the cascades and the Canals. So at 4pm we hastily rethought our plans, given the variability of when the storm could arrive we decided it was prudent to be back past the canals and in the dry area of the cave by 3pm on the following day. The only way to do this would be to go for it now and cave right through the night. Only four of us (Biff, Cal, Martin & I) were up for the trip. We would be derigging and would have heavy bags to carry on the way out so we decided travelling light and fast was the way to go. This meant a no WAG en-route strategy and so team immodium set off for the entrance at 7pm ready to enter the cave at 9pm. This is also the point I decided that food took priority over the camera in my already stuffed full flood survival bag, (with the chances of being flooded in so high in this system MINIMUM survival gear includes a Blizzard Bag, stove, mess tin, candle, warm clothing, first aid kit, food, spare batteries). Before we entered the cave one of the rigging team appeared on the surface having turned back after a fall and thorough soaking at the Grand Cascade he was cold and hungry but otherwise ok, though the rigging team were now down to 5. Once in the cave my team mates were off like rockets leaving me thinking there was no way I could keep up, we got to Camp 1 in 1.5 Hours about 1 hour less than the average. I was knackered already and I nearly turned it there and then but Biff encouraged me to go on insiting there was “no ‘I’ in team but there was an ‘I’ in Hippy”.. We stopped for a quick brew at Camp 1 with the 1st rigging team who reported they had successfully bottomed and were getting ready for a nights sleep. We then blasted onwards passing the second rigging team on the way back from their trip to the bottom. The rest of the trip down was fairly uneventful and by 3:30am we were at the bottom of the final pitch “the Hurricane” from here a short plod brings you to the 1000m inlet and shortly beyond this at actually at -1122m is what most teams call “the bottom” there is actually a short section of deep swimming canal to get to the sump but unless you intend to dive most people give that a miss. It had taken just six hours to get to the bottom and take some snapshots.

Once at the bottom the hard work begins, with the upward struggle and now as each pitch is passed more rope to carry. A brief stop at camp 2 for a revolting cup of tea drunk with a spoon and then onwards up the wet cascades to the canals – always concious of our target to be up into the dry section of cave by 3pm. In the event we had derigged all of the cave to the bottom of the first pitch on the safe side of the canals by 1pm and were safely back at Camp 1 by 2:20pm some 17 hours and 20 minutes of pretty much solid caving since entering the cave the night before. We just missed the hourly Nicola radio call in slot (surface were scheduled to listen every hour for 20 minutes) got ourselves into dry clothes and got some hot food into us. A call in at 3pm let surface know we were safe then we bedded down at 4pm for some sleep. I woke to see my watch saying 7 O’Clock but with no AM/PM I had no idea if it was tomorrow yet, we called the surface to check – still 7PM only 3 hours sleep managed – the weather had still not arrived but was still forecast. We stayed up and chatted till 10pm and then got a good sleep though till 8am the following morning – radioed in – the weather had never come, it was a dry a beautiful day and no rain was forecast – typical, but I still think we did the right thing erring on caution. A quick trip back down to derig from above the canals to Camp 1, then it was time to pack our personal gear and head out. Everything ached – my arms were pumped still from the previous days activity and it took 6 hours to get to the surface finally exiting at 7pm a full 46 Hours after entering the cave. Tea & Beer were drunk before the hour’s walk back up the hill for Pizza and more beer.

The caving was over for me but the rigging teams had to go in two more times to recover the gear from Camp 1. Then of course all the gear had to be lugged back up the hill to the cars with most of us making at least two retrun hikes down & up the hill.

All in all we got 12 people to the bottom (9 from our team and an additional 3 French cavers who made use of the cave being rigged to the bottom to place some new and much needed anchors) with no serious injuries it was a very successful trip. Like I said its very much a team effort and thanks to all who made it possible including Fiona who has earned many brownie points by doing much taxi driving to and from Moulier car park to the base camp in Meaudre and generally helping out – I’m told I now owe her a months gardening and that she gets to choose next years holiday! 😉

PS. WMCEG thanks for putting up with the fat one and teaching him to cave, if you need any tips on bottoming the Berger just let me know 😉