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Denis Provalov, one of leading Russian speleologists, has visited BASK and shared his latest Mexican experiences with us. He with his team has downclimbed deep ‘Las Golodrias’ cave. Inter alia, we were pleased to know that Denis was impressed with KONG climbing gear. (Let us remind that BASK is an official representative of KONG in Russia). The expedition of Russian extreme-athletes down the deepest Mexican cave looked (as described by Denis) like a sequence of amazing risky adventures. Say, for Valery Rozov, a leader of ‘Russian Extreme Project’ delayed jumps from vertical walls and skyscrapers are nothing but ordinary leisure. To make this, too dull for him, pastime a bit more extreme Valery with his team decided to jump down the giant Mexican cave.
Indeed, how may one get more adrenaline if not diving, pushing off an edge, down a dark half-kilometre abyss? Just six or seven seconds of breath-taking flight filled with master feats and drawing with a thundering roar a parachute helps you to land on a rocky bottom. In ancient times Aztecs used this, hidden in jungles, cave ‘Las Golodrias’ for sacrifices. In sectional view the cave looks like a bottle. With a 50-metres ‘neck’ (in a diameter) it expands to a 305-metres bottom, which resembles a football ground with grand stands. ‘Las Golodrias’ is 476 metres deep and all its walls are covered with thousands of swallow’s nests. If one put famous Toronto TV tower inside the cave, he will be puzzled to see that its top even doesn’t reach a surface.
But before jumping inside athletes had to think how to get outside. So the team consisted not only of base-jumpers but of speleologists (headed by Denis Provalov) as well.
Below (see Fig. 1), at a sketch of the cave drawn by Denis, from the right side one may see a system of ropes fixed with rock pitons. Speleologists spent three days for processing a reliable route out of the depth. ‘We had to work hard while fixing rope lines, – said Denis. – The main obstacle was in overhanging cornices as well as in balconies and dilative walls. To reach a wall we used a 4-metres pole. In general, we had used about 30 rock pitons and had organized 24 points of re-clipping to ropes.
Maximal height of a vertical segment was 80 metres. We were the firsts who managed to fix the cliff in an alpine style’.
Firstly, team spent for ascent from the bottom about three hours, but in the end of the expedition it took only 35-40 minutes. According to Denis, this is related not only with skills acquired by jumpers during training, but with high-level gear of KONG too. Athletes were using KONG ascenders -– jumars and rope clamps (grabs for chest mounting) so popular with speleologists. Denis Provalov, Oleg Klimchuk and other members of CAVEX use gear of different companies, but for each special purpose they prefer equipment of one particular company. KONG rope clamp was found the best for long ascents as even dirty and clay-covered rope had been passing through it with no problems. That’s why Denis uses it not only during his expeditions but at speleo-competitions (when each second is important) too.
24.05.2002
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