Having seen the semi closed rebreather Rick Stanton used to push the end of Cocklebiddy and after some conversations with John Volanthen about small rebreathers he agreed to loan me a small 1kg scrubber he’d had made – complete with male p-port. I purchased a CDBA mouthpiece from a diver on Rebreather World, an extra p-port from Tecme, an MSR water bag and away I went – armed with some other bits left over from the first rebreather I built – my chest mounted “silent green”. 

The results are below, the whole rig is nice and compact and I’ve done several excellent test dives on it. The plan is that I’ll use this in Culimebro this summer.

Silent (Solent) Green is the chest mounted CC rebreather I built for Culimebro and other projects. Based on Dolphin parts with bits made by Tecme it ended up being a 'kit' rather than a home made rebreather - which suited me as I had not access to a machine shop or lathe.

There is a single counter lung on the exhale side, next it the O2 addition just before the Dolphin scrubber. On the inhale side is a sensor housing for two cells - one read via a Marc Munro style ppo2 display and the other going to my VR3.....  

In memory of Tony Jarrett – BEC caver, legend and inspiration

I met Tony when I started caving on Mendip with Soton Uni and we would always visit Bat Products and stay at the Belfry.

Later on my involvement with the Dachstein expedition gave us another connection as he was involved in some of the early trips out there. I remember hearing the story of how they were caving on ladders in an area where sudden thunderstorms can be dangerous – so they ran a telephone cable down the cave in order to communicate about the weather and help logistics. Tony recalled being underground when the phone rang – he answered it only to be struck by a bolt of lightning travelling down the wire and out of the phone!! Apparently it took him some time to convince the people who found him dazed and confused what had actually happened. Then despite what they say – lightning does strike twice – as the same thing happened when he picked up the phone at the Belfry!!

September Caving Expedition

Jason Mallinson saw me in Bernies one day in February and mentioned that he was going to dive some sumps at the bottom of Bu56 – a 1300m deep cave. As I was already signed up for Hils trip I thought another slog down a cave with a load of diving gear sounded right up my street!

It soon became apparent that Jason wasn’t organising a small team of dedicated cavers – but was involving the whole YSS in this massive undertaking. This wasn’t really my scene but I gave in and begrudgingly joined the YSS along with quite a few cavers from other clubs. As time rolled on the plan changed and it became clear that a second diver would be useful – at least for surveying, bolting and taking pics. I thought it might be my chance – but I could only manage 1 week off and Jason was going to be in Spain for 3 weeks! I therefore suggested to Phil that he ought to talk to Jason and was quietly very pleased that a BEC man would also be diving in the cave! Meanwhile as I could only do one week I volunteered for the final week and the de-rig.

Picos – Texa Before Christmas, Hilary Greaves persuaded me to join her on an expedition to the Picos, along with Tony Seddon to dive some sumps at the bottom of a 900m+ deep cave.

By the time we departed in July the team had grown to include quite a few of my friends – a team of Irish cavers, Phil Rowsell, Simon Cornhill, Rich Bayfield, Pete Whitaker, Will Stewart and various other people.  Along with Rich Bayfield and Will – I was heading out for the last two weeks of the trip to pick up any diving leads left and help de-rig the cave. Knowing that I might be limited with my diving or not get any at all I did a lot of research on Culiembro – the resurgence for the area – incase we had any spare time.  

As the team were already in Spain I managed to get a txt from Hils before I left telling me the score – that the main sump had gone deep (43m by Tony S), that one had been bypassed and that the final upstream one had been passed and a dry passage explored to a waterfall. My mission was therefore to go out – get straight down the cave and up the waterfall!! 

Dachstein 2007 This was supposed to be the year of the pig – Pig Pen 2 that is. Left at over 700m last year I was returning with one goal in mind - pushing Pig Pen 2 as part of a good team of Dachstein veterans. I also fully expected this to involve camping down there as well.  Due to lack of time off I opted for the middle two weeks of the expedition – although this approach was considered slightly selfish by some people I had stayed right to the end every other year and with a lot of people just doing the first two weeks I figured it would be useful for me to join at the peak of activity. 

When I reached the Weisberghaus on Saturday 14^th of July I learnt that not everything was going according to plan. There had been snow on top of the mountain at the beginning of the trip and this had seriously delayed the rigging of Pig Pen 2. For example it was predicted that the cave would be re-rigged to it’s previous limit within 3-4 days of the exped start. So I understood we were behind schedule when after one week they weren’t even at the limit. Whilst those involved in Pig Pen rested for their next big trip I was eager to go caving as soon as possible and figured I needed a few warm up trips before I headed down anyway.  

For quiite a while I'd had the idea of making a dry bag - not the normal ortleib type thing, but one with a drysuit zip and an inflator. When I heard that Balders from Reefers and Wreckers was able to put something together for me this was made. I gave him a design and and old drysuit zip and he did the rest.

I opted for a Buddy (A.P.) valves BCD inflator so that it could swivel, allowing the bag to be packed in a tackle bag, with the inflator sticking out of the top.

http://www.reefersandwreckers.co.uk/

I wanted to go on an exploration trip in the Hirlatz since my first visit to the Dachstein in 2002 and finally this year everything dropped into place. On Friday .. I met Andy Kuszyk at Stansted airport and we flew off to Salzburg to be picked by by one of the Austrian cavers, Peter Hubner and delivered to Obotraun. Unfortunately the first thing Peter told us when we arrived was that he wouldn’t be joining us as planned due to being ill. This was a massive blow as we were reliant on him for route finding and showing us leads. So I then spent the next hour in the car making route and lead notes for the trip by the light of my tikka!  

We finally arrived in Obautraun at the caving hut at about 11pm where we met Phil Rowsell and Rich Hudson. They had driven out two days earlier and already carried two bags of gear into the cave that day, depositing them about ¾ of the way to the first camp. We spent the rest of the evening packing our large tackle sacks before crashing out to bed.

Rich Bayfield, Andy Kuzyk, Charlotte Harris, Rich Beer and myself (part the BEC youth) went to Fermangh in Northern Ireland for a long weekend of caving.

A couple of years earlier I’d been to Mallorca on a caving and canyoning trip with a large contingent of Irish cavers and when I met one of them in the Hunters in September I thought it was about time I went and did some caving over there.

Three fantastic weeks of caving in the Dachstein in Austria. There were about 40 of us at one time, with a mixture of cavers from Cardiff, Reading, Southampton, Nottingham, Sheffield and Aberystwyth Uni caving clubs plus the usual veterans. Overall it was a very successful expedition with the highlight being the exploration of PigPen2.

Four of the youngest members of the BEC, including two of the most recently joined members went to the Dent de Crolles for the long Easter weekend and completed the Trou Glaz to Guiers Mort traverse. (Chris Jewell, Rich Bayfield, Rich Beer and Charlotte Harris)  

At the beginning of April I went to Spain to do a scuba diving internship, this meant working in exchange for doing my PADI dive master course. Although I enjoy diving I knew that just doing this wouldn't satisfy me for seven months. This was why I picked the Costa del Sol, because of its proximity to some caving and canyoning areas. However once there I realised the number of obstacles in my way. Firstly I didn't speak Spanish so meeting up with Spanish cavers would be difficult. I didn't have transport; I hardly knew the area and my days off were few and far between.

On the 26th-28th Nov the Council of Higher Education Caving Clubs (CHECC) put on the third university caving seminar. 127 cavers attended the event at the YSS's old school houseHelwith Bridge, in the dales, with most enjoying bunkroom accommodation at the YSS hut. The YSS provided bunks for most people and Those that couldn't fit,the remainder camped by the pub, the Helwith Bbridge Inn which is only stumbling distance from the old school house.

In the Summer of 2004 Chris Jewell and Rich Bayfield from the BEC joined the Hong Meigui Cave club's expedition to the Yunnan province in China. Yunnan 2004 was a 17-person, 7-week expedition to the mountains just west of the town of Zhongdian, Yunnan Province, China. As in previous years, the expedition set up a base camp at the Milk River Guesthouse in the north of Zhongdian and camped at a series of locations in the mountain range, usually in yak herders' villages. The expedition returned to several undescended shafts located in 2003 and, in addition, worked in several previously unvisited areas, logging and exploring new caves. Approximately 250 new entrances were logged. Below is a short piece on one of the caves the expedition found, a large surface shaft.

80 Cavers descended on Rhongyr Isaf activity centre in S.Wales on Nov 29th for the second University caving clubs seminar. These included cavers from Southampton, Cardiff, Reading, Manchester, Sheffield, Exeter, Aberystwyth, Kent, Portsmouth, and Huddersfield Universities

I was returning for my second year to the Dachstein in Austria. The Dachstein is a spectacular limestone massif rising to almost 3000m, located about an hours drive southeast of Salzburg, Austria. Since the 70's, the Dachstein Caving Expedition members have been exploring the potholes high up in the mountains, on a plateau that is approx. 2000-2004m high. These limestone areas are completely riddled with caves having a depth potential in excess of 1,700 metres. The project is dedicated to original exploration, and not simply to sports caving.

The following article was published in Descent and the Wessex scene following the 2002 CHECC seminar. This was the first CHECC seminar at led the way for future events - which are still running today.

In the summer of 2002 eight Students from Southampton University went to Austria to take part in a five week caving expedition to explore the caves of the Dachstein plateau of Austria.

Try to get through Longwood August in flood, loose a tackle sack, rescue it, do the Cwm dwr crawl five times in a weekend, learn to rig, get to the black wall tunnel in the West end, have an epic in Rhino, get back 15mins after the call out and finally spend ten hours in Easegill - It's just another normal semester for Rich and Chris!!
Written May 2000

The carefully selected elite of Southampton University caving club spent the week before Easter at Bull Pot farm in Yorkshire. Sitting right on top of the UK's largest cave system - Easegill, the Red Rose's caving hut was the perfect location for an excellent weeks caving.