The vast caverns beneath Crazy Horse Buttress are full of surprises. On a recent Introduction to Vertical Caving course, we discovered a perfectly still, clear, thigh-deep underground lake in a passageway that has been dry (as far as we know) for over five years.
Wading through the water with bats zipping around the edges of our lights, we emerged in another large chamber next to a towering white flowstone. Eyeless cave centipedes crawled on the ground and when we all turned off our lights for a moment, the darkness was so thick we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. With lights back on, we spotted the entrances to tighter passageways leading even further under the earth. In the end we left them unexplored, as instructor Noppadon Uppakham (Taw) reminded us that it was already afternoon — and with 30 meters of rope to ascend in order to exit the cave, our work was hardly over!
Join CMRCA for a Vertical Caving course and discover the awe-inspiring world beneath northern Thailand’s limestone hills. Cave ON…
