Day 1: Urenui
We awoke in the lovely ASG hut, still warm from the fire overnight. We quickly ate some breakfast and sorted our gear; sizing up boots, overalls and helmets before all piling into our cars and heading off to the start of our first day. We parked the cars and began the short walk down the farmland to get our adventure going. The day started with a wonderfully exposed 30 metre abseil into Prickly Pot, and with several of the members of the group being new to caving, it was a wonderfully exciting moment and a great way to start the trip. We then made our way into the cave of the little people, admiring the creativity of visitors before us, and contributing some creative pieces ourselves. After this we carried on to our downstream exit, carefully squeezing our way one by one through Logans Joy, before then crawling out the exit and out into the wonderful, bright green bush. We then battled the swamp, some vicious blackberry bushes, and some electric fences before making it back to the cars, very damp and muddy but very satisfied with the efforts of our first day.
Day 2: Zweihöllen
We awoke on day two feeling a little sore, but still enthusiastic and ready to go for another day of adventuring, and so we headed down to Zweihöllen. We admired all of the stunning formations found within, asking our resident geologist to explain how these beautiful creations came to be. One member of the group with keen eyes spotted what looked like glow worms, so we all turned out head torches off and admired their beautiful glow for a while before moving on. We made our way to the organ grinder, and after sizing it up, many members of our group were keen to give it a go. The particularly nimble members of the group slipped through the very tight looking lower line, with the rest of us opting for the roomier higher line. We went through and back again, opting to return via the helictite grotto. We stripped our overalls, as is required, and went into the grotto, absolutely amazed by the formations within. They were much more intricate and delicate than those we had seen previously, and we were amazed by the way the formations seemed to curl around, somehow defying gravity. After this, we began the walk through the streamway to the exit, with much of the group choosing to stay in the river most of the way to the carpark, having a bit of a swim in the process. We packed up the hut and headed back up north, having had a wonderful weekend and a great adventure.
via Dani Dwight
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