Exploring a massive cave labyrinth hidden under Borneo

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure)

Caving is a great adventure, there are unique challenges from many disciplines including bouldering, fixed rope ascending/descending, logistics, navigation, cartography, first aid/rescue, communication, psychology, leadership, etc. You tend to spend a lot of time in cold, dirty, cramped spaces, but the rush of exploration and gravity of danger make it quite exciting and rewarding too. I found the camaraderie to be fantastic, there’s local clubs all around the world and the community is pretty small and tight knit, it tends to draw a somewhat unusual group of individuals. Perhaps how rock climbing or scuba diving felt in the earlier days, pushing your limits doing something that most people find pointless and/or terrifying.

Very nice article.

Question, if spending the night in the cave system, long hours, what are the rules for human waste? Do they have to bring it all out? I noticed they talked about putting down cable holds and such so that got me thinking, what rules do they operate under when in such environments?

For those who are interested, here is the main link to the Mulu National Park, which is where the caves are located [1]

Disclosure: my family visited Mulu National Park a few years ago and it was amazing. We didn't visit the pinnacles as it was too physical for a family with a young kid but we did explore (with guides) some of the publicly available cave areas, including the one showing the profile of Lincoln's head.

The caves are as amazing as the article describes and more. And I will never forget some areas where the guano was so thick that the smell of ammonia was nearly overpowering. :-)

[1] https://www.mulunationalpark.com/

"Sarawak Chamber was so big, Mad Phil explained, that it almost certainly contained new passages—particularly in the roof, where no one had ever searched. Although it’s tempting to think of caves as similar to mine shafts—tunnels that slope relatively straightforwardly down—natural caves are nonlinear and expand and contract according to the movement of rocks, the meandering of water, the work of chaos.

Concepts of “up” and “down” assume subtler meanings underground, where directions can be utterly inverted over a few million years. If someone is exploring the down part of the cave, another caver might try looking up. And up was Mad Phil’s specialty."

I've done some caving and I'm pretty sure that the situation here is that there may be stream passages that once exited into the chamber through the roof. They probably no longer carry water, or they would already be obvious.

For, example, the caving term for a vertical shaft that is discovered from its lower end is "aven", and it doesn't imply that the whole landscape has been turned upside-down by geological forces.

http://www.speleogenesis.info/directory/glossary/?term=aven

"aven

1. A hole in the roof of a cave passage that may be either a rather large blind roof pocket or a tributary inlet shaft into the cave system. A feature described as an aven when seen from below may equally be described as shaft when seen from above, and the naming of such a feature commonly depends purely upon the direction of exploration. Many avens close upwards to impenetrable fissures but may still be important hydrological routes; few caves are without them. In parts of France, aven is equivalent to the British term, pothole [9].

2. (French.) A vertical or highly inclined shaft in limestone, extending upward from a cave passage, generally to the surface; smaller than an abime. Commonly related to enlarged vertical joints. Compare cenote; natural well; pothole.

3. (British.) A vertical extension from a shaft in a passage or chamber roof that tapers upward rather like a very elongate cone [10]. Compare dome pit."

"Vadose" is another technical term that applies to the regime of erosion in which water is trickling down towards the water table. That's obviously something that can very much happen in the rock above the ceiling of the chamber. (Vadose erosion is usually contrasted with phreatic erosion, which refers to tunnels which are literally dissolved through the rock below the water table.)

The visuals in the article are amazing. Thanks for posting.

Having grown up in the 60's listening to the "Death of Floyd Collins", some of those tight fit cave pictures are sort of trigger-worthy.

Precious photos, but no Gollumjapyx smeagol were found