Speleo Vercors Blog

23/10/11: (hard frost, cold but sunny) High Plateau walk – a Grand Day Out. Left Coche at 11am and arrived at the Cabane Pre Paynet at 13.00 (10k and about the correct timing according to the way marks). I wanted to do this as in the summer Bev and I did a circular walk as far as the Gerland hut and I noticed that Pre Paynet looked to be about another hour (which it was) so that opens up the possibility of going that way to the Roman Quarries next year.

21/10/11: Today dawned crisp and clear so I’ve had a day out on Font d’Urle, where it is decidedly cool. Managed to locate the entrance to Scialet des Comperes (hopefully the back door to Chuats II) and had my lunch at a high point at the southern edge of the plateau looking down at the cloud filled Die valley and two chamois grazing just too far away to get a good picture. Then circled back to the cairns for a spot of image trickery before heading north west to locate the entrance of another new discovery, Scialet de la Porte Derobee, discovered in the winter at the side of a piste due to the snow melting at the entrance.

11/10/11:  After many months of faffing, finally completed the migration of the web site from WebPlus X2 (on XP machine) to WebPlus X5 (on Win 7 machine) and included some additional pages (Via Ferrata page, initial work on Download page and Blog page)

29/08/11: High Plateau walk checking out holes in the ground.

27/08/11: Scialet des Drayes photo trickery project (solo photo trip)

24/08/11: Pic St. Michel walk. Been meaning to do this for years, no idea why it took so long to get around to it ‘cos it’s a brilliant walk! It has a bit of everything but nothing extreme - and great views.

20/08/11: Prospecting on Font d’Urle - could have found a dig…

16/08/11: Checked out Trou de Vent again – no sign of recent activity, and the water flowing in the valley smelled strongly of sewage (being down stream of the “works” across the road from here) so decided not to go in…

24/05/11: Scialet des Drayes: Intended to install some P38’s in readiness for my summer ‘photo project, but when I got there, I found that someone has already installed a variety of ring hangers. Had a quick trip into the first gallery, but as I was in shorts and T shirt, didn’t go any further.

22/05/11: Cave hunting. LSD has information on two new caves in the La Chapelle area, so spent a couple of hours looking for and logging the entrances to Scialet Bidon and Trou de Vent (both quite near SV HQ). Still no news on the new cave near les Barnoux and despite several attempts, I’m still to locate l’Aspirateur

21/05/11: 47th Rhone Alps Speleo Congress (at Vassieux). Collected latest Scialet and LSD and attended a lecture on Scialet II des Chauts II, which is now over 12k and still going! The problem with exploring beyond the temporary sumps below le Grand Noir (P90 – takes you from –93m to -223m) has been overcome by the discovery of La Voie Royale, a series of pitches direct from the floor of the big entrance chamber. Exploration upstream is more or less complete as they are nearly popping out through the cliff face at a known mud filled tube, and see no point in expending further effort in that direction (however the discovery of Scialet des Comperes almost immediately above the upstream end of the cave, could provide another entrance). Down stream is still being pushed and water tracing is planned for this summer, as they don’t actually know where the water goes (because of the fault zone they are in.) Will it be the Cholet or will it be the Bournillon? Time will tell.

13/08/10: Scialet Veyou (aka Dead Deer Cave or Not The Dead Deer Cave…) Having spent 3 days searching the Font d’Urle plateau looking for the entrance, and eventually having found it on 14th July - this was it! The excavated crawl at the bottom of the 13m entrance pitch leads directly into a surprisingly large and well decorated chamber. The entire floor has been a lake in the past, but now dried out, so is taped off to preserve the deposits. There are bones everywhere, going back to before the last ice age, but the calcified deer skeleton is not there! So my plan for an entry at HE entitled Cave Life (and Death) now has a big hole in it! Back at SV HQ, we re-read the LSD description to see that the dead deer was removed in July 2007 for study and to save it being removed by others...