Liang Feng Dong

Cold Wind Cave

Inevitably the two best caves we were shown, turned out to be those next to the hostel where we were staying. It also happened to be our last day in the area, as this part of the expedition was intended to be a very short reconaissance before going on to the main area, near Jiang Kou.

Liang Feng Dong Entrance

Both caves contained deep entrance shafts and looked very promising. However this presented a problem, because a lot of our equipment was still stuck in Hong Kong, after being freighted by sea from the UK. We were particularly short of the expansion bolts needed to hold the ropes and stop them rubbing.

Ali Garman was quickly proving to be one of the ablest vertical cavers on the team and he and Ben Lovett set to work on Liang Feng Dong, which was the nearer of the two shafts to the Hong Chi Ba commune building where we were staying.

Hong Chi Ba commune building

Ali goes over the edge

Rigging Liang Feng Dong was slow work, because loose rock had to be removed and the rope had to be rehung often to avoid abrasion. Each time bolts had to be hammered in; all of which took time and energy.

By the end of the day the pair had reached minus one hundred and six metres. Stones thrown down indicated a further fall of about one hundred metres.

A small crowd of spectators had gathered to watch the proceedings, intrigued by the foreigners and the techniques they were using.

While Ben and Ali were working on Liang Feng Dong, Jack, Laurie and I went off to Pian Keng, the 'Big Sky Hole'.

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