Report on the weekend of 16 and 17 July 2005

In brief, the weekend was memorable on account of the water, the hoses and the food served at the entrance to the cave, which I unfortunately missed out on as I wasn't taking part in the mission at all.

The siphon in the second side-branch is almost empty and has already given about ten meters of new passage which lead towards the initial (walking / swimming) part of the sump in the first side-branch which had also lost a little bit of height.

It would be possible to empty the first sidebranch's sump into that of the second, and from there to empty both deeper into the cave. Another 50m of one inch hose were taken into the cave for this purpose. It is now possible to dive the sump in the first sidebranch without going through the squeeze through the gours.

The first sump had almost filled up owing to the teams efforts to empty the higher sumps and it was necessary to re-empty it: this task occupied the team on the second day of the expedition.

Finally, there was a little exploration done in the field by Panos, who was led by a local to a "bottomless" pot hole of all of 8m depth!

The following members of SELAS were present: Nikos Mitsakis, Niki Hatzilia, Yiannis Vavourakis, Marianna Manolatou and two recent graduates from our annual seminars: Panos Papasotiriou and Nektarios Servos.