20 December 2004

Like, elected office and all that jazz

This weekend was the wash the gear which was de-rigged from the cave rescue drill about a month ago. Given that Kostas G. has his shoulder shafted and couldn't come exploring the Paloumba area with me (despite the ministry being kind enough to finally issue permission), I decided to come and wash other people's gear and the ropes of Selas.

Nikos (foreground left, in blue) has given the club a bathtub, which Andreas put on stilts, and then a siphon system was rigged up to prevent mud going directly into the wastewater system, and away we went.




The whole washing thing usually happens where there is plenty of running water, like in rivers, streams, springs, etc. but this is the next best thing.




So here's all the stuff we washed on Saturday, brand spanking new rope belonging to the federation's rescue team included. We'll be washing the rest today or wednesday. Got the first meeting of the board of directors, where we get to share out all the jobs and decide exactly what it is we will be doing.

A final bit before signing off - three of our boys are getting ready to go to Voronya, to the deepest cave in the world, which is currently measuring in at -2080m More information can be had (in Greek) here, and I expect there will be regular updates. They're going to confirm the survey work done by the team that broke the barrier of -2,000m, working between -1,440 and the bottom. It's quite exciting given that there are not that many cavers who have one so deep.

There's plenty of stuff (most of it in Russian) about Voronya, which can be found by plugging in Voronya and / or Krubera into google.