Sverdlov’s blog

Yet one more cave is conquered!
I’ve been dreaming for years to get in “Duhlata”, but either didn’t had the equipment, or enough people to gather together for this specific cave… The biggest in Bulgaria (over 13 miles length) and one of the most dangerous ones, it proved to be interesting enough to remain forever in my memories!

Actually, at some point I wondered who the hell got me inside… because, after hour and a half crawling on sharp rocks, climbing on a rope above an abyss or an underground lake, at the constant threat of falling down and breaking my neck on the way down in my mind, you really start asking yourself such questions… on top of that, our “leads” kept cheering us up with words like “Last year a girl fell here and broke her face”, or “here a very experienced instructor fell and broke his  ribs, and we could not get a stretcher inside, because of the narrow way and we had to pull him all the way out on the ground” and so on!
A little bit more about the cave: it’s located on the back side of Vitosha mountain, 30 miles from Sofia and 3 miles from Bosnek village. The entrance is hidden behind a bush, and is so small that you can get inside only crawling. You crawl for at least 3 meters on sharp wet rocks, until you are able to stand up. The temperature inside is a little bit below 10 degrees Celsius (during the summer). It turned out it is useless to bring a hand light inside - the only light you could possibly use had to be mounted on your head - because you need your hands and feet constantly to save your life from falling into an abyss or a lake!

The whole thing inside the cave lasted for about 6 hours (3 hours on the way in and 2 1/2 on the way out), and included everything - from crawling, to jumping, to climbing on a rope, walking through ice cold water, crying out loud “HEeeeeeelp! Can’t pass through here!” or “I got stuck here, somebody help me out” etc, it was FUN!

On the way out, after 6 hours of hard, hard work, we just fell on the ground helpless - nobody had any strength left for anything else. Finally, sunlight, fresh hot air… We laughed at the sight of ourselves, washing our DIRTY clothes in the river, with the women looking at us, like “see what it’s like now?”
Of course, a beer and a meal in the village in the evening, is a necessity!

I almost forgot: only 4 pictures of the cave, because I broke my camera inside - you could see the last picture is already showing the damage… well, I had to say goodbye to the camera for the last time then - it completely died.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 10th, 2006 at 10:44 am and is filed under Hobby. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.