I'm just back from a week long trip to Shijiagou Cave (石夹沟洞), a cave I first visited in 2002 in the early days of Hongmeigui. This is a huge cave at the bottom of a deep gorge which another Hongmeigui member,Brian Judd had been led to in 2001 (long account but well worth a read!). After being rained off in 2002 we never did manage to find the opportunity to go back so it was easily my first choice for a river cave when tasked with a week's exploration for four cavers at a loose end.

Jordi and I drove out from Chengdu, collected supplies and fellow cavers in Wulong, then back across the border to Fuling and up the hill. Longtang pretty much unrecognisable after six years of tourism development. Town almost exclusively new buildings and even a new name (Wumingshan Xiang). The trail down the bottom end of the gorge (under construction in 2002) had been completed and then abandoned, and the old route the other side now non-existent. Entry to the gorge was now only possible from the top end with a very long walk and scramble to the cave so once again access was a long airy abseil (~130m). Highlight of this was (not) the rope getting caught around a tree and stretched tight on the main hang, so being forced to reverse prussic the entire length (~60m) to free it.

Erin had managed to relocate the underground survey data from 2002, although not the (unfinished) surface survey to connect it to a gps point. It took about 1km of survey to get from a gps signal to the entrance of the cave, but amazingly after all this time we managed to relocate both ends of the existing survey and save ourselves a day of tedious resurvey. The cave was just as much fun as I had remembered: higher than we could see, wide passage with a big streamway. Very low water with only a few wading sections (previously swims). We'd budgeted three long days and got over 1km in the book for the first two. Our last day ended prematurely when we hit a pitch after only 100m. There was some thick looking Chinese rope on it, but we hadn't brought any vertical gear or rope of our own, and it certainly wasn't a pitch to be climbing hand-over-hand (~30m?).

This early retreat left us with the next day free to make some enquiries on the surface and attempt to locate the resurgence. This was done with a minimum of surprising minimum of fuss. A drive down the valley to the Wujiang made it clear roughly where the water should emerge, and this was confirmed by locals. Lunch in the farmhouse we'd stayed at in 2002, plus clues from the village officials via the landlady of our current hotel made it clear that:

• People had attempted the cave from both ends
• The rope had been carried in in 2003 and,
• most importantly for us, no-one had yet successfully traversed the cave.

We headed back to Wulong along the other side of the Wujiang with a GPS and soon spotted the obvious resurgence across the river -- a km or so upstream of our vantage point a few hours before.

This cave can only really be explored in the dry season, and there's not much of that left this year. We're itching to get back into it though, so Jordi and I are coming up with clever plans involving overnight trains, ferry crossings, motorbike rides and weekends off work so that we can be back before it starts to rain. Once the connection between the two entrances has been made we'd love to give more people the chance to experience this place and so will try and offer this as a guided through trip to our customers.