Sam’s Cave

The most beautiful, best preserved cave in the Czech republic. We named it Sam’s cave because he would have loved it so much but he couldn’t go because he’d caved the day before. We entered down a narrow man-made shaft that had been dug out over a decade to circumvent a punishing SRT descent in. Once we got in we were greeted by chamber after chamber of beautiful calcium cascades, perfectly preserved and glistening white like something out of a Colgate advert. All of the chambers were so large that we rarely even had to stoop down. At the bottom Paul faked an asthma attack so he could take a shit in the country’s best preserved cave.

On our way up we took a slightly different route past some terrifying cracks in the ground and to a big jump above a 10m drop. Mikey, Dan, and I managed to summon up the courage to do it, while everyone else climbed around, which looked only marginally safer. At this point we split into two groups. One group took the same route back to the surface while a few of us went a more “sporty” way. And sporty it turned out to be. It started with a short swim, and then progressed to a field of some of the thickest, siltiest mud any of us had ever seen. At any time half of us were sliding about and the other half were stuck knee deep. After this we found a pool to wade through and wash off the mud. I couldn’t seem to get clean and had to stay underwater for about a minute scrubbing myself, during which I got very cold, only to find more mud right around the corner!

At this point our guide realised that the water level was too high and our exit route had sumped out. To escape we had to climb an unbelievably slippery tube at a 45 degree elevation. This involved an awful lot of pushing people up by the bum and standing on each others’ heads. When we got to the top of the tube there was a slide down into a deep pool of water. At this point we started wondering whether this was a cave or a water park. After another short swim and some walking along submerged wooden walkways we finally made it back to the narrow man-made tunnel and emerged into the warm Czech air ready to regale the other half of the group with stories of the madness they missed out on.

Special mention must go to Marie, whose first cave ever was this absolute monster.

Ben McKechnie

By Benjamin McKechnie