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POLISH CAVING 2005
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After some time we decided to return to Mała. In July 2002 after doing some work we managed to pass through the narrow crack and we slowly started pushing the cave further down. The person who was mobilizing us to do so was our club's long time president Anna Antkiewicz. Beside the author and her, people who participated in exploration were Pawełi Rams, Paweł Wańczyk, Czesław Zabrzeński, Jozef Kołodziej, and later Wojtek Skoczeń and Piotr Florian. Our desire to explore was growing while we were pushing the cave down, to cumulate once we discovered Fakro Hall which is today the largest underground chamber in Poland. It is 85 m long, 30 m wide and 60-90 m high. The cave kept going down, after more pits we stopped in a place where water disappeared in a narrow crack. We thought we reached the depth of 300 m but after mapping the cave it turned out to be -361 m. Beside the fast exploration, our success was discovering a major cave in a mountain which so far had only a few small ones. In March 2003 we received Polish award KOLOS 2002 which mainly helped us with gaining sponsorship from FAKRO Inc.
At home, after drawing the cave map, we made plans of further exploration. Due to the high water flow in summer we wanted to continue the exploration during winter when the water is frozen in tons of snow covering the mountains. We secured the entrance and measured its coordinates in order to be able to get to it after subsequent snowfalls. Unfortunately mountains intersected our plans. On 28 January a huge avalanche claimed the lives of our four friend. Anka (the founder of the club and its President since the beginning) with Piotrek Trzeszczoń, Magda Jaroszand Daniel Rusnarczyk, were going to the cave to dig into the entrance. They will stay in our hearts and memory for ever. That year we also received the KOLOS award for our exploration achievements in Maia Cave which helped us a lot. The following summer came, it was the time to return to the cave. It was not easy as the person who led us was not with us any more. Finally we went for the first camp in cave without her. In 2004 we used time to catch up with surveying and to look for the possible bypasses of the old bottom. After calculating the survey data it turned out that the cave is 3200 m long with another 500 m to be surveyed. It is 538 m deep but the recently discovered Waterland (not presented in the section) with a stream flowing in it, goes lower than the current bottom. |
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POLISH CAVING 2001
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page 07 |