News from Kinder - Grigna - Italy
Yesterday and today an expedition to Kinder took place. We had been longing to go back for one month, but it had been impossible due to bad weather, and we unwillingly had to turn down to the half-flooded coppers in Fornitor (the surveying of this cave now reaches 24,660 mt.
The last month’s rains however have considerably swollen the Kinder torrent which was definitely looking in flood…
First we went down to recover a couple of sacks with ropes at -830 mt, then we started to descend a route in the hall at -750 mt which in our opinion would take us to a big water mouth at -860 mt. A short passage in landslide and a 3mt basin lead us to the departing point of a definitely deeper sink. Quite hesitating we came down a vertical wall for 45mt… Luckily, among three waterfalls at a few liters per sec, we manage to find the only half square meter of all the trap (a trap whose size by the way is 20 by 30 mt) where you have some chance not to drown. The three water cascades came from three canyons that have not been explored so far: one of them should anyway be the active way that you leave behind 100mt before the hall at -750mt, while as for the other two it is absolutely unclear where they come from.
The basis of the sink takes to another jump of 7 mt, followed by another of 12 mt. In this section the canyon’s size is 4mt of width and 15 mt of height! We then covered our way alongside the torrent for another fifty meters, stopping at a 10mt jump. In this area you can see another beautiful freatic duct which has not been reached yet. Unfortunately we ran out of ropes and therefore we had to set off towards the escape with our two usual heaviest bags.
Anyway, the interesting feature of these new explorations is that along the canyon there were other significant water mouths, giving hope for a future link with other caves on the Releccio side.
Participants: Daniele Bassani (ASC) and myself (GGM).
Total explorations:150 mt
News from Andrea Maconi translated by Claudia Rossetti