Specific Plan

The plan is to explore the Ellis Basin caving system under Mt Arthur to over 1200 vertical metres, adding more length onto the known cave systems below Tomo Thyme and Exhale Air, and going beyond the sumps by draining them.

There are two parts to this plan:

PART ONE

• Fly equipment into a base camp at Exhaleair, located just below the bushline in the Ellis Basin, Mt Arthur.
• Rig the cave and transport dive equipment 550m to the bottom and dive the sump.
• Use hoses to drain the sump so non-diving team members can get through.
• Set up underground camp 1 beyond the sump
• Explore as much of the cave as possible from camp 1, towards other known caves 8km away

PART TWO

• Rig the higher entrance of Tomo Thyme
• Follow inlets upstream under the Twins
• Use rockclimbing techniques to climb upwards, and connect Tomo Thyme to known caves located up to 500m higher, thus increasing the depth and length of the whole system.

Timeline

Caving details:

1) Tomo Thyme

• To explore uphill from milky bar galaxy towards terelene tomo to try and connect them.
  Uphill from the milky bar galaxy is a rock pile from which blows a very strong draught. Less than 100 metres away and less than 100 metres above is the end of Terelene Tomo. A connection would make the system a whisker off 1000 metres.
• Upstream up the Blue Hawaii waterfalls.
  These waterfalls are heading up towards the twins and there are possibilities to get very high. 200 metres has already been surveyed up one of the inlets. The bigger one has yet to be explored.
• Upstream cold breeze.
  This ends a very high aven with water falling down it. This is heading up under a karst field higher than the Tomo Thyme entrance

2) Exhale Air

• drain the amazing maze sump
  This sump lies at the end of a flood overflow route for the mainstream in the Amazing Maze. We will try draining sump before diving, this way everyone can explore beyond the sump.
• descend the death by chocolate waterfalls
  Death by chocolate lies in the vicinity of the Amazing Maze. Approx 30m of wet pitches were descended a long time ago before exploration stopped due to lack of rope. This has potential to pass the sump.
• explore and survey the mazes above 5 is alive
  There is a maze of crawls above 5 is alive. These crawls were never pushed to conclusions.
• look for an inlet that may connect falcon
  According to the survey the end of falcon is lower than the upstream rauros stream where falcon is thought to connect. The survey may be correct in which case there should be a small inlet somewhere around lucking fost that heads up towards falcon
• dive upstream from 1001 bucket sump
  The passage upstream of 1001 bucket sump is an old downstream route and ends in a sump under flowstone. A side passage in this vicinity ends in a draughting rock pile.

3) Bleakly Pot (aka sling shot tomo)

• Dig the bottom and explore

4) EK 3010

• Push down the tight rift at the limit of exploration
  This short cave is located in the karst a couple of hundred metres above the Tomo Thyme entrance. Exploration ended in a very high and narrow rift with a strong draught blowing into it.

5) Cow Sucker

(Cow sucker is one of the highest cave entrances on Mt Arthur located just below summit of Winter peak at 1700 metres)

• Bessies dilemma.
  Bessies dilemma is a rift just inside entrance of the cave which has not been explored

6) Terelene Tomo

• Push downhill through the rockfall
  Lots of wind blows into the end rockfall of this cave and probably blows through to Tomo Thyme.