Expedition Name (& Club): Julagua 2009 (OUCC)

Destination country: Spain
Region: Picos de Europa

Lat: 43.2727 Long: -4.9851 Elevation: m
MEF funding: none

Leader: Nick Edwards

Brief Expedition objectives:

List a short summary of the main Expedition objectives.

We plan to return to the Picos De Europa in northern Spain to continue exploration and documentation of Sistema Julagua. We will push a dry lead left from an expedition last year, and support a team of cave divers to continue underwater exploration began in 2008. We will continue exploring and documenting other cave entrances in the area.

How can the GPF support your Expedition?:

Please explain the aspects of the trip which make it eligible for Ghar Parau funding.

Personally, I think this year's OUCC expedition is especially exciting, as a connection between Sistema Julagua and Cueva Culiembro would be a major breakthrough in the cave exploration of the area. Such a connection between a cave of the high Western massif of the Picos De Europa and the Cares gorge down below has been long sought after, but so far has proved elusive. There is an extremely good chance our expedition will establish such a connection. We are a University club, and as such have a lot of members who are newer to caving. One of the underlying aims of all our expeditions is to give newer members an experience of cave exploration on expeditions, in an environment where they can be supported by our older members and learn from their experience and expertise. This year we are inviting a number of other University clubs along on our expedition, giving their members a chance to benefit from this training process.

Detailed description of objectives:

Give a more detailed account of the purpose of the trip, including any particular known caves you intend to visit, specific areas where you will explore for new cave, and scientific experiments you will attempt.

We aim to further explore Sistema Julagua, which as of the start of 2008 had been explored to a depth of 1,060m. The project furthers exploration undertaken over a number of years by Oxford University Cave Club to fully map caves feeding into the Culiembro resurgence and surroundings. An expedition last summer furthered exploration of Sistema Julagua, and left a number of going leads. The most promising of these is a passage heading directly in the direction of the Culiembro resurgence, where the water from the cave has been shown by dye trace to reemerge. There is only about 600m horizontal and 60m vertical distance between the limit of exploration in Julagua and the closest point in Cueva Culiembro, so a connection is a very real possibility. The further reaches of the passage discovered in 2008 contain spectacular formations, so a primary aim of the expedition will be to put in conservation measures to protect the formations and to photograph and document them. A team of divers, lead by Hilary Greaves, organiser of the 2008 Julagua expedition, will accompany the expedition and continue the diving work started last year. Their main aims will be continued exploration of the deep sump at the downstream limit of the cave, previously dived to about 40m, and to continue exploration of streamway passage past the upstream sump. We are certain there are other deep caves to be found in the region, so we will continue the systematic exploration and logging of the many cave entrances in the surrounding area.

Previous work in this area:

Give details of any previous work in this area by your own and other teams. Include references to reports and articles published on the area, and the names of any local cavers or academics with whom you have discussed the Expedition.

OUCC has been exploring caves in the Picos De Europa since 1961. Details of these expeditions can be found in OUCC Proceedings and in expedition reports, many of which are available on our website: www.oucc.org.uk . OUCC expeditions in 2002 and 2003 discovered and explored the Tormenta entrance of Sistema Julagua, connecting it to the Aspoladeru La Texa entrance, which was discovered and explored by Spanish cavers in the 1980s and 19990s. An OUCC expedition in 2005 continued exploration at the bottom of Julagua, discovering much new streamway. The cave diving expedition to Sistema Julagua last year, organised by an OUCC member, uncovered a number of new leads, which we aim to push see http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~hgreaves/caving/julagua2008/ . We hope that some of the Spanish cavers from the club that initially discovered the system will join us on expedition, as they have done in previous years.