Expedition Name (& Club): The Buttered Badger Oman Expedition

Destination country: Oman
Region:

Lat: 17.0139 Long: 54.0923 Elevation: m
MEF funding: none

Leader: Mark Richardson

Brief Expedition objectives:

List a short summary of the main Expedition objectives.

Searching for caves in the Salalah mountains in the Dhofar region of Southern Oman. We will also be visiting known sinkholes and caves in the area with a view to survey and search for new leads.

How can the GPF support your Expedition?:

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

The Buttered Badgers are a very young, keen club who have been around for about 18 months now. We have a large number of student and recent graduate members who we want to keep enthused about caving and encourage them to grow and develop themselves into tomorrow's expedition cavers. International expeditions are a rare opportunity for real adventure and our hope is that this expedition to Oman will open up a new area for British cave exploration and one which the Buttered Badgers' younger members will benefit from for years to come. As such, any support that Ghar Parau could offer would be very gratefully recieved and put to exceedingly good use.

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.

Oman has 2 main mountainous regions, the Al Hajar Mountains in the north and the Dhofar mountain range in the south. Much of Dhofar is dominated by a high limestone plateau, parts of which sit at 1800m above sea level and contains over 1000m thickness of limestone. Water is very scarce most of the time but for 3 months of the year, Dhofar becomes the only part of Arabia to catch the Indian monsoon which turns the mountains into a lush, green and fertile environment. Northern Oman is famous for being home to Majlis al Jinn, ranked as one of the largest cave chambers in the world. The north of Oman also has the superb Hoti cave and Selmah system. Although these northern regions have been fairly well explored for caves due to their proximity to the capital Muscat, the Dhofar region still remains relatively untouched by modern cave explorers. There are several known caves in the Dhofar region, many of which are very large sinkholes high on the plateau. Dhofar is also home to the world’s second largest mega-doline, the Teyq sinkhole. We feel that given the favourable geology, the still active monsoon season and the presence of several, very significant cave features in the region, the Dhofar Mountains show significant potential and warrant an expedition to ascertain the potential for future development. To this end, the Buttered Badger Potholing Club, a young, keen UK based caving club intend to mount a short expedition in April 2012 to undertake a reccee of the Dhofar mountains and establish exactly what potential the mountains and plateau have for significant karst development. We aim to find, record and survey new cave entrances, some of which we already have strong leads on, and survey some of the known caves in the region which have never been systematically recorded. We have enlisted the help of a guide who lives and works in Oman and who has helped the Ministry of Tourism produce reports assessing the potential for adventure tourism and caving in the Dhofar region. Himself a keen caver, he will be aiding with translation, logistics and searching out leads prior to our arrival. Through his contacts with the Ministry of Tourism, we have been granted permission to descend Majlis Al Jinn and undertake a 'tidy up' of the mess left in the chamber by previous visitors. There is currently no access allowed to Majlis Al Jinn following a series of base jumping stunts which made a mess of the place. Politically, a British expedition taking a day out to tidy up the chamber would be an excellent use of our time and will help strengthen links with the MOT for any future expeditions to the area. We plan to return from Oman with detailed survey data, field reports and a very comprehensive photographic record of our findings both above and below ground. Several members of the team are keen amateur photographers and will be honing their skills whilst out in Oman!

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.

Since 1985, there have been several expeditions to the Al Hajar Mountains in the north of Oman by British, American and Slovenian cavers. The only major expedition to Dhofar was in 1997 by a group of Slovenian cavers from the DZRJ Ljubljana. They explored 16 caves with a total length of 4518m, the deepest being 223m where bad air prevented further progress. Since then, some members of the RRCPC who lived and worked in Oman have caved in the area but only on short duration trips and with minimal expedition style reporting of their findings.