The extreme caving team funded under the SPARC Hillary Expedition initiative , has discovered New Zealand's first 1 kilometre deep cave.
The expedition team, led by Kieran McKay, has managed to reach the new depth in the Ellis Basin cave system near Mt Arthur in Kahurangi National Park.
The team had spent the summer exploring the system, at times on the verge of giving up as they sought to break a record cavers have been striving for since the 1960's.
McKay and his team members Aaron Gillespie and Troy Watson were literally at the end of their rope when they made their dramatic breakthrough.
"The complex nature of the cave had been eating up our rope supplies as we swung across deep holes and abseiled down big shafts."
According to their survey, the cavers had gone across the top of the point where they thought they would connect to Tomo Thyme which was believed to lead to the new record depth.
On Thursday 18 March, the team made their way down a 400 vertical metre shaft, which Kieran describes as one of the hardest caves he has ever explored with "numerous squeezes and tight narrow canyon passages and very difficult climbs".
"A series of small crawl ways led us to a big shaft," Kieran said. "The shaft dropped 46 metres into a very big chamber. No Tomo Thyme. A short dig through a pile of rocks got us into a big horizontal passage and another pitch. Still no Tomo Thyme . Our second-to-last rope was put down a 20 metre pitch. At the bottom we were contemplating negotiating a very narrow and drippy crack, hoping we would not need any more rope.
"I decided to look up a little tube to find an easier way down. Contemplating the climb out of the cave I was not prepared for what I saw next, a few steps up the tube I came across a junction. My mind did a flip, I recognised this place. It was Tomo Thyme. We had done it!
McKay says that without the Hillary Expedition funding his group received "this would not have happened for a long time, if ever".
"The Hillary Expedition made us set big goals and it is now a great feeling to have come through and achieved a historic first for New Zealand, a first which I know will be applauded by cavers all over the world."
