It has been a very long time since I wanted to go all the way to the very end of Cuves de Sassenage. I have been to the Cuves multiple times but never to the end. Cuves de Sassenage is an important resurgence of water coming from Gouffre Berger and other underground systems draining the Vercors plateau. Last weekend, the stars finally aligned and we planned this trip with Jeff Wade since I was visiting Grenoble for professional reasons. As experienced cavers, we went for a drink the night before and a 2AM bedtime was a promise to a swift trip!
The whole team, composed of 6 people, met at the show cave carpark at 8:30 and after a bit of faff we finally entered the cave at 9:30. The very beginning of the cave is part of the show cave and the following part up to Salle a Manger is used for guided caving tours featuring an underground via ferrata and a tyrolienne. After that, the fun begins. One goes through trutchy bits and a multiple ascending and descending pitches. On this trip, we had to rig P13 and Puits Lavigne. The rest of the cave is hard rigged and the equipment is in a relatively good state. The whole cave is also P-bolted. The trip went relatively smoothly to the Salle du Thermometre before which we were caught in a traffic jam but the other party let us kindly pass them. Looking at the watch, the time is not very good and it promised a long trip. We continued further without a lunch through wonderful Rivere des Benjamins until Salle Carrel, where we finally ate our lunch at the foot of a 60 meters ascending pitch. There are two ways to go up: a direct route or a little vertical side trip. After finishing my sandwich, I set off as first towards the unknown. After getting through a wet, trutchy tunnel I finally got to the succession of waterfalls where I kept going up. This place is very impressive and very noisy. When I finally got to the top of the waterfall pitches, I found a nice place in sand where I sat down to wait for the others. I sat in the dark for a long time, maybe an hour, before the rest of the team got up. From here, it’s finally not very far to the final sump. We made a small break at the sump and split into two teams. Jeff and Manu went to see the top of the very last 13m pitch to see a potential for exploration while we turned around. The dynamics was finally much better when it’s just 4 of us. On the way down we descended the direct P60 pitch with an exciting, free-hanging rebelay. We made our way smoothly without major navigational issues to the Salle du Thermometre. Since the other party didn’t catch us up, I used a piece of paper survey and a piece of chocolate to write a message to Jeff that we are ahead of them and heading out. The guys finally caught us up at Puits Lavigne and so we made the final bits of the cave together. We got out at 10 PM making our trip time 12.5 hours. Just on time for a couple of pints and bit of dancing ?
The trip is very nice and varied and I can only recommend it to the cavers who come to Vercors. It’s definitely a good idea to keep the party small for such a trip… The hydrology of the place is quite complicated and one always wonders where does the water go… Also, the potential to find new cave passages is huge. The river, which you mostly follow comes from St Nizier direction where no major cave is known.
Link to the
survey
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