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Grotta Pillirina

Alex Ritchie · Jan. 7, 2024, 8 a.m. 2 people · 2 hours and 30 minutes
Cavers John (JP)
Date/time entered Sun 7 Jan 24 — 08:00 2024-01-07 08:00
Date/time exited Sun 7 Jan 24 — 10:30 2024-01-07 10:30
Trip type Sport
Region ????
Country Sicily
Clubs NONE
Notes

This was the longest cave we did, it starts off as a large abandoned sea cave about 20m altitude before shrinking down into smaller passage. There are several flat out squeezes, one of which was rather tight and John struggled a bit with this. This then broke out into walking phreatic passage with formations. We navigated by the draft that was cooling things down, but this suddenly disappeared as it was going up an old shaft that was dug as a well apparantly. We continued to follow varied and at times muddy passage, in stifling heat. Eventually it went into a high vadose passage which thankfully for John (he was way too hot) terminated. Though there was a tight squeeze onwards which I passed this led to an even smaller squeeze where I turned around given the stifling heat. If I ever cave in a more major cave like this in Sicily I need to bring water with me. Trip time about 2.5 hours.