Pegasus Caving Club
aka Pegasus Club Nottingham
Mallorca Revisited 2016
For over a quarter of a century the club or it's members have been visitting Mallorca, either for caving or for other recreational purposes. My first visit was in 1993, the early history of the Pegasus' escapades in Mallorca is recorded in the Pegasus Occasional Publication No 9, CAVING IN MALLORCA Parts 1 to 4 covering the clubs visits up to 2000. Part 5 was added the following year to include the clubs activities during their visit in October 2001. No further visits were made by the club, as far as I'm aware until 2014 when Malc Scothon, Dave 'Geordie' Walker and Terry Wheatley made a brief foray back to Pollensa. Following this visit, Terry undertook to arrange a larger scale Pegasus reunion on the island for 2016. As a consequence a group of nine intrepid, or should it be decrepid, cavers assembled at East Midlands Airport on the 17th September 2016 ready to fly off for a weeks caving and socialising. Unfortunately we lost Terry to the Big C earlier on in the year, but his sterling efforts did not go to waste. The team comprised of Mallorca veterans Malc Scothon, Malc Debbage, Andy Walchester, Dave Walker, Al Steans, Mallorca newbies Aaran Smith and Sam Garrad, and Pegasus new members Mark Staples and Kelvin Eady.
We arrived midday Saturday, wasted an inordinate amount of time collecting the pre-booked hire cars (a lesson to be learned there), went shopping for provisions and then located our villa on the outskirts of Porto Pollensa. By the time we had comfortably settled in, it was too late to go caving so we settled down for a wee drink.
Sunday morning we were joined by the original Mallorcan explorer Lee Hollis who had flown in from Canada a couple of days previously. Lee was accompanied by three American cavers, renowned cave photographer Dave Bunnell, Elizabeth Rousseau and Julie Schenk Brown. Lee and his party had been down COVA DES PAS DE VALLGORNERA the previous day on a photographic trip. VALLGORNERA featured briefly in my Caving in Mallorca book but at the time of writing had been closed to cavers and was a relatively short but extremely well decorated cave. The cave was accidentally discovered in 1968 while drilling a cesspit for the sewerage of a hotel being built in the area and a major breakthrough was made in 2004, the system is now over 85 kilometres long and still going, with extensive underwater sections over 17km in total, making it by far the most important cave system on the island. As a consequence the cave has now been classified as a SITE OF COMMUNITY IMPORTANCE IN THE BALEARIC ISLANDS, and access is not granted to the general caving populace. One of Julie's friends was an original explorer of the system and was able to arrange a visit to the cave as a photographic expedition, Lee met up with Julie's friends Dave and Elizabeth while assisting Dave on a surveying trip in Hawaii, and was invited to join them in VALLGORNERA. Julie is doing a write up of the trip for the February edition of the National Speleological Society journal, the article will feature some of Dave's photos taken at the time. A complete write up of the history of the caves exploration, can be found in the May 2014 edition of the International Journal of Speleology. Link at http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/1827-806x.43.2.1
After joining up with Lee's party the thirteen of us trekked up to COVA DE CAN SION, where some of the more photogenic Pegasus members posed for Dave in the cave. We then all met up for a meal in Porto Pollensa, before returning to the ranch for a nightcap. We retired in the wee small hours of Monday and didn't surface until after midday, Monday was then designated a rest day.
While at VALLGORNERA, COVA DEL PIRATA was recommended to Lee as another cave with superb formations to visit, so we decided to attempt to find the cave on Tuesday. Lee had no information as to the location of the cave, but the two Malcs, myself and Andy had visited the area in 2001 to sherpa for J.J Lavergne who was diving in the adjacent COVA DES PONT (see Caving in Mallorca Pt. 5), COVA DEL PIRATA is also shown on the large scale road maps of Mallorca, so we thought we had a good chance of locating the cave. Although we successfully found the private road leading to the parking space we had used in 2001 (recognisable by an overload of graffiti) the gate on the left leading towards COVA DES PONT / COVA DEL PIRATA approximately 1km away was locked. We were informed by a local that it was very risky to park on the private road, since it was patrolled frequently by over zealous wardens who were prone to handing out 200 euro parking fines. After returning to the main road and unsuccessfully attempting to reach the site by another road, (access being denied by the landowner), we returned on foot to the heavily graffitied end of the private road. A gate facing the end of the road was partially open and led to a large parking space with a foot path leading down to a beach at Cala Varques. We were informed by the local who had previously warned us of the parking restrictions, that if we followed this footpath down to Cal Varques, then turned left to follow the coastal path we would eventually reach COVA DEL PIRATA. We followed the footpath to the beach and turned left to skirt a small cove in a clockwise direction, directly opposite where we met the beach was a large open sea cave, accessible by swimming only. The coastal path took us up to the cliffs above the sea cave and across a small headland from where we could see another small cove with the exit to the sea cave on one side and a very impressive rock bridge on the other. We continued at clifftop level past the rock bridge following the coastal path which eventually petered out on a rough gorse covered limestone pavement, after a ten minute wander across this pavement keeping as close as possible to the shoreline we encountered another small cove, with an obvious cave entrance at sea level. We climbed down to explore the cave, it was definitely not COVA DEL PIRATA. It was however extremely well decorated and very spacious after passing through a deep lake where the roof lowered to within a foot of the water level. We researched this cave afterwards, it was almost certainly COVA DES COLOMS at Cala Falco, this cave was mentioned very briefly in Caves of Mallorca Pt. 4, it can be reached by following the footpath and does not require swimming to get to it,if you arrange your visit for the time of the lowest possible tide. You will not be left stranded by the tide, but you will get wet, and possibly need to swim a short distance if the tides rises considerably whilst exploring the cave.
Survey of Cova Sa Gleda
Coastal Path followed to Cova Des Coloms
Exit of the large open sea cave passed on the walk to Cova Des Coloms
Impressive rock arch passed on route to Cova Des Coloms
Mark passing through duck to cave extension
Cova Des Coloms Survey
The 2 Malcs viewing Cala Varques from the coastal path.
The caves in this area are extremely difficult to find without the assistance of knowledgeable locals, and the naming of the caves make it even more confusing, there are the Cuevas del Pirata (E.Martel 1901) marked as sea caves on the map, these are different to COVA DEL PIRATA which is definitely in a collpsed doline inland. There are several other inland caves in the immediate area of COVA DES PONT & COVA DEL PIRATA, including COVA SA GLEDA, COVA DES XOTS & COVA CAMP DES POU, all referred to in Caving in Mallorca Pts. 1 - 5. There are also many sea caves on this stretch of coastline, some named some not. If you intend to visit any of these caves thoroughly research them on the net, and try to find out any access restrictions, local knowledge is invaluable.
A brief mention of a cave discovered in 1999 by a scuba diver doing a decompression stop, can be found in Caving in Mallorca. This Cave is LA COVA DE SES LLAGRIMES situated on the Alcudian Peninsula. It can only be accessed by diving from a boat. A full description of the cave appears in the Spanish Caving Journal: Endins Vol 25 2003. Another well decorated sea cave COVA DE GENOVESA appears in the same volume. Endins is in general an excellent publication for people researching Mallorcan caves, unfortunately it is published in Spanish. You can ask Google to translate into English, but the translation leaves a lot to be desired, sometimes it's practically impossible to understand.
On Wednesday I had a rest day back at the villa, chilling by the pool. Meanwhile Lee led a team to the entrance to AVENC DE FRA RAPHAEL, where Andy, Aaran, Malc S, Malc D, Sam, Geordie Dave and Mark did the standard tourist trip to the top of the final pitch, visiting the upper series on the way out. We all met up again in Porto Pollensa for a farewell meal with the Americans who were departing the next day.
Thursday we split into two parties, after depositing a car at the end of the TORRENT DE PAREIS and dropping a small party comprising Aaran, Sam, Andy and Mark at the SA FOSCA GORGE, the larger team of Lee, Kelvin, Dave, the two Malcs and Al set of to do the full TORRENT DE PAREIS canyoning cum walk. The trip took a full eight hours, as opposed to the standard four and we exited in darkness, this was down entirely to yours truly. Many thanks to the rest of the lads for their patience and endeavours in helping an unfit, obese, old bugger to complete a traverse well beyond his compass. The other guys also took eight hours, due to the low water conditions and the rank smelly nature of what stagnant water remained in the canyon, they aborted the trip shortly after the halfway point and exited by the escape route. Apparently they had an interesting trip, two points spring to mind, despite the low water conditions there are still a number of sections where the smooth canyon walls and deep canals require the team to swim. Point one; if you wish to avoid hypothermia it's a good idea to wear a wet suit that fits you, ask Aaran. Point two; if you wish to avoid drowning it helps if you can swim or have sufficient flotation devices, ask Andy. Incredibly the two separate teams met up at the starting point within a few minutes of each other, Lee and Malc shot of first in order to top up the beer and wine supply from a local garage, all the supermarkets being shut at this time of night.
A session ensued back at base camp, and we finally retired at 0550 Friday morning, the rest of the day was spent, sleeping, resting and eating.
Saturday morning we had to leave early as all the roads in our area were shut for the Mallorca triathlon. After doing our packing and tidying the villa, we all drove to Porto Cristo to visit the CAVES OF DRACH showcave before having a leisurely lunch by a secluded cove in Cales de Mallorca. We then dropped the cars back at the car hire place, and awaited our flight back home. All in all a brilliant week spent in Mallorca with some serious caving and drinking done, plans are being made to return next year.
Further reading;
If you Google MALLORCA VERDE and click on Menu Espeleologia, a list of 92 caves appears, several of these are featured in Caving in Mallorca or in 501 Grutas, many do not. If you click on any of the individual caves, a full description of the cave including map co-ordinates comes up. Unfortunately all the descriptions are in Spanish, but the basic information is fairly easy to understand.
Al Steans.
