Visit to Dahl SabSab
Thursday,
Friday April 19-20, 2001
3
vehicles from Aramco, Dhahran: Greg
Gregory; Marek
Wiechula, son Aiden, Aiden's friend Kevin;
John and Elizabeth Weatherburn and 3 daughters.
CAVING
SUMMARY
We visited virtually all of the mapped passage of this cave, descending and ascending from all 3 entrances. For the northern and middle entrance, rope and climbing gear was used. Within the middle of the cave, there are also 2 steep pitches, where rope was used. The deepest area of the cave (labeled “Pancake Rooms” on Davis’s 1981 map) was at the base of one of the steep pitches accessed using rope. It is probably about 50’ below ground level. Clear cool water, averaging at least 4 to 6” deep, and occasionally deeper filled this area. Several small, sinuous narrow passages lead away from the base of the pitch. After going about 25’ down one of the passages, I backed out to the open area. I didn’t see an end to them, but they would be best negotiated by someone who is very slender, and perhaps wearing a wetsuit. It’s a wet belly crawl, with 1/3rd of the height of the tube-like passages filled with water. The passages are mainly composed of hard, fairly smooth carbonate; Some areas are slightly rougher, with gour pool- type deposits. The water clouds up from very fine sediments when salamandering thru the tubes.
For
much of the entire cave, the air smelled fine, was a comfortable
temperature,
and a very slight breeze could sometimes be felt (we went thru during a
hot
sunny afternoon – much hotter on the surface; Most of this cave was
cooler
than the Magala area caves.
However
it was warmer in a few areas: (1) the shallow area labeled “ceiling
pinches
out; (2) at the shallow “bat grave yard” section, which also had a
slight
smell of decay, probably associated with the moldy bat corpses; (3) at
the
southern-most dead-end (?) passage of the cave, which also smelled
quite
unpleasant—almost nauseating after a few minutes.
We
didn’t see any live bats; Near the “oil drum” at the north entrance,
was
the fur covered upper half of a fox;
Fortunately,
neither the fox nor the oil drum smelled bad in the well-ventilated
area.
The
southern most entrance, which can be easily accessed, leads immediately
to a
fair sized room covered with a small amount of litter and graffiti; I
hauled a
trash bag full of the most offensive materials out of the cave (Happy
Earth
Day). The southern
and northern
entrances provide the easiest access to the main passages of the cave. The northern most entrance
provides easiest/quickest access
to the “pancake rooms”. The
middle entrance is closer, but it requires a belly crawl through ~10
meters of
tight passage containing a few puddles.
Recommend
hauling ropes and gear by starting at the North entrance.
Bruce
Davis’s map, in general, appears fairly accurate and complete; There
could be
some additions of upper and lower passage, as some areas had at least 2
levels.
We
didn’t see any delicate speleothems.
I
saw one sloping area of dripstone that resembled a water slide, made of
leather
hide, about 4 to 6” wide and 3’ long.
Some
other areas appeared to have small, weathered calcite crystals.
This
is a fairly good cave for introducing people to caving, but there are
some areas
of large drops where care must be taken.
All of the children traversed about 60% of the cave
starting from and
returning to the south entrance, and avoiding the large pitches.
The
round-trip off-road portion of our trip was 77 km (Shafiyah departure /
return
point).
Marek
and I plan to make future visits with the Boy Scouts.
Greg
Gregory