This time we decided to go for two days to the Jura. Plans: the deeper caves in Hawk Mountains. On the first day we wanted to go down into Studnisko and maybe do one more cave, but a big course from Lodz blocked access to all caves but Urwista - so that's where we went (on the other hand, even though we came to the Jura on Friday night, we came to the caves on Saturday around lunchtime - the party of the previous evening took a while...).

The entrance pitch, although not very deep, is very nice: a big hole (in diameter) in the ground surrounded by rocks. The rigging took us some time, somehow we couldn't concentrate properly. We didn't use any belays, but a single deviator - so that we descended about 20 meters without touching the walls. Unfortunately, one started to turn around on the rope (which reminded be of the 50 some meter descent in the Pod Wanta cave, where the descent was very slow (old rope), you jumped up and down like a yo-yo, which together with turning around could lead to gastric problems). In the main chamber there are some very big and nice formations, but unfortunately already dry. The North passage is not very interesting, but maybe it's worth noting that: 1) going under the rubble can be a bit nervous (the rocks seem to be holding on just about), 2) you can find some examples of fine modern caving art (see the pictures).

On the other hand, the South passage is fantastic - low chambers in between a shattered floor and an evenly cut ceiling, a lot of side passages between boulders, some squeezes there... Well, we just ran around there like children (or more like, we crawled around there like children).

The next day in the early morning we went to visit the deepest cave in the Jura. We were the first ones there, so we had plenty of time to prepare and to rig the descent. Although the entrance pitch is deeper than in Urwista, I like the latter one more. Maybe because of the small entrance the pitch is soon pretty dark and all of Urwista's pitch is visible?

Anyway we went down and started exploring - from the Entrance Chamber we went to the Rubble Chamber, where there are a lot of nice formations. Next, we started descending into the Parts of the Thirsty Ones. Sometimes a bit tight, but without major problems. A lot of mud at the bottom, water level at about -70 meters. On the way down I was thinking that the ascent will be somewhat difficult, but the small pitches have good footholds and it's quite easy to climb them. I guess the practice from Mietusia's Tube helped here some - actually, this passage in Studnisko reminded me a lot of the Tube in Mietusia...

When we came out of the passage, we met some cavers from Czestochowa and then later on we had a small photo session in the Rubble Chamber.

After Studnisko on the same day we went to Coral Cave. A very interesting and varied hole. We'll have to come back to this one, since this time we were running out of time, and the will wasn't there (we had to wait a while for the previous group to exit).

So we went quickly to the Coral Passage to see very nice water corals on tree roots. We didn't deviate much from the main path, so this text will be short and there aren't many pictures, either. But the cave's really nice.