Harwoods Hole / Starlight Cave

For me caving is not just about being underground, it is also about the people you cave with. I consider myself fortunate to belong to two great clubs, with only 14 months of caving under my belt the people I go caving with are happy to share their experience and knowledge of caving, and they like to keep caving fun (in fact side splitting at times), which is important for introducing newcomers to caving and ensuring NZ caving has a great future. Recently I made decision to do more outside of my area, though I thought not knowing anyone in the South Island would be limiting in terms of what I wanted to achieve this year. Pete Smith had put me in contact with Garry De Gaia and Chris Whiting and all of a sudden a weekend multi club South Island caving trip was on!
I had booked some flights down a few days out (there are some good airline deals out there) and packed about 35kg of gear which included some after cave ‘refreshments’. The first weekend trip was into Summit Tomo cave and during our stay we ran into Chris Whitehouse and Matt Bennett. The impact of that trip had us resulted in booking in Harwoods Hole in three weeks’ time from the Summit Tomo car park. The Summit Tomo trip was that good I’m sure if anyone was walking around on the surface would have heard some questionable jokes and laughter all day.
I had thought of abseiling Harwoods in 2018, as the thought of the 170+ metre drop (one of the pinnacles of NZ caving) still had me somewhat nervous, but the team I was with gave me more confidence to give it a go earlier than planned.
Up at 6am and out the door at 7am from the NSG Hut, not quite a frost but near on. After walking through the bush track to Harwoods Hole, the first impressions on seeing the edge of the sink hole certainly gave an awe-inspiring feeling on such a calm morning. While setting up, I almost lost my second back up torch down a crack in the rocks….my rugby like arms were too big to get in-between the rocks. Luckily Mel was able to reach to rescue my touch (there is some irony in this to be mentioned later in this story).

 Chris #1 headed down Harwoods Hole first. I watched how slow the start of the rope was, as the weight of 173m of rope causes a lot of friction in the rack and you have to feed it through for a good portion of the decent. Chris radioed all was clear, and now it was my turn as I wanted to take some photos of the others as they descended the rope. I was clipped into the first line down to the pitch, and lifting 173m of rope so you can get the rope into your rack required some extra Wheat-Bix. After final checks on the rack, then unclipping the cows tail, I started to descend carefully as the first 10m of the wall was damn slippery. I decided to simply enjoy the view, up, down, and sideways, at someplace down the wall someone has placed an ‘interesting’ statue…..look out for it on the way. If you miss it, you can’t have been enjoying the view! It took about 20 minutes for me to descend while having a really good look and experiencing all Harwoods had to offer including about 5 minutes of just looking up watching all the water falling down in what looked like Morse code. I do recommend some hang time just to take in the awe of the geology.

I quickly got the Sony a6000 out with a basic 18-50mm kit lens and started to take some shots, as Garry, Mel and then Chris #2 came down the rope. Being a very low level intermediate photographer, my motto is ‘lead in the air’: shoot lots, and may be a photo or two will come of it. A number of shots just weren’t working due to the over exposure of the bright sky, so I moved around the cave, as the others were coming down the line they were blending too much into the dark background, then the winning lotto moment when the final person (Chris) was descending the rope, then some fog entered the background. I was pretty stoked as an amateur to get that shot, and I possibly had let out a few expletives in my appreciation in getting it.

As we moved on from the entrance, what no one had mentioned to tell me was the trip out of the cave was equally as impressive as the descent in. I thought I had seen some really nice caves over the year, but this was the best yet with cold pools of gin clear water, fun slides, and a few squeezes that weren’t tight at all. We had a little bite to eat at the ‘Twin Waterfalls’ to appreciate what the cave was offering, with crystal clear pool I wish I could always dive in, and water flowing over flow stones, I could see a few opportunities for next time to take some long exposure shots. As we traversed through the system, there were some fun places to swing across a rope Indiana Jones style and sneak around the edges of these clear and deep pools, with one slip and you’re bound to have the breath taken from you with the cold water. Unfortunately Mel found that out the hard way on the other side of ‘Blasted Squeeze’ ….she was so close to getting through the cave dry…ish. Better luck next time Mel. She needed some better luck as after ‘Shorty’s Terror’ her torch fell casualty to the deep clear water….you may see it, it’s yellow and petzl at about 1.5m deep….Some chocolate may be a reward to anyone that retrieves it.

As we traveled through the cave, being an ex rugby player that used to be in the front row I initially had some reservations knowing there were some squeezes ahead, but they were fun, Id describe them as ‘very narrow’ rather than a squeeze, I thought it was interesting hearing the wind howl loudly as it rushed around me. As we approached the blue lake at the end of the cave, I had not realised this was the end, I was a bit gutted at seeing the daylight as this area was worth a few more photos. I looked behind me at the blue lake, I was a little thirsty, so I thought hey it looks good enough to drink, and I thought I’d rehydrate a bit before the climb out as my final appreciation of this cave system.….there is possibly a few cavers laughing and thinking they have had a ‘stop’ up stream, but Im not one to care too much, I’m still alive.

And just as quickly as it began, it was sadly soon over, it was very hard to judge how much time went by as we were having too much fun and a string of bad jokes, time went quickly and that might be a good warning to others if you want to retrieve the rope and get back to the carpark before dark in winter you will need to start early.

So now we are out of the cave, but it’s not over yet! Now the very long climb on the surface going up the scree slopes. My advice to cavers that have not done this is to appreciate the view and just keep one foot in front of the other, and remind

yourself “it was all worth it” as your searching for energy to get yourself up the hill side for what seemed like eternity……over 1 hour, close to two by time we got back to the rope to haul it out of Harwoods Hole.

Our total time 9 hours from out the door at the NSG hut at 7am and arriving back at 5pm where the first priority was to get that fantastic fire going….who ever made that fireplace is a damn genius in my opinion. In a short time the fire and bbq was on, and my crafted Hefeweizen, Vanilla coffee porter and apple cider was flowing well amongst the team.
My final words on this trip: Get out and cave in other regions, meet new people that want to have fun, share your experiences and most of all laugh….if not in the cave, maybe back at base when you talk about the only person that fell in the drink.