Amazing Cave in Vietnam
 

My family has been active in caving for well over 50 years and I've been crawling around underground since I've been a kid. The past few years my brothers and I have graduated to vertical caving using ropes for traverses and rappels to explore the more harder to reach cave systems. While I dream of finding something new underground, every cave I've ever been in mostly (KY, AL, and TN) has either been surveyed or at least traveled before. I saw this on Nat Geo the other day and can't believe something this amazing was just recently discovered. It can be like another world underground and thought these pictures highlighted that well.

The first picture is the entrance to Hang Son Doong "Mountain River Cave", it was discovered in 1991 by a local, the reason it stayed unexplored for so long due to the powerful whistling noise it made from the underground river made the locals afraid of it.

It wasn't until 2009 it was made public when a British survey team finally went through it. While it doesn't hold the record for longest or deepest cave system, it does hold the record for largest (cavern size). The largest cavern in it is over 5km long, 200m high and 150m wide.

The second pic shows the other reason it stayed hidden so long, to get to the entrance was a several hundred meter rappel, which when on the top, the entrance all but disappeared into the mountain.

Anyway, enough rambling, here are the pictures.

Unreal. That place is huge, and amazing. What a cool hobby or job or whatever. How do you go about finding new spots? GPS or satellite images? oO is it just hiking in areas where you think there may be caves?

Thanks for sharing.

Was there last month - it was amazing.

Wes I am unbelievably jealous. How much of the cave did you make it through? I have a lower res picture of where the ceiling collapsed and a mini jungle has formed inside the cave and it looks like something out of a sci fi flick.

Rob, for us it's just a hobby, we are involved with the National Speleological Society but that's to help with cave preservation and also helps with access to systems that are on private land. What we try to do is find or explore new sections of caves. Some systems might be mapped, but some passages unexplored because it appears to end.

There is a cave I do regularly in Kentucky that has a room that appears to dead end. Its fun to explain to the new guy that it's going to be a 100 yard belly crawl with the ceiling scraping your back, and pick a direction you want to turn your head because once you're in there's not enough room to turn it over again. Its a miserable experience for a few minutes but when you pop out on the other side to an underground river and waterfall it's worth it.

I want to go to there.

Thats truly amazing.

Thats nuts.
I read a pretty cool book called Beyond the Deep. It was about a "cave" in mexico. Pretty interesting read.

That's pretty amazing. Just the shear size of the cave.

The Viet Cong used some of these caves along the rivers to hide out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phong_N..._National_Park

I got nervous just reading that.

"There is a cave I do regularly in Kentucky that has a room that appears to dead end. Its fun to explain to the new guy that it's going to be a 100 yard belly crawl with the ceiling scraping your back, and pick a direction you want to turn your head because once you're in there's not enough room to turn it over again. Its a miserable experience for a few minutes but when you pop out on the other side to an underground river and waterfall it's worth it. "

Oh hell no! Reminds of that movie that came out a few years ago(horror flick) where they were going through crazy tight spots like that. Pretty difficult to watch. The mosters who ate them were nothing comparable to the tight squeezes.

I am with Jeff and Miguel..... just reading that made the hairs on my arms stand up. WHOA...... Heebee jeebee's!!!

The first few trips like that you really think, wtf am I doing here. But it's the most difficult traveled routes that provide the greatest scenery. The easier routes always get littered with graffiti, formations broken off etc. I'll try to dig up some pictures of the more difficult passages but they don't photograph well and I'm a pretty lousy photographer as it is.

One of my favorite routes I've taken probably over 50 times is simply for the fun of it and any one of you could handle it without a problem. It ranges from a good hike in some tunnel type rooms, to rooms the size of a small sports arena, to climbing, to some limited belly crawling. There's even a river that we brought tubes in with us and tried to take it to the end. (Even in a cave you can't get away from tubers) The vertical stuff is a little more fun, but still has its moments. In the first picture it was a 220 foot drop into the cave, we did some exploring but then the only way out is back up the rope.

Awesome!!!

Looks amazing would love to go there! Far as I know the Vietnamese are proud they won the war and are ok with most foreigners.

after seeing 127 hours, repelling into caves, crevices etc is not on my list of things to do. very pretty though