MeanderTelo Piekny Kielo Cud, ph. K. Recielski

Sądecki caving club is 20 years old. Despite the fact that members of our club participated in many expeditions to different regions, the main area of our caving interests remain the Tatra Mountains. Members of our club took part in exploration of Jaskinia Wvsoka, connected Jaskinia nad Dachem with Ptasia Studnia discovering over 3 km of new passages in this alpine cave, including the largest Polish underground lake Wielki Kłamca (the Big Lier). Through the years we always thought about discovering a new big cave. The fortune turned to our side and that happened.

The entrance tojaskinia Małia w Mułowej is located next to the fizzling trail leading to Ptasia Studnia cave. Few people knew about it, and with small air flow it did not attract anybody who would try to push it In 1995 I descended the 9 m entrance pit to find that a well thrown rock falls for quite a bit and that there is an airflow, but at the time we were busy with exploration of Ptasia Studnia and we decided to return to the cave later.

After some time we decided to return to Mała. In July 2002 after doing some work we managed to pass through the narrow crack and we slowly started pushing the cave further down. The person who was mobilizing us to do so was our club's long time president Anna Antkiewicz. Beside the author and her, people who participated in exploration were Pawełi Rams, Paweł Wańczyk, Czesław Zabrzeński, Jozef Kołodziej, and later Wojtek Skoczeń and Piotr Florian. Our desire to explore was growing while we were pushing the cave down, to cumulate once we discovered Fakro Hall which is today the largest underground chamber in Poland. It is 85 m long, 30 m wide and 60-90 m high. The cave kept going down, after more pits we stopped in a place where water disappeared in a narrow crack. We thought we reached the depth of 300 m but after mapping the cave it turned out to be -361 m. Beside the fast exploration, our success was discovering a major cave in a mountain which so far had only a few small ones. In March 2003 we received Polish award KOLOS 2002 which mainly helped us with gaining sponsorship from FAKRO Inc.
During the winter of 2003 exploration stopped due to large snowfall and inaccessibility of the cave. In the beginning of July just after the snow receded Anna with two Pawełs went to the cave to make a movie about it. Returning from the trip, while traversing a pit, they found a new passage. After moving some rocks it went. Three weeks later another team continued the exploration. Marek and Józef discovered a passage leading to another pits. After traversing them the passage Korytarz Pokuty (Penance Passage) was discovered. Subsequent trips discovered passages leading to a the Sump at -444 m. At that point the appetites grew even larger as the big stream called Nil was discovered. We hoped for more depth so we began looking for a bypass, and quickly found it. The lack of gear and time on the trip delayed exploration till October. For subsequent time our saying "if you ran out of gear while exploring, the cave will continue" checked out, and as some of us say that was where the real cave started. We reached the point in exploration were we could no longer do it effectively from the surface. We established a camp in the Korytarz Słoni (Elephants Passage) and on 2 January 2004 started exploration from there on. After surveying and rigging, during that camp it turned out that the cave is 481 m deep and the new passage is over 500 m long, which is roughly half of the cave. The water passage continues after beautiful multilevel meander called Telo Pieknv Kielo Cud.

Źródła Nilu, ph. K. Recielski

At home, after drawing the cave map, we made plans of further exploration. Due to the high water flow in summer we wanted to continue the exploration during winter when the water is frozen in tons of snow covering the mountains. We secured the entrance and measured its coordinates in order to be able to get to it after subsequent snowfalls. Unfortunately mountains intersected our plans. On 28 January a huge avalanche claimed the lives of our four friend. Anka (the founder of the club and its President since the beginning) with Piotrek Trzeszczoń, Magda Jaroszand Daniel Rusnarczyk, were going to the cave to dig into the entrance. They will stay in our hearts and memory for ever.

That year we also received the KOLOS award for our exploration achievements in Maia Cave which helped us a lot. The follow