Exploring Hipmanova with Slovak cavers
Five cavers from Wałbrzych (WKGiJ) visited the recently discovered deepest cave of Slovakia - Hipmanova (495 m). Maciej Pawełczyk passed into a new series - Polska Vetva.

Miecharska cave - a giant in the Beskidy
In fall 2004 cavers from Speleoklub Bielsko-Biała opened by digging an entrance in a small surface depression on flysch rocks. Now the Miecharska Cave, in the western part of the Beskidy Mountains, is the longest and deepest sandstone cave in flysch of the Polish Carpathians, with the length of 1744 m and the vertical extent of 56.3 m. Arrangements are made to lock the entrance with bars and to protect the cave by law as a natural monument.

Feichtnerschacht 2006
Expedition Feichtnerschacht 2006 (March 19 to April 7) explored from the bivouac at - 450 m in Z Miśkiem Room. They continued exploration from the depths of 1015 and 1088 m (4th Bottom). Through a few cascades and meanders they reached KKTJ Sump at -1145 m. This part of the cave ends there. More than 300 m of corridors and pits were explored in three weeks. Feichtnerschacht is now 5.1 km long.

In Feichtnerschacht at -1120 (Pit with Nose), ph. J. Nowak

Dolomiti Friulane
The area of Busa dei Vedei - a little explored zone in the Dolomites - was visited by eleven membres of Speleoklub Dąbrowa Górnicza, led by Włodzimierz Matejuk in August 2005. About 50 caves were known there, with two deeper than 400 m. The expedition found and explored AQQ cave, ca. 200 m deep, and several smaller caves. Several interesting entrances have been spotted from a paraglider by the expedition leader.

Monto Durano

Touring the caves of Cuba
Andrzej Wojtoń visited tourist caves of Cuba. Most of them are in the western Pinar del Rio province, which is the home of all largest Cuban caves. The richest speleothem decoration may be seen in electrically illuminated Cuevas de Bellamar near the town of Matanzas in central Cuba. A cave bar, a restored refugee of slaves, a boat trip on underground river, are among cave attractions in Pinar del Rio. Precolumbian paintings may be seen in Oriente province and on the Isla de la Juventud.

Cueva del Indio (Pit with Nose), ph. J. Nowak

Nordland
Marcel Nawrot summarizes the activity of Polish cavers in Norwegian Nordland in years 1988-2003. Four expeditions from Gliwice, Poznań and Kraków mainly visited the earlier known caves, but also took part in exploration of Tjarve and Steinaksla.
In 2005 eight people from Poland explored a new area - Slunkajavri (12 caves, with a total legth of more than 500 m). They also explored from Bonna, where they contributed to exploration of Steinaksla (1100 m), Stoppenolen and Tjorve.

In Feichtnerschacht at -1120 , ph. J. Nowak

A hole in the Earth
Krzysztof Paul describes his descent to a 220 m deep pothole in Libya in November 1983. The pothole lies in the Green Mountains, near Cyrene and Labraq. He made the descent using ropes for tying camels. The well seemed to be a karst cave with collapsed roof. Its wide bottom was covered with loose rocks.

Wielka Śnieżna - summing up the exploration by Speleoklub Bielsko-Biała
Cavers from Speleoklub Bielsko-Biała explored those parts of the Wielka Śnieżna system that lie near the Litworowa Valley. The new length of the Litworowa cave is now 7,071 m and that of the whole system - 23,619m.

In Feichtnerschacht at -1120 , ph. J. Nowak

News from Lodowa Małołącka
Decay of ice in Lodowa Małołącka cave opened access to some new series. The cave has now a vertical extent of 53 m deep and is 360 m long.

Ancient mine galleries in the Lejowa Valley in the Tatra Mountains
The two described and surveyed mine galleries are 7 m long each. They are the vestiges of manganese ore mining from Lower Jurassic limestones in 19th century.

Near the entrance to Feichtnerschacht, ph. J. Nowak

Otmice shelters
Small caves are described from Triassic limestones exposed in an abandoned quarry in the Opole region.

Curiosities from Miękinia
The author tried to find the cave described in the middle of the 20th century as a natural cave in porphyry in Nowa Góra, later transformed into a store for explosives. A concrete shelter does not fit the description and the very presence of the cave seems may be put in doubt. A 5 m deep vertical shaft in porphyry and a small shelter in overlying Rhaetian limestones are also described.

Therion - plans ready from computer
This article describes the main features of Therion.
Therion is a complete package which processes survey data and generates maps or 3D models of caves. It runs on a wide variety of platforms: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X. It is completely free, released under the terms of GNU GPL, with source code available. It doesn't require any other commercial software to run.
At the Therion web page (http://therion.speleo.sk) you will find examples, screenshots and documentation. There you may download Therion and example files, read Wiki pages and participate in a mailing list.

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EPIMENIDES polish speleo page.

Last change 2006.08.20