The timing was perfect—Matt Oliphant and I were in Singapore at the same time Charles Nelson was in the Philippines. Charles invited us to stay at his house in Lucap, a small town on the big island of Luzon, roughly 200 kilometers north of Manila. Actually, Charles and his wife, Sonia, have two houses next to each other--quite a nice set up! So in mid-April, 2006, we flew to the Philippines with a friend from Texas, Charley Savvas. (Two Charlies! For convenience, we usually called Mr. Nelson “Charles”, and Mr. Savvas “Charley”, but since all of “Charles’s” friends called him “Charlie”, it was confusing!)

Charles asked us what we wanted to do while we were visiting, and we said “go caving, go scuba diving, and eat seafood”. From the day Charles and Sonia picked us up at the airport, that is what we did--it was great! We had a lot of caving adventures, so here are some recollections of the highlights (which coincidentally all happen to involve through-trips).

Cacupangan Caves

One morning we picked up Charles’s friend, Rawen, in a nearby town, and continued on to Cacupangan Caves. Cacupangan has several entrances, and part of the cave is used for commercial tourist trips. The day before, Rawen had shown us the tourist trail—a wooden walkway leads up to one of the cave entrances, then there is a nice stream way to follow to two more entrances several hours away. The cave is not developed, but the trail goes along mostly walking passage with a few short scrambles. The caves in the Philippines are warm, and the water temperature is pleasant.

On this trip, we descended about 12 meters into the cave from a pit entrance, and worked our way down to the stream. We went upstream a little ways (same route we had followed the day before), then stopped at an infeeder. The infeeder was barely noticeable because it was coming out of a very low airspace and it flowed into a pool. Charles and Rawen had checked out this infeeder before, but it had ended in a sump. Now the water level was lower, so it was worth rechecking.

We ducked under the low airspace, stashed our vertical gear, and started following a narrow crevice. Sometimes we had to crawl and squeeze—it never opened up like the big, mainstream way, but there were nice formations along the passage. We couldn’t feel any airflow, so we suspected it was still sumped. Less than an hour later we got to a small room with a pool, and to another low airspace. We ducked into the low airspace and poked around the corner, but it sumped. We came back to the small room and took a break.

While we were sitting there contemplating the situation, I noticed that the pool was formed by a gravel bar—easy to dig through. We all started digging, and the water level dropped noticeably. After about 15 minutes we heard a glugging sound and smelled a different odor (none to pleasant—it smelled like rotting debris). Shortly after, sticks and leaves started flowing from upstream. We kept digging, then ducked back into the low airspace. This time there was a strong breeze coming from around the corner! We popped through the “ex-sump”, and continued on. We found more and more evidence of a nearby entrance, and after a short while, we saw daylight. Rawen is a relatively new caver, and was impressed with the “lower the sump” trick. We tried to explain to him that it is actually a rare occasion where it works. Rawen’s next lesson was about discovering a new entrance—it is exciting, but when you emerge from the cave, you usually don’t know where you are!

We found ourselves in a field, so we figured there was probably a house nearby. Of course, we had the option of going back the way we came, but the thought of all the crawling and low airspaces was so unappealing we decided to take our chances on the unknown. We found a trail to follow, and soon found a house. Luckily, Rawen speaks several of the local languages, so he was able to explain where we wanted to go. We could follow a road back to the truck, but it would be a long ways to walk. The lady of the house and her daughter volunteered to show us a short cut. It was good they knew the area, because we bushwhacked up and down sinkholes and through thickets, and I really had no idea of where we were. After about an hour, we arrived at the road that led back to the truck. We still had to drop down the higher entrance to retrieve our vertical gear. Then we could celebrate an unexpected, successful through-trip.

Caballoriso Cave (sic, Cabalyoriza)

On another occasion we picked up Rawen and headed out to a different area to check out two caves. Charles had some errands to do, so he dropped us off, and planned to come back later to pick us up. We hired some local guys to show us the first cave, which turned out to be an easy 15 minutes from the road. The entrance is big, but quickly funnels into a small stream passage. I elected to check out upstream, since I had knee and elbow pads. I crawled a little ways into a very nasty, sharp, small passage before it got too small to continue.

Meanwhile, Matt, Charley and Rawen headed downstream. At first, it looked like the passage sumped, but we managed to float in the water and weave through a forest of stalactites, and we came out in a room. The cave opened up into walking-sized passage, so we continued following the stream in a very decorated, pretty passage. Soon we came to another “sump”, but upon closer inspection, we found a narrow slot over a sparkling rimstone dam that led to bigger passage. We ran into several more rimstone dams, but all had small slots where we could squeeze by.

We were following the stream, and found a small opening in a mud bank on one side. We climbed through the opening and broke into a gigantic room, full of huge columns and stalactites. We walked around the room and took a bunch of pictures. We couldn’t find any other passages leading from the room, so we returned to the stream.

After a few more intimate encounters with rimstone dams, we found another small opening off to the side of the stream way. We popped through into another enormous room, full of formations. We split up to explore the room, and I followed a passage that had footprints and a slight amount of airflow. I went a little ways before being stopped at a short climb up that I couldn’t quite manage alone. I went back to the others, and we continued to tour the rest of the room and take pictures.

Finally, we all went back to the climb I couldn’t do, to see where that passage went. When we got there, Rawen excitedly told us that he recognized the climb! He had been at the top of this climb from the other cave we were going to explore that day. Matt gave us boosts and then climbed up. We had to go through a tight S-turn squeeze, but sure enough, we found the other entrance from the inside.

Unlike before, Rawen did have an idea of where we were, so we headed back for our rendezvous with Charles. We hiked several kilometers, and found Charles waiting for us. The trip wasn’t quite over—our two guides were still waiting for us at the first entrance, so we had to go back to get them. Then it was time to celebrate another unexpected, successful through-trip.

Angelo’s Cave

Even though there are lots and lots of caves close to Charles’s house in Lucap, Charles arranged a caving trip in the mountains above Solano, about six hours east. We met up with a local caving group, bought provisions, and headed another several hours east to a small town called Capisaan. We spent several days caving, mostly doing through-trips in nice, well-decorated river caves.

Charles and Rawen wanted to learn more about surveying, so one day we planned to have a survey orientation on the surface, and then practice surveying in a cave. One of the club members, Angelo, knew of a good cave for that purpose. He had been a little ways into the cave, and knew where the final survey station was. The rumor was that the cave continued to another entrance, but no one knew how far the other entrance was, or even what the cave was like. The first part of the cave was mostly horizontal, with one short nuisance drop into a deep pool (we found a ledge so we didn’t have to swim). We left our vertical gear, and found the last survey station. We broke into two groups—Matt and Charley set stations, surveyed, and coached Rawen on the instruments. I followed with Charles and Angelo, concentrating on sketching. It was a good training session. After about a hundred meters in big walking passage, we came to a low airspace duck-under and then followed a smaller passage—sometimes walking, sometimes stooping. By this time, we joined the two groups into one so we could survey faster, but continued to show “tricks of the trade”.

A few hundred meters later we found the other entrance. However, it was high up on a ledge. There was a rotting log that had obviously been used as a ladder at one time, but now it was scary looking. Matt delicately used the log and managed to climb up the ledge to the entrance, but the rest of us were not so talented. After he made sure we could get out of the entrance, Angelo and I went back to the nuisance drop, derigged it, and retrieved everyone’s vertical gear. We threw the rope up to Matt who rigged a much safer escape route.

We emerged in a large, enclosed valley—lushly vegetated and full of cave entrances. It was late in the afternoon, so we didn’t have much time to explore. We found narrow slot to exit the valley and got our bearings. It was a long hike back to the house where we were staying, and then, another celebration of an unexpected, successful through-trip.

Conclusion

Of our three weeks in the Philippines, these throughtrips were only some of the many adventures we had. There were many caves that we didn’t have time to visit, and overall, we only saw a small part of the country. So much to do, so little time!

By Nancy Pistole, SoCalGrotto's The Explorer, November 2006