Between 5 and 14’th of september 2014 the Coiba Mică – Coiba Mare – Tăuz spring cave system was explored by cave divers as the goal of a cave diving camp organized for this purpose.
The preparations started in january, the same year, after Adrian Pereţ, techincal diver from Finland, contacted me willing to organize a Finnish cave diving expedition. Finnish cave divers were interested in the underwater caves of Romania. I proposed Tăuz spring, and as a backup the sump in Coiba Mare and Coteţul Dobreştilor spring. All of them are beyond local techincal possibilities, but are all well suited for rebreather diving, in which the Adrian’s team mates are experts.
During the following months, all the administrative and logistic details were cleared, so the camp was on the right path for success. With the kind help of the National Speleological Society from Romania, the base camp was established in Casa de Piatra (near Arieşeni).
Top team was composed of Sami Paakkarinen and Patrik Grönqvist, both divers with considerable experience in covering long and deep sumps. Andras Kuti, technical diver from Hungary, joined them.
In the diver support team I had with me Adrian Pereţ, Christian Ciubotarescu and Gergely Iosif. The administrative tasks were handled by Ovidiu Guja.
On short, the results are as follows:
1. In Tăuz spring
-The second sump, 83m deep, was crossed.
-After passing trough a dry tunnel, the third sump, 20m long and 5m deepm was crossed too.
-The fourth sump was reached after climbing a 4 m waterfall encountered in the dry passage between sump 3 and the fourth one, using an aluminum ladder (!). The exploration ended after laying 300m of line, at the depth of 60m.
-Survey of the dry passage between sump 2 and 3.
2. Coiba-Mare cave
-Exploration of the final sump, known as the Death Lake because of the large number of logs floating on it’s surface. The team stopped at a depth of 90.5 meters, with visibility to 93m. This makes the Coiba Mare sump the deepest in Romania.
3. Coteţul Dobreştilor spring
-It was dived to a depth of 25m. The dive was called due to a very bad visibility.
These findings represent an exceptional addition to the knowledge of the Coiba-Tauz system, and in general for the knowledge of the Romanian karst. For the Romanian cave divers this was a special event too, as we had this way a first contact with the cave diving as it is practiced by the world’s elites.
Special tanks are due to the National Speleology Society members, to the ones which helped us bypassing the techinal difficulties we had, including the problems we had since the first day with the air compressor – (Dan Lupu, Rareş Pop), and the last but not the least, to Christian Ciubotărescu, who accompanied us with his characteristic enthusiasm.
During the 10 days of camp, the participants were the next:
From Finland: Sami Paakkarinen, Patrik Grönqvist and Adrian Pereţ.
From Hungary: Andras Kuti.
From Romania: Carmen Dănescu, Magdalena Drăgan, Ovidiu Guja, Gergely Iosif, Dan Lupu, Christian Ciubotărescu, Radu Drăgan, Călin Drăgan.
As the results are assembled, more details will follow.
Călin Drăgan
Foto
Expediţia Tăuz, 2014. Ep. 1: The road & the headquarter
Expediţia Tăuz, 2014. Ep. 2: Tăuz
Expediţia Tăuz, 2014. Ep. 3: Coiba Mare
Expediţia Tăuz, 2014. Ep. 4: Coteţul Dobreştilor
