By Jack Huygens, 22 June 2025
Over in the magical land of Ruahine Corner (the big limestone plateau in the top north-west corner of the Ruahines) lies one of the lower north islands largest and most promising areas for wild cave exploring.
The mixture of limestone bluffs, sinkholes and at least one known surveyed cave (a tiny miserable thing called "Yamaha Hole") gave me all the inspiration I needed to plan a big trip in there to explore for more. Due to it's remoteness (needing about a 4 day tramp to get in and out, or a helecopter) this place has hardly been explored by cavers at all, and the aforementioned "Yamaha Hole" is basically right in front of the hut inside a giant sinkhole, so not exactly hard to find. So surely there must be more where that came from.
And there was! We found three new caves, ranging from two more miserable squeezy little ones to at least one big wide open walk-in entrance. We dubbed these caves:
- "Drunken Stag", due to a beer can and stag antlers wedged in the tight entrance, along with lots of flood debris. It had a bit of calcite and several small waterfalls, some small rooms and lots of squeezy sections. It eventually reached the classic "too tight" roadblock. On to the next one.
- "Hand Grater", another squeezy hole with an interesting three-prong entrance. I was wriggling my way through one entrance when Tommy looked down at me from above from a much easier opening. This one is named for its sharp crumbly rock walls, and the fact that Tommy didn't wear any gloves. If you enjoy tight caving then this is a really fun one, the passage just keeps going and going.
- "Ruahine Ballroom", now this is what we were looking for. It started with a classic small crawly entrance, but kept getting wider and wider until we were clambering around in large open rooms. The adrenaline of exploring a brand new cave passage that keeps growing might just be the biggest dopamine high I've ever experienced. We eventually reach a wide open circular room ("the ballroom") and suddenly notice sunlight! There was a big open entrance right ahead of us! And with that, we had found a "real" cave, with a walk-in entrance, and more than just a squeezy, sharp, wet wriggle down a sinkhole.
As is caving tradition, we will keep the location of these caves a secret, but for anyone genuinely interested I will gladly tell you all about them. There's caves in those hills, and there's bound to be many more to find. After all, we only spent a single day looking, the rest of the trip was tramping in and out!
