The next day everyone mobilized to get the diving equipment to the sump and I kitted up with the team to try again. News that larger team members had fit through the trough was comforting. When my turn came, I felt my way forward with one arm stretched out in front pushing the cave pack ahead of me and the other arm to my side. The trough meandered until it opened up to where I could turn my head and see where I was going, and finally to where I could crawl on hands and knees. I had made it through.

The haul past the ice crawls consisted of a kilometre of crawling over sharp rocks. The team effort had moved all the rebreathers, dive cylinders, lead weights, and other equipment to the sump by nightfall.  Tom, Richard, and Craig would spend the next few days alone at Entrance Camp executing the dive. Our support team would leave the next morning, and Katie, Tyler, Jeremy Bruns, Christian Chenier, Catherine Tardy-Laporte and myself would spend the next six days doing exploration projects based from camps deeper in the cave.

Progress at the deep camps

Obstacles characterize the passages carving further into the mountain. After the ice crawls the next obstacle is the pools, a series of ice-cold waist deep ponds. Further along is a 24-metre rappel, and then The Subway, a near perfect example of a phreatic tube that goes arrow-straight for half a kilometre.  After this is The First Fissure: a vadose canyon sometimes ten metres deep. Cavers must bridge the passages that climb and descend within the rift. A day’s worth of hard travel finally brought us to Camp I, where flat ground with nearby pools of water in ancient drip cups were an oasis amongst the rifts and rubble.

From Camp I our team split up to tackle our exploration objectives. Katie, Jeremy, and Catherine tackled F7, an inhospitable passage yet to be fully explored. My team went to The Next Scene, a tight passage described both as a “terrific” lead by a British team and “terrible” by the last Canadians to see it. We brought a chisel and folding shovel to make The Next Scene’s lead bigger if necessary. The lead was too tight and we tried digging, but left convinced that it would take weeks to make meaningful progress. We returned to Camp I to find Katie’s team had been skunked too; the F7 passage being dreadfully wet, drafty and tight. Dejected, we were hopeful for better results deeper in the cave.

Rousing from a cold, damp sleep to put on cold, wet cave suits, our team was excited to get moving for the next phase. I was the only member of our team who had previously been as far as Camp I, so unfamiliar ground lay ahead for all of us. Beyond Camp I, Holes-in-the-Floor provides a series of 19 pits to traverse. Then comes Second Fissure. Within the start of this new rift is the most sporting passage in the entire cave. The crux is fissure-eroded by a small waterfall requiring long legs and teamwork to cross. 

Finally, we reached Camp II, a bizarre anomaly within the Fissure where a 50-metre section of the rift has an actual floor. 

With time left in the day we continued to our objective, the Munchkin Peon Trail. This passage was partially explored from the north in 1980 and then from the south in 1984, but the second expedition’s connection to the 1980 survey did not line up. This survey error cast doubt into the accuracy of documented passages in the headward complex of the cave.  

Climbing into the Munchkin Peon Trail from Second Fissure involved wedging seven metres up a side rift. Catherine and I started the resurvey at the top of the climb. Christian Chenier and Tyler went through the passage to where it nearly connects to the main passage and surveyed back towards my team. We were able to resurvey approximately half of the passage, a mixture of walking, crawling, and flat-out munchkining before returning to Camp II. Progress was good, and we excitedly planned to reach the ice plug the next day. 

The ice plug

There is something about being so incredibly remote and to finally find yourself in a place of your dreams. The juxtaposition of being within Banff National Park, but also being incredibly isolated, takes time to fully comprehend and appreciate. There was a time when the ice plug was the furthest one could get from a cave entrance anywhere in the world. 234 metres of rock and ice lay between us and the surface of the Columbia Icefield above. Simultaneously inside a mountain and underneath the glacier, for a moment we were in what has been described as the most inaccessible place in Canada. The team was smiling all around. Katie and Catherine became the third and fourth females to reach the ice plug.

At Camp III Katie and Jeremy left for a scientific sample mission at Dessert Glacé. The Swiss team that first explored that section of cave in 1987 had found peculiar organic matter in the passage and a new collection of this material was needed to facilitate further research. Christian, Tyler, Catherine, and myself resumed the resurvey of Munchkin Peon Trail. We connected the surveys and gleefully returned to Camp II for the night. Reviewing the results in camp by the glow of our PDA screens, we knew we had fixed the survey error that had persisted for 36 years. It was a great success, but the statistics would have to wait until I could crunch the data on my computer back home.

Returning to the entrance took two days. Emerging from darkness I was struck by the scent and the magnificent colors of the world, of pine forest and Watchman’s Peak across the valley. While we were away Craig and Tom had dived Boon’s Sump, and surfaced in what became a fissure-like rift. With the high risk of puncturing their dry suits on sharp projections within the passage, they safely surveyed what they could, and returned for the dive home.

Our support team arrived with the freshness required to move the equipment from the Sump back to the entrance, and over two more days all was ready for our departure. 

Unlike other caving trips, returning after 11 days from the underground to the regular world had a different flavour this time around: despite the highlights of the news that our support team had provided, nothing could have prepared us for a world changed by COVID-19. We emerged from under the Earth into a new reality, one which still persists a year later.

Moving the needle

Post-expedition cartography revealed the outcome of our trip’s work; a kind of delayed gratification that often comes with cave exploration. Between the new section beyond Boon’s Sump, the revised Munchkin Peon data, and our other new “dry” passages explored, the needle was moved in Canada’s longest cave. Castleguard is now 21,311 metres long and 388 metres deep. Unfulfilled objectives persist, and some of what lies within will be unlocked in our next attempt, scheduled for the winter of 2022.