Cobblestone Cave
Length: 105m | Grade: 5D | Surveyed: 2003-04-04
Anthony Hitchcock, 2009
On 28 March 2003 I descended from the Marine Drive lookout down a track past the ranger’s house to the Otter Trail. I followed a steep fisherman’s path down to the coast in search of the two caves that Stephan Moser and Andrea Pulfrich discovered the previous November. I found the first cave a little west from where the path reaches the sea. The approach to the cave is difficult requiring one to traverse some rocks that are washed by waves so it is best done at low tide. The cave entrance is up a 20m high, steep slope consisting of pebbles and rocks cemented in hard mud and earth. This forms the earth plug blocking most of the entrance. The floor of the cave slopes steeply down from a post-box like entrance into a large chamber about 10m high, 10m wide and 50m long. There is a low and wide passage off to the left that ends in a collapsed slope after about 30m. Two small muddy passages extend from the end of the main chamber for a further 20m. The floor of the cave is covered with sticky mud, which has settled and dried in many places into even squares as one often finds on roads drying after rain. This phenomenon prompted Stephan to call this cave Cobblestone Cave. I completed the survey, which took over three hours. The only evidence of previous visits was Stephan and Andrea’s footprints. This is probably due to the difficult access to the entrance. The accumulated length of the cave is a little over 100m.
There is some evidence of bat guano and pellet-like droppings, possibly ‘dassie’ (rock rabbit), but I only encountered rock pigeons nesting in the ceiling area.
Survey
Survey — Cobblestone Cave — click image to open PDF