S. A. CRAVEN, SASA Bulletin — 1979/80

Ascension Day 1979 fell ona Thursday. Therefore Archie Coetzee, his wife, son and I took the Friday off work and enjoyed 4 days leave for the price of one. Incidentally, if the climbing fraternity is permitted its official holiday, why cannot we cavers celebrate Descension Day? ButI digress... As usual, we were made very welcome by Mr. Butcher of Windhoek, and by Messrs. Jordaan and Miller of De Hoop. On 24th. May we ascended Potberg which had just been acquired by the C.P.A. Dept. of Nature Conservation.

On 25th. May, Nikki Hess, one of the labourers at Windhoek, announced that he knew of an undescended hole on the farm Dronkvlei, and that he would show it to us. He led us to Hot Pot. Not wishing to discourage him, we pretended that it was new to us. We belayed the ladder to the Land Rover bumper, and dropped it down the pitch — whereupon the bees attacked in force and we had to beat a painful retreat. Nikki ran for help to De Hoop in 15 minutes, and returned with Mr. Miller and Willem, the beekeeper. Willem very kindly recovered the ladder, and commented that he had never before known the bees to be so vicious. Nikki then told us of an undescended shaft on De Hoop, and added that it was guaranteed to be free of bees! Mr. Jordaan, who has been at De Hoop for 16 years, confirmed that as far as he knew, no one had descended it. We drove south, then southeast, along the old track to Die Mond until at about 100 yards short of the windpump, and on the north-east side of the track, we found the place covered by tree branches & wire. The shaft is 30 ft. deep, and of 5 ft. x 10 ft. oval cross-section.Nikki, Archie and J descended, and found the floor to be of very soft sandy soil. We easily dug4 ft. into this floor, after which we stopped because of lack of space for the excavated fill. Three men with shovels, buckets and a rope could easily lower this floor.

This shaft was noted by MacPherson (1960) who neither named nor descended it. We therefore claim a first descent. I have named it ‘‘Nikki’s Pot” after the gentleman who pointed it out to us. In deference to his language, I had originally intended to name it in Afrikaans. However Archie insisted on English because the Afrikaans version might be misconstrued!

REFERENCE

MACPHERSON 5S. (1960) ‘More caves of the coastal region’’, Bull. S.A. Spel. Assn. (3), p.76.