Posted 2016/10/8
A new day started with a visit to the local museum that features the many tiankengs in the Leye karst – now the key features of a geopark. The museum is excellent, with displays designed by the Institute of Karst Geology in Guilin, so that it is commendably informative. Right behind it, the showcave of Luomei Lianhua Dong gave us a delightful walk through to the next valley. Its well-decorated passage is notable for the many circular shelfstone formations up to 2m across that grew around stalagmite stumps in pools that are now dry (except when the cave acts as a flood overflow); these are known as lianhua (lotus) deposits in China, and as lily pads in the West.
At the exit our bus was waiting, to take us on new tourist roads through the spectacular, cave-rich cone karst of Leye. First stop was Chuan Dong, where remnants of the major Xiongjia trunk cave survive in hills on both sides of the road. We walked up to the northern segment, the shortest, which has a path through a spacious tunnel to an overlook in the wall of Chuandong Tiankeng. Again a few hundred metres wide and deep, this massive collapse feature has vertical walls around a forest-covered floor. Paths took us down and round, and into a huge side chamber with a tiny skylight far, far above. This was seriously lazy caving; but with underground sights like this to enjoy in comfort, we felt that the heavy-duty stuff could well be left to roughie-toughies rather younger than us.
Another short bus ride. Past more huge cave entrances and some lesser tiankengs. Then we were dropped off at the foot of a long flight of steps towards the top of a cone hill – a new tourist trail to a viewpoint above the giant Dashiwei Tiankeng. Over 400m across, this has collapsed outwards to create a perimeter of vertical walls cutting through three steep conical hills, with the high point 613m above the floor. It is truly amazing. Hidden behind boulders on its floor, a few kilometres of large river passage have been explored, largely by YRC members on the China Caves Project. But we felt that a long rope pitch to the tiankeng floor was best appreciated from above, and would merely impinge on one of the most spectacular days of spectacular karst that any of us had experienced. Leye is unforgettable. The evening banquet featured stir-fried bees.
