Botet de Casa Rei

The entrance is accessible via a steel tube about 4 metres long and less than 1 metre in diameter, installed to prevent its obstruction as a result of landslides from the slope of the track that passes above the cave. Once past the tube we find a very narrow passage for a couple of metres. In the first 80 metres the gallery has reduced sections, with a subhorizontal layout, the floor presenting pebbles and lutitic materials. At 54 metres we find an ascending branch 32 metres long. At 80 the gallery widens almost suddenly, acquiring a width of 5 metres and a height of 10. This is the widest sector of the entire cave. A little further on we must overcome an ascending step of 4 metres between some flowstones; just here, the cave makes a 90-degree turn taking a N direction. After overcoming a short narrow section, the gallery continues with a height of 6 metres, which will be the general norm in a large part of the cave. We begin to find important accumulations of sand, which along the cave will alternate with rounded pebbles. At 240 metres, the cave turns sharply again at a right angle, heading towards the E. The dimensions remain similar to the previous ones, although the ceiling sometimes lowers momentarily. Sections in forced conduit are frequent, but we also observe sections in “keyhole”. Further on the cave begins to have a slightly descending layout, at the same time as it loses height and the accumulations of sand are increasingly abundant. At 540 metres from the entrance, the roof lowers and the gallery is almost covered by water. Shortly after this point we reach the first sump, where the cave was initially considered to end. This sump is 1 metre long and -2 metres deep. On the other side of the sump, the gallery continues very low and with the floor full of sand; the second sump is overcome, 12 metres long and -2 metres deep, with a low point in a descending tube of -6 metres (-18 m with respect to the entrance mouth), shortly afterwards reaching the third sump which has a length of 8 metres and a maximum depth of 2.5 metres. Once overcome, an ascending gallery continues that maintains the same dimensions and shapes as the previous stretches, then finding a very unstable descending ramp that gives way to a narrow stretch; at this point in theory we would find the fourth sump, but on the date the exploration was carried out (18-11-2017) due to the drought the passage was dry. Past this crawlway we quickly access a large chamber Sala de la Família of 11x7 metres and a height of 21 metres, making it the largest chamber of the cave. At the final part, after the chamber we find a pit of -2 metres where a new sump begins (S5). On 30-09-2018 a team of divers made up of Juanjo Gonzalez and Javier Monedero made a further push past sump number 5 and reached a new chamber “Jean Marcel Eon” where at its end a new conduit emerges that leads to a new sump, S6, pending exploration; the heavy rains at the end of the year have raised the levels making explorations impossible. The network of crawlways is located 200 metres from the entrance mouth; at this point we find on the right a small conduit that is the access to the network. This is formed by a series of rectilinear conduits with two dominant orthogonal directions, all of them of minimal sections, making their exploration very difficult. The total length of this network exceeds 400 metres. In September 2019 access is made again to try to force sump S6; the team would be made up of two divers, Juanjo González and David Martínez, which implies that logistically 4 bags must be moved for each diver; once they reached the last chamber explored the previous year Sala Jean Marcel Eon, with all the effort that this implies, on starting the exploration of S6 and at 3 metres depth they find an impenetrable laminator; after trying to clear it they decide to leave it due to the narrowness and danger it involves, since the water quickly becomes turbid with the amount of sediment it accumulates, despite the clear evidence of continuity. The rest of the team was divided into two main tasks, one to carry the material and give assistance to the diving team and the other to finish the pending work in the dry zone; thus the entire survey of the cave could be completed, including the parts that remained pending, as well as the review of all the unknowns of the crawlways, clearing some stretches such as those known as Refrigerios which had good expectations, but which finally ended in a new small stretch. The total height difference of the cave is 41 metres; this figure is obtained from the sum of the elevations (–18 and +23). The current length is 1579 metres.