Gouffre Quetzalcoalt

During the first incursions, the opening, an ordinary vertical crevice exhaling a strong current of icy air such as are found by the dozen in this sector of the massif, was largely obstructed by piled-up material and could only be entered with great difficulty. Below the vertical that immediately follows the modest porch of the entrance, the passage narrows into a thin fissure, skilfully widened with explosives to facilitate progress and opening onto a second shaft 8 metres high. Downstream, behind a constriction of the walls where a few boulders have accumulated, a widening of the gallery takes shape: passable at vault height, opening at the foot of a sinuous passage that soon turns into an unexpected forced conduit. The artery then descends a moderate slope for nearly 80 metres, then drops abruptly, the ceiling lowering after a few metres and leaving only a very small opening at ground level. The narrow neck gives way to a steep gallery, disappearing on the approach to a large chamber defended by a vertical step 3 metres high. The lamps struggle to dispel the darkness of the lair, cluttered in its central part by immense blocks of rock. Chimneys, overcome by climbing, revealed some twenty metres higher the existence of tiered crypts, linked by narrow passages.

The cave is filled at the very modest depth of 55 metres by a stalagmitic barrier blocking any passage downstream, but the topography of the place suggests an ancient connection with the galleries of the golet de la Combe des Arches. Later work made it possible to go from the dimensions indicated on the survey (55 metres of depth and 255 metres of development) to a depth of 104 metres for a development of 608 metres.

In the forced conduit line up magnificent stalactites of different proportions. In the upper parts of the great chamber gather beautiful stalagmitic flows ornamented with small gours, and curious alcoves open, harbouring a profusion of eccentric concretions of the purest calcite and coloured in places by iron oxides. The narrow passages linking the tiered crypts abound in geodes and eccentrics.

Progress requires a brief crawl beneath the lowered ceiling, then the climbing of the chimneys and the crossing of the vertical step 3 metres high. a team including Gilles Choupin, Christelle Audcnino, Thomas Rossi, Jocelin Perez, Cedric Verollet, Jacques Pion and Jean Louis Fantoli carried out the diggings and then the climbs in the great Quetzacoalt chamber on 28 August 1992.

Apart from the austere passages of the réseau de l'Alpe, rather reputed for harbouring great verticals and noisy torrents, the cave stands out from its fellows for the splendour of the landscapes it contains, adorned with superb concretions, a phenomenon deserving particular admiration in these alpine cavities so often devoid of significant crystallizations. Spurred on by the promising draught that ventilates this magnificent little network, the latest explorations led to the discovery of several side branches, alas all without any possible exits, but their discovery was not without profit: the splendour of the concretion-covered galleries and the scale of the underground chamber so close to the surface are fully enough to satisfy any caver sensitive to the bewitching charms that these strange hypogea can bestow.