Source de Male Brigue

This description concerns the cave once the water of the first sump has been drained. Normally, the visit is quick, with the pool 2 – 3 metres below the slippery entrance. The cave begins with a very steep forced conduit cluttered with blocks from the surface. After a bend, at -6m, the gallery widens and descends towards the South. Everywhere the rock is bare and shows fine corrosion forms and a black patina of the loveliest effect. A few steps and potholes announce the bottom at -13.5m, a passage doubled on the right.

A more spacious part appears, accessible by two passages. On the right, a fine decorated conduit rises towards the West and ends at +8m against an earthy fill; it splits shortly before and finishes in a narrow laminar passage. This part is fairly close to the surface but still too far to consider opening another entrance (see section).

On the left, a wide but low and sloping gallery runs due South. The floor is occupied by a shallow pool that ends 9 metres further on against a vault. On the right side, two rising passages join and continue as a narrow laminar passage that opens onto a rising passage that can be followed for a few metres (+5m) and two shafts onto the pool, which continues as a narrow flooded laminar passage that cannot be pumped or dived.

At the outlet of the first of the two passages of the more spacious part, note the presence of a very fragile black cup in relief on the rock; it is doubtless a fossil exposed by corrosion.

We then go up the stream that flows in a wide rising laminar passage inclined at 35°; it quickly reaches more than 8 metres in width but is only a few decimetres high, which makes progress arduous. On reaching the level of the entrance, the water comes from a small crawl, the overflow of a pool.

We are in fact coming out of the sump that has been named « Siphon du Sar mou » in tribute to one of the pillars of CDS 11 who will certainly recognize himself; in any case, we recognized him and we thank him for having given us quite unintentionally the opportunity to name numerous underground passages.