La Venta - Oman Expedition

For the friends of the "La Venta Esplorazioni Geografiche" Association, a long-standing partner of Ferrino Outdoor, 2024 opened with a fascinating new expedition.

This time the destination of the trip was the Qanaf Cave, a large sinkhole that opens up at the end of a wadi draining a hydrographic basin of over 10 square kilometres on the Jabal Samhan plateau, in the province of Dhofar in southern Oman.

Here, on the invitation of the French speleologist and researcher Philippe Audrà, the La Venta association has tried to overcome the environmental and human limitations imposed until now by this cave.

Since the 1990s, Quanaf Cave has already been the scene of numerous exploratory expeditions, but these have always come to a halt near a large underground lake, where the extremely high concentration of carbon dioxide makes the air unbreathable. The wadis, in fact, are almost always dry, but during rare and exceptional rainfalls, sinkholes such as Qanaf, collect enormous volumes of water, filling up completely and collecting large quantities of organic material carried by the current. The organic material carried into the cave slowly decomposes, producing carbon dioxide and heat, creating an almost hellish environment for humans.

It was a decidedly out-of-the-ordinary challenge, which required the cavers of the La Venta Association to adopt new strategies and technologies to safely explore such an extreme location.

We asked Luca Imperio and Tullio Barnabei, long-standing members of the Association, to tell us more about the expedition to Oman, and we also took the opportunity to chat more generally about the passion and spirit of caving exploration.

Tullio, the Venta has a history of more than 30 years of great and adventurous caving explorations behind it, yet you have not hesitated to define your latest expedition to Oman as an experience 'beyond the limits'. What made this experience so special?

This going 'beyond the limits' certainly needs to be clarified. It is not so much a challenge to risk for its own sake, but rather the overcoming of a technical and exploratory limit, which we approached, as is our custom, with great caution and awareness. In Oman, we were invited by other cavers who, in their explorations, had come up against the obstacle of this cave with very high CO2 concentrations and, knowing our predisposition to take on challenges of this type, they asked us to intervene to see if we could go beyond the limit they had reached. We decided to go and see what could be done and so this first expedition was born, which was a sort of inspection, from which, however, many answers to our questions had already come.

Luca, from a technical point of view, what was special about this expedition?

The main problem to be solved was the concentration of CO2, which in these caves reaches levels of up to 5%, a good fifteen times higher than in the air we normally breathe. Practically a highly toxic atmosphere for human beings. To move in these conditions we had to experiment, adapting technologies that were not designed for caving use. We chose to adapt equipment that is normally used in the health sector and which allowed us to recover and concentrate the little oxygen present. The system proved to be quite functional, although it needs a lot of improvement. In spite of this equipment, in fact, moving and breathing down there was really crazy: it was like having a boulder on your lungs! From this experience, we set out to create a new type of concentrator that is more powerful and suitable for use in underground environments. This is our concept of going beyond the limit: experimenting, doing science and exploration... and coming back to tell about it!

Tullio, this kind of field exploration, however, is not 'simple' laboratory research: despite all the precautions, a margin of risk always remains. Inevitable, therefore, is the classic question that all explorers hear sooner or later: why go into those situations? What is it that drives the caver? Is it the love of science or is there also something else?

Everyone has their own personal answer to this question. But I would say that we at La Venta certainly have a modus operandi in common. Our goal is not to do exploration for its own sake. What we carry out are structured, interdisciplinary projects, which develop and grow over time, projects related to geology, biology, archaeology and paleontology. Starting from our experience in Oman, for example, we are working on the study of a new breathing apparatus, just as we designed a special suit to cope with the extreme climatic conditions of the Crystal Cave in Mexico. The experiences on each expedition open up the field to many different directions of study and research. In Oman, for example, due to the concentration of carbon dioxide, we had to go through 48 hours of detoxification after each descent; yet different types of animals live there without any problems, and they go in and out of the cave without any problems. The most common is the bat, a mammal just like us. How does it do it, how has it modified its physiology to adapt? These are all areas of research that open up with each step forward: each limit crossed points to a next one yet to be explored.

Luca, does this research have any practical spin-offs? Can the exploration of the underground world have a bearing on the major contemporary issues of the sustainability of our life on the planet?

With regard to the practical spin-offs of exploration and scientific research, our late friend and teacher Giovanni Badino, a speleologist and particle physicist, often reiterated that his studies in physics were apparently of no use at the moment, but he felt it was his duty to pursue them, because one day they would certainly find a concrete application. The same can be said of exploratory speleology. Down there, for example, there are precious resources for mankind, first and foremost water. Just think of a country like Oman, which also has problems with drought and access to water resources. Knowing the disposition of large underground water reserves such as the one we have explored and understanding how they could be used sustainably in the future is certainly a field of research that will have fundamental practical repercussions on the lives of millions of people. Then there is the big issue of climate change. Think of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is unfortunately still increasing today: understanding how organisms living in caves have adapted to extreme carbon dioxide conditions could one day be a great help to our own survival. In all of this, we cavers have a special role: we are not scientists, but we pave the way, we have the skills and technical capabilities to enter underground environments and collect documentation from which scientists can then develop their research.

Tullio, let's look at it from another angle: what is the beauty of caves for you?

Beyond the classic underground setting, with the stalactites, stalagmites, columns, etc., for me the fascination of caves is the unknown, what you can't see, it's this underground planet that you don't know. One of the things that fascinates me the most are underground rivers, waterfalls and lakes, because they are hidden, obscure, normally very clear and clean waters. For me that's the beauty, it's the morphology, it's these shapes carved out by water in the darkness inside the mountains.

Luca, what is the beauty that you seek over there?

For me too, the beauty I seek and find down there is that of the unknown. In this regard, I am reminded of the feeling I had many years ago during an expedition in North Vietnam: we were walking in the hall of this cave and, at a certain point, turning around, I saw that behind me there were only my footprints in the mud and in front of me nothing! I was the first one to get there, to see things that nobody had ever seen! So, if you go beyond the more obvious aspects, even beyond the marvellous formations that, in the imagination of so many, identify and exhaust the beauty of caves, you discover that there really is a whole new and amazing universe. Beneath our feet there are incredible worlds such as the Cueva de los Cristales in Naica, which Tullio mentioned: a gigantic geoid in which one moves among enormous crystals, a decidedly alien place that has no comparison on our planet. Or the caves I explored in Iran: real mountains up to 1400 metres high, made entirely of salt, into whose cavities we penetrated, admiring the most incredible formations and colours. What is even more incredible, then, is that these alien worlds are not uninhabited: several species of animals live and thrive down there, many of which are still unknown to us.

Tullio: to see beauty in the dark, in places that are often damp and cold, where you may have to lie down, crawl through mud in asphyxiated tunnels and face dangers that you can't always keep under control... Of course it is a very special aesthetic concept! What makes you appreciate such things? I mean, what ‘type of humans' are cavers?

I often jokingly say that the caver is the most dangerous animal you can find in a cave... A little more seriously, I can say that the caver is basically an eternal dreamer. You could also call them a failed researcher, in the sense that they know that they will search all their life for something that they will probably never find and, even if they do find it, in the eyes of the majority of people it will probably be of little value... But I also think that it is the very act of searching that motivates us and that constantly calls us down there. During courses, I always tell students: you will be a caver when you are no longer in a hurry and no longer want to get out of the cave. Then cavers are also a tribe. A tribe of 'weirdos'. Because, to do those things, to subject yourself to certain labours, even certain risks, you have to have motivations that are not easily found in normality. But we are very aware 'weirdos': to go down into a cave, especially when exploring, and to do it while bringing home results - apart from in one piece, of course - you have to be very aware of what you are doing and the risks you are willing to take.