The UBSS in Eastern Europe

Subsequent to the 1963 Pyrenees expedition Society members were involved in expeditions to Czechoslovakia in 1967 and Romania in 1968.

The Romanian expedition was billed as “The Joint Universities Speleological Expedition to Rumania, 1968.” The participants came from a dozen UK institutes and included three UBSS members, one of whom, Tony Philpott, was the photographer. A copy of the published report may be found here, along with a selection of Tony’s photos and his film of the trip.

The next European venture to break new ground was to Slovenia, still part of Yugoslavia, in 1972. For a reconnaissance trip, this was reasonably successful with new ground being broken by diving, by dropping unexplored shafts and in prospecting high up in the Julian Alps. The report on this expedition can be found here.

A small party returned the following year, but at this point the Yugoslav government had forbidden access to all non-show caves to foreign visitors on security grounds. The trip still went ahead, see the report here but for obvious reasons its scope was quite limited.

In later years, members of the Society forged some friendships with Slovene cavers and visited numerous times, on holiday and to attend conferences and there has been one further expedition, in 1994. We had been directed to a plateau near Mt. Triglav which had recently emerged from permanent snow cover. The area, as this report shows, sadly did not live up to its potential.