site 0207

0207: Cuvía, Cueva de la Fuente de la
Riaño 30T 451386 4799619 (Datum: ETRS89. Accuracy code: M) Altitude 190m
Length 796m Vertical range: -2m +16m
Area position : Site entrance in context : Logbook search

Updated 18th April 1999; 14th May 2000; 22nd February 2001; 9th November 2003; 15th April 2008; 4th May 2009; 6th January 2011; 30th June 2018; 12th September 2019; 25th April, 5th June 2020; 9th September, 14th November 2021; 8th September 2022; 7th January 2023

The draughting entrance is above the resurgence (site 5320) and is a tight downwards squeeze into a low streamway.

   Crawling upstream soon gives way to walking in a small vadose stream passage and, by keeping to the right, a chamber is reached some 80m from the entrance.

    Just back from here on the left, is the passage which carries the draught. This has been followed in a lowering streamway for about 200m until a calcite blockage stops progress. This was excavated in the summer 2019 and the mouth of a small passage blowing a strong, very cold draught was snappered. Work continues in this constricted and damp place.
    In the summer 2021, further excavations took place with a camera-on-a-stick providing information about what lay ahead. An "armadillo casing" was also used to protect tackle sacs while being pulled along the approach to the dig. This consists of a cut-down digging barrel with thick bungee cords. (Photos of the two constructions below.) The upstream route was also resurveyed and can be seen on the 3d Survex file below, replacing the dotted line and providing a new length of 796m - an increase of 12m.

   Two routes are possible out of the main chamber. The right hand passage is walking and then a low crawl into a chamber; the left hand passage is lower, wider and contains some fine gour pools. This passage emerges in the roof of the chamber and it is possible to climb down. A couple of routes from here eventually combine in a cracked mud floor chamber which leads to 250m of walking and stooping in a well decorated passage. This ends at a low, wide bedding which, at Easter 2000, was poked out to the surface near a field of ostriches. A large flake prevents an exit. The GPS for the Ostrich Farm "entrance" is ETRS89: 30T 451173 4799728 Altitude 192m, site number 2978.
   About 80m back from the end is a well decorated alcove containing a large number of goat skeletons beneath a blocked-off surface shaft.

   The centre line data from 1980 was finally fully entered as an svx file in 2019 and the entrance position GPS'd and adjusted to give the grid reference above.

   (Dye dropped into the sink below Fuente de la Cuvia at Easter 2009 was seen in the stream crossing Quadraphenia in Cueva Hoyuca 30 hours later.)