CLEARWATER & WIND CAVES – Mulu NP, Sarawak, East Malaysia – 1 October 2024
I’d already been into these two caves on my “adventure” trip, but my anxiety level, knowing that I had to do 8k of cave (instead of my anticipated 4.8k) was so high that I pretty much didn’t see anything. So, instead of having a rest day, I decided to do the Conference field trip through the tourist caves. Who would have thought I’d enjoy a tourist cave as much as I did?
The first cave we went into was Wind Cave (which was the route we took to do Clearwater Connection.
The beginning of the tourist track, note the ceiling, a gazillion years ago, this would have been a streamway and the roof would have been eroded by water.
The “daylight hole”. When we did this on the adventure trip, when we had walked for about an hour (by then off the tourist track), we could look back and still see this daylight hole, that’s how big the cave is.
Looking ahead at the tourist track. There isn’t any lighting in this cave (or Clearwater).
Lots of formations high up in the cave.
Very skinny stals from the floor.
I didn’t notice any of these when I was through this area the first time.
Looking from where I was on the tourist boardwalk through stalls to others on the boardwalk 50m away.
Stals and rock fall area. It’s amazing when you think of what it would have taken to build the tourist boardwalk.
This looks like a void, but it’s actually rock, looks like an animal.
As a “wild caver”, I see voids like this and just want to go off track and explore them!
On the way out, just love this passageway.
The entrance to Clearwater.
The tourist track down to the river (which is where I exited on the adventure trip). Note the daylight hole above.
Looking down at where I exited, the track goes right down to the river.
Looking up at the daylight hole.
Looking back at the boardwalk – amazing amount of infrastructure.
As this chamber was so big, there wasn’t that much formation that we could see … walking back out to the entrance/exit. When on the adventure trip, I was so tired, I didn’t take in any of this part of Clearwater.
This was only a 1/2 day field trip, but I saw so much that I’d missed a few days ago on the adventure trip. I would definitely recommend doing these two tourist trips if anyone goes to Mulu, and since I’ve now recovered from the adventure trip, if I went back to Mulu, the Clearwater Connection trip would be a “must” for me.