FASTLANE & LAGANG CAVES – 4 & 5 October 2024
I was booked in to do the Sarawak Chamber, but had cancelled that as the 8k walk with a backpack didn’t sound enticing, so signed up for these two caves, then, the next day I was the only person signed up for Fruitbat Cave, and as it wasn’t feasible to run the trip with just me, I decided to tag along with another trip to these caves, but this time I’d do some of the adventure trip through the cave (bonus!).
Another longboat trip to a jetty, just 15 minutes from the Park HQ.
And a half hour walk through the jungle on a relatively flat track.
Then up a short staircase and onto the Lagang Cave boardwalk, which will take us through the cave, mostly on boardwalk.
The cave has a locked gate at the start of Lagang and at the end of Fastlane. I love the way the gate is designed to look like a spider web, the large space between the “fence” is made so that bats can easily fly through it.
The boardwalk is showing its age, and, sadly many sections were painted with a thick white paint which is now flaking off. I spent most of the next day’s trip with John B, thinking of how it needs to be scraped off and all the flakes that have already fallen to the floor, picked up somehow.
The cave is quite highly decorated.
More nice formations.
Lovely flow stone.
And yet another large flowstone, makes me wonder if there’s a large pool at the top of this one.
We now move off the boardwalk and onto a pebble path. I did see the two tourists I was with go off the track for some photos, and this started another conversation the next day with John B that the track needs some marking on the edges (not what you can see, that’s an old electric cable now not used).
Love these large formations.
More great formations.
Apparently, this is ash from a volcanic eruption thousands of years ago. The jury’s out though as to whether it’s the white band or the slightly gray band above it. Two different guides on the 4th and the 5th and they each said a different thing!
We’re now in Fastlane which is a full-on streamway, loved it.
See the way the ceiling has formed, this is indicative of a streamway passage.
More of the ceiling.
Nice shawl.
These are fossils on the wall.
Towards the end of Fastlane, more interesting formation.
A map showing the two caves, we went to the junction of the two passageways, obviously there’s much more of Lagang’s cave than we saw.
We’re now a day later, and yet another longboat ride to the jetty, this time accompanied by both John B and Marg C (ACKMA members like me but they are guru level as far as looking after caves goes). We also have a couple of Slovenians with us on the adventure trip.
This time we entered at the Lagang entrance and pretty soon we were at a section of the cave where there were what I initially thought were the glowworm tendrils, but was to find out they weren’t glowworms, very cool though about 10cm long.
A large stal, which is dripping down to create a stalagmite on the floor. Slow-moving solution over the stalagtite means that more calcite is deposited, making it fatter than normal stals from the ceiling.
These formations are called “showerheads” because the stal has a lot of narrow “holes” through them which means after rain, there’s a shower coming down from above. Because the water is fast flowing, the passages don’t have solution deposited in the passages.
We’re now in Lalang and on the “adventure” route. We’re off the formed track and its’s more squeezy than the big passageways we’ve been in up to now. The guide, at the back with the white helmet and he’s explaining some of the footpads of an animal who is often in the cave (can’t remember which animal it was).
Now we’re into full-on adventure, had to belly-crawl through this space as the formations were quite low. Not everyone was happy with this belly-crawl.
Another belly-crawl, this one not so difficult as there weren’t any formations above us. Shortly after this section, we walked about 50m and were back on the tourist track.
Off track again and we passed a small pool, crystal clear.
Shortly after the pool, a crawl (John B passing through), and after a short walk through stals, we were back on the tourist track again.
And then we were back on the boardwalk (and that awful flaking off paint).
So, I’ve seen more of these two caves that ordinarily I would have seen, but it was good going through it a second time, saw much more on the second trip, so worthwhile.
And, this was the end of our caving for the week. I’d def recommend anyone interested in caves to visit Mulu NP, I’d go back in a heartbeat and some caving friends that I know, have been there 2 or 3 times. The conference was excellent and it was good to meet cavers from overseas and hear their stories. Thanks John B for recommending that I attend the conference.