Sumaguing Cave is really living up to its reputation as very interesting cave. The formations inside the cave were quite impressive. Ian, my guide, has been absolutely helpful in pointing out the more dangerous parts of the cave and also pointing out the more interesting parts.
At one point of the cave he asked me to remove my footwear, since it might be too slippery for normal footwear. I was wearing my trekking sandals and I didn’t think it would be slippery for this type of footwear. Anyway, he knows the place more than I do so we left our stuff at one side. I had a little more stuff since I have camera, we left the camera bag and other stuff in it hanging from a prominent stalactite for us to retrieve later.
I was a little wary of just leaving my stuff anywhere but this is a cave, who’s going to take it? From that point on, there was a lot more clambering down limestone formations. The more impressive one is dubbed the King’s Curtain for obvious reasons. It is a huge limestone formation where water drips from the top of the “curtain” and into the pools below. To go down one will have to shimmy down the two “curtains”. Now I understand why the need to leave the footwear behind.
In another part of the cave, we went through a small hole in the wall of the cave. Ian has to leave the lamp with me while he entered the chamber then I handed it to back to him before entering it myself. To enter the hole one needs to walk backwards through the hole to make sure you enter feet first. This is essential because there is a waist deep pool inside that small chamber. The chamber was dripping wet inside and there were tons of evil looking stalactites.
I was fearing for my camera because it was dripping wet inside, I still managed to take a few photos inside before handing the camera to Ian who probably has surer footing that I have. I kind of feel bad having to hand the camera to him since he was wading in almost chest deep water (he was shorter than I am), with both of his arms raised above the cold water, one holding the lamp and the other holding my camera.
Fortunately, he didn’t trip, to my relief. He handed me back the camera for another challenge. There was another chamber where there are several pieces of thick rope hanging from the roof of the chamber. The challenge is to be able to move from rope to rope to the exit. Ian had to sacrifice his leg to serve as my stepping stone to the rope. I had to support myself against the wall of the cave chamber and moved from one rope to another. It was my first time to do something like that.
When I successfully conquered that challenge, we got out of that chamber and were back on the main trail and to the final challenge. This one has just a single piece of rope hanging from a rock on the cave wall. The challenge is to climb up the wall using that piece of rope. I braced my foot against the cave wall and started walking, I was thinking I would not be able to pull my own weight but I managed to climb up successfully too.
I felt really good having completed those series of challenges and I wasn’t really expecting something like that. I was thinking this would just be a simple tour around the cave. The addition of the wall climbing challenges surely made it much more interesting.
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