"Old-MGU" expedition on Zagedan 
NEW!!! You can see photos from our expedition NEW!!!
An expedition of "old-MGU" speleologists to Zagedan was hold this August (from 5 to 28). I say "old-MGU" because only two of us (Gusev and Mushenkov) are "real members of MUCC". But I can't say that others are not "MGUshniki". I think you'll agree with me. Here is our team:
Leader: A.Shelepin.
  
I. Gorina I. Latsis (child)
A.Gusev Ja. Malahovskaja
A.Guzeev A.Mushenkov
M.Vinogradova T. Nemchenko
M. Kirjakova (ex Gracheva) A. Nizovtsev
N. Kirjakov K. Rubtsov
A. Latsis O. Shul'ga
Zagedan was a new region for us, nobody from MGU have ever been there. But now it became the most perspective and, dew to it, popular region. It seems to me that everybody, who wasn't in Switzerland that time was here. During last 3 years terrible crowds of speleologists occupied plateau Fisht. I'm afraid that now they'll go to Zagedan, because the deepest cave of Russia (Gorlo Barloga, 770m) is located  now here. And it's a great luck, that Zagedan's area is much more, than the Fisht's one. Really, more than 5 groups were working in this region (Socol'niki, Barrier, Perovo and "sbornaja Sojuza on Gorlo Barloga": Vladivostok, Novosibirsk, Donetsk, Krasnojarsk, etc.) but we had not seen them, but on approaches. So you can see, that Zagedan is very interesting region.  And now about our caves. We worked on a rather small area, basically in two caves- "Podsnezhnik" and "Dorbun-tur" (they are marked by greek letters "psi" - psi-1 and psi-2). This caves were discovered by O. Tsoj in 1995. And besides, we have found and marked several new caves - from Psi-10 to psi-19. One of them, psi-14 occurred to be the second (but, it's a pity, not the upper) entrance to Podsnezhnik. 
Podsnezhnik consists, as it seems, from two parts - old, wide and dry, and new, with river ~60 l/s. The fist 100m presents itself broad and dry tilted gallery. (It looks like "Myshinyj laz" in Krestik-Turist, but not horizontal, but bend on 40 degrees. The lowest part of this cave is similar to Dorbun-tur - a lot of water, pits from black marbleized limestone. Dorbun-tur is "sportive" (as this Tanja Nemchenko has said) from the very beginning - t=+0.2 - +1C, snow even on -100m and water, maybe 80 l/s. It seems that significant part of water comes from Podsnezhnik. And according to our topo it is less than 50m from the last picket in Podsnezhnik (but not from the end of gallery!) to Dorbun-tur. We hope, that we'll connect this two caves next summer.
And now some numerical data of our expedition:
INCOME:
    
Podsnezhnik  depth -340m length 1600m
Dorbun-tur depth -275m length 900m
"virtual" system Podsnezhnik-Dorbun-tur depth -400m length 2500m
EXPENSE:
    
benzine 45 liters  
zhratva (i.e. food) 150 kg  
vine spirit  0.005 litters (!!!)  
     
TOTAL:
 everybody is happy!!!  
NEW!!! You can see photos from our expedition NEW!!!
You think it is Scandinavian fiord? No! It is Zagedan's lakes!
   
River Bol'shaja Laba
Near entranse to Psi-14
PBL in Podsnezhnik
You are welcome to visit my personal page
Andrey Mushenkov
If you have some questions and offers - write me
 back to "TURIZM"
20 XII 1997