Caving Near Echternach, Luxembourg
Background
The Journey
The Location
The Rappel
The Cave
The Background
I’m staying with my sister who is in the Air Force, stationed at Ramstein, Germany. Thousands of service people from the States and other countries are stationed in this area at Air Force and Army bases, and the various services offer recreation programs so that the service people available in the nearby communities – from hiking to canoeing to hangliding to caving. Service members can take advantage of these programs – and so can their visitors from the States (as long as they sign the necessary insurance waivers.)
My sister and I arrived at the rec area a bit late and were quickly issued our gear – a one size-fits-all helmet with a small headlight on the front, and a harness which we’d use to do our rappelling.
There were nine of us (five women, four men) and two instructors. It was a “beginning cavers” trip – none of us had ever rappelled or caved before. I was the only one not in the military, and the only one not really in shape.
The Journey
We left about 3.15 pm, in an 11-passenger van. I had snagged a window-seat, and brought out my notebook with the attention of taking notes of everything we passed, for future research. We headed out on the autobahn, the A62, towards Trier, which was 84 kilometers away. As we zoomed down the autobahn I kept an eye out for the brown signs, which signified cultural or historical sites of interest, and noted them down.
The city of Trier, on the southwest border between Germany and Luxembourg, is two thousand years old, with quite a bit of Roman history. It took about an hour on the autobahn to reach Trier. We didn’t go into the city, however, but took the exit 64 towards Luxembourg.
I was looking forward to passing from Germany into Luxembourg in order to get the appropriate stamp on my passportâÂ?¦but we didn’t even have to go through customs! The formation of the European Economic Union and the adoption of the universal currency known as the Euro (pronounced Oi-ro) has done away with that. Indeed, the border station seemed to have been replaced by a large establishment called the Trucker’s Paradise, which consisted of a resting place for over-the-road truck drivers, as well as a large shopping mall with a couple of fast food places, including a Pizza Hut.
At this time we didn’t stop, but kept on going towards Echternach. The cave that we were to visit was located on the outskirts of this historic city.
The area around Echterhach is called the Muellerthal by the Germans and “Little Switzerland” in English.
None of the caves have names, and none of them are marked – so the only way to get to them is to go with someone who knows the area. (However, those caves which require one to rappel into them will doubtless be recognized by the pitons driven (permanently) into the rock above the entrance for the use of those wanting to descend into them.
We drove through the city, and within a few minutes of passing through it arrived at our initial destination – a paved road off the main drag which would turn into a pathâÂ?¦which would lead to the cave.
The Location
There was no particular parking place for people wishing to go hiking or caving in the area�there was one car already there, parked on the edge of the road. Our instructor parked on the *other edge of the road. We then began a 25-minute walk up to the cave. The instructors set a brisk pace, but my legs were already aching from my steep walk of the morning, and I found myself lagging behind (just a little bit!) The instructor noticed and, as a good instructor should, had the group pause a couple of times so I could catch up.
The path started out well, but it was obscured at times with heavy leaf fallâÂ?¦so that I’m not too sure that anyone could follow it if they weren’t familiar with it to begin with. There were several steep sections with rock steps, but several more steep sections with *no steps!
We passed by several ancient trees, and lots of interestingly-shaped boulders. I wanted to take photos of them but couldn’t take the time to do so.
And then we arrived at the entrance of the cave�which seemed little more than a slit in the ground. My sister and I stared at it and wondered between the two of us why someone would ever think that it would be worth while seeing if it was possible to slither down into it.
The Rappel
The slit into which we were to descend was set into the bottom of the sheer face of a cliff about 40 feet highâÂ?¦and it was on this cliff that we were all to do our first, practice rappel. While our lead instructor climbed the path up to the top of this cliff to set up the ropes and do various other tasks, the second instructor – who was a seasoned rock climber but a newcomer to the world of guiding beginners – showed us all how to put the rappel rope through our ACTs (air-traffic controllers, as he called them) which is what we would use to control our descent down the cliff. The ACT was in turn passed through the carabineer that was hooked onto our harness (two leg loops, and a loop around our waist).
I was the only left-hander in the group, and so I waited until last for him to show me how to do it. Each person had a chance to set up their ACT and then practice backing away from a tree (to which a rope had been tied) to get the feel of the rope. In my case, as a left-hander, I was supposed to hold the top of the rope with my right hand, just letting it slide through my fingers, and hold my left hand behind my back. It would be my left hand that would act as a ‘brake’ as I lowered myself down the face of the cliff.
The lead instructor told us to ‘trust in the harness’ and that he’d have a safety rope on us from the top, and the second instructor would have control of the rope at the bottom, so that if we slipped we “wouldn’t go anywhere.”
We all hiked up to the top of the cliff, and then the process of everyone heading down began. I waited. My sister, who had rappelled before, went down without trouble, as indeed did everyone, although a couple were quite vociferous with nervousness before doing so.
I didn’t feel particularly nervous while I waited for my turn. ButâÂ?¦when it was *my turn, my ‘doom came upon me,’ as the Lady of Shallott once said. The instructor got me roped up properly, and then I started backing towards the edge of the cliff. Right foot was to go on a piton at the very edge of the cliffâÂ?¦left foot was to simply rest on the cliff about a shoulders width apart. I got to that pointâÂ?¦and then my legs started quivering like jelly.
“I can’t do this,” I told the instructor, and he very calmly and pleasantly said, “That’s okay,” and then, “I can lower you down into the cave if you like,” and I agreed that he could do that.
So I stood on the top of the cliff while the last person started down. However, my sister would have none of this. She rushed back up the path to give me a pep-talk, saying how easy it was. And, my legs had stopped quivering. Frankly, I’d regained my composure. It had been a simple panic attack, I guess. So, I told the instructor I’d try again, and this time, uttering a few squeaks, I backed up over the edge of the cliff and started down.
It was a herky-jerky trip down the cliff. You weren’t supposed to hold onto the top of the rope with a death gripâÂ?¦but I was. The rate of descent was controlled by my back hand, and so I’d go down two steps, release the pressure of my left hand and go down a couple of feet, then go down a couple of more feet, and so on. But I made it to the bottom – studiously avoiding looking down – and felt great at the end of it.
I was the last one down, so I relaxed and got congratulations from a few people who had seen my first ‘wimp out,’ and then it was time to go into the cave itself.
In order to get into the cave, one needed to fix one’s rope through the ATC in order to rappel into the cave, then lay on one’s back, and slide sideways and down through the opening. The instructor gave each person instruction on how to get through the entrance, but no instruction as to what to expect on the other side, except that it was about 20 feet to the ground. So my sister went through, and could find no footing once she got through, and so was hanging out in space. She commented on this, an that worried me, as I thought if the descent was too technical for her, it would be too technical for me, so I decided to take the instructor up on his initial offer to lower me into the cave.
So instead of using the ATC, he just put the loop through my carabineer. I sat down, eased myself through, and then hung in space, and he lowered me down. And it was while this was happening that I really had an epiphany. Again, all the weight was taken by the harness. There was no wall to walk down – I didn’t *need to walk down a wall. It was just as easy to hang in space and lower oneself down using the rope itself – absolutely no strength was needed.
So after that experience, I didn’t have any problems with the remaining two rappels, and in fact quite enjoyed them, and would love to do rappelling again.
With caving itself I was not enchanted�I am happy to have done it once but have no wish to do it again.
The Cave
It took about two and a half hours to get through the cave – not because there were two and a half hours worth of things to see, but because it took that amount of time for everyone to rappel through the remaining two descents. For an experienced caver, the whole journey would not have taken more than 15 minutes, if that!
This came as a disappointment to my sister and myself, as we finally started realizing this. We had envisioned that we’d rappel into the cave, then walk through huge caverns with stalactites and stalagmites to look at similar to Carlsbad Caverns in the States, and then walk out. But that was not the case. The cave was only a couple of hundred years old, according to our instructor, and there really wasn’t anything to see, majestic or otherwise. The main object of the trip, therefore, was not really to do ‘caving’ but to get used to rappelling. That was fine, of course, it was just that that was not what we had been expecting.
As each person arrived at the bottom of the first descent, we found ourselves in a chamber about 20 feet long and wide, strewn with rocks. We were in the dark except for the headlamps on our helmets. White limestone gleamed wetly on the walls, and there was lots of sand on the rocks and on the ground. It was cold in the cave, but we had all been instructed to wear a sweater, so that was on problem.
Once everyone had come down, which took perhaps a half hour total, we did the next rappel. What we had to do was squeeze through a crack in the wall, slide bodily over a sand-covered rock ‘shield,’ and then into a smaller room – which only two or three people could fit into comfortably. In the floor of this room was another hole. Again, one instructor would be on top to fix our ropes to our ATC and carabineer, and the other instructor was below holding onto the line.
Again the instructor told me where to put my feet and how to start down through the opening, but then I went down without hesitation. My confidence was complete. My skill, also, of controlling the speed of descent with my left hand, was improving. I got down to the bottom without incident.
Here, once again, we had to wait for everyone else to get down. The opening for our third rappel was behind the instructor. There was an opening to the left into which people could goâÂ?¦and being deceived by one of our team members who came out of this opening saying she’d seen a vast open cavern, I and my sister went into it, following by another woman from my sister’s office.
We scraped through tight squeezes, and came to an even tighter squeeze, and there was no cavern. The woman had merely been joking!
We returned to the main room, a bit irritated, and at this point realized that there would be nothing to really ‘see’ in this cave.
The third rappel was a dawdle, and at the bottom of it each person was pointed in the right direction and told to “find our own way out,” by the second instructor. I actually didn’t care for thisâÂ?¦I expected to see – certainly not arrows defacing the cave but perhaps a temporary line, similar to what cave divers do, pointing the way out. As a beginner my rappelling confidence was quite high, but my confidence in finding my way in a bunch of pitch-black narrow spaces with only a single headlamp to light my way was not.
At this point, though, my irritation was perhaps compounded by the fact that, since I lacked the upper body strength of the guys and most of the women, I was having a hard time climbing up the steep rocks in order to get out of the cave.
Fortunately the people from my sister’s office used this as a bit of a team building – we stuck together for the most part, and when I needed a hand to help me get my short little legs up a particularly steep rock, the hand was there.
Finally we got out into the fresh air..and after the coolness of the cave it was actually pretty muggy and I divested myself of my sweater quickly. We still weren’t done with the steep climb, as we had to keep on going upwards to get to our initial starting point, where we had all left our backpacks.
There we waited for the rest of the group (we didn’t wait for them at the final climb-up point because we assumed they’d come with the instructors, as they did). I stretched out my legs and relaxed and reflected that over all I’d had a great deal of fun.
On the trip back to Ramstein we stopped at the Trucker’s Paradise. The Pizza Hut wasn’t open, not that I was hungry for that. I walked through the little shoppette and chose a selection of Belgian chocolates to celebrate having finished the caving.
Caving Notes
Luxembourg
If you’re an experienced caver, take your gear to Echternach, and ask at any of the hotels for directions to the caves. If you’re an inexperienced caver, you will not want to go unless you can go with a group of people. Caving is like scuba diving – you should go with at least one buddy to help you out in case you get in troubleâÂ?¦and always let someone else know your time table in case you somehow become trapped in a cave. (Not that I’ve ever heard of that happening in Luxembourg, but it’s only common sense.)
General caving
If you’re not afraid of heights or enclosed spaces, you should give caving a try at least once. If you’ve got short legs and not a lot of upper body strength, this will not really be a problem if you go through a beginner’s cave with a partner. If you don’t have a partner, just tell your instructor that you might need some help getting up any extremely steep rocks, and he or she will help you out – either pulling from the front or boosting from behind!
Rappelling
Rappelling is fun. I personally have no interest in going caving again (caves are different than caverns, by the way, and there are some famous caverns in Europe that you can walk through, ala Carlsbad Caverns in the States, without having to do any climbing of any kind.)
Rappelling, on the other hand, I would love to do again. As long as you’ve got a harness and good gear – and make sure that you do – then you need no strength for the task. The rope and the harness take all the weight, your arms and feet just do the guiding.
So if you’re looking for a different experience, don’t hesitate to give caving and – more importantly, rappelling – a try.
