If one is already fed up with election stress, going caving is a good idea – down there, no campaign messages will catch up with you. Perhaps similar reasons led that group of friends toward the quiet underground world when they set off for an underground adventure tour in the Mátyás-hegy Cave on Friday afternoon.
At 13:55, one member of the group made a wrong move while squeezing through a narrow passage in the Toldy-branch; the sudden exertion at an awkward angle resulted in a shoulder injury. The cave guide immediately recognized that the 56-year-old man would not be able to leave the cave on his own. He began protecting the casulty against hypothermia and alerted the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service.
Within an hour of the alert, we were on site, by the injured person. Our cave rescue doctor examined the man and, apart from the shoulder injury, found his vital signs to be stable. After immobilizing the injured limb and relieving his pain, we began transporting him to the surface in a specialized cave rescue stretcher.
The accident occurred near the Nagy-chamber of the Toldy-branch, in a section where the passage height does not allow an upright posture; in some places even crawling on all fours is impossible. This section also includes a flat, segmented stretch, so until the first constriction we had to remove the composite ribs that stiffen the base of the stretcher. After reinstalling them, the stretcher could proceed toward the Színház-chamber.
The last constriction before the Színház-chamber is difficult to pass even without injury, and particularly challenging with a stretcher. The first attempt to pass through was unsuccessful, but on the second attempt, with more delicate maneuvering, it worked. Moving a stretcher through narrow passages requires the precise coordination of many small movements by several people. In such situations, one rescuer at the front and one at the rear guide the stretcher while lying down and crawling, while the pulling force is provided by rescuers positioned outside the constrictions using a hauling rope.
From the Színház-chamber to the entrance the route is easier; the only significant obstacle is the approximately 12-meter-deep shaft leading to the entrance, where we normally use a fixed ladder. Here we set up a counterweight hauling system and a z-rig system for extraction. The casualty reached the surface at 20:00, where an ambulance unit was waiting; he was transported to János Hospital for further examination and treatment. We hope he did not suffer a serious injury and that we will see him again soon in good health.
Thirty cave rescuers took part in the operation; in addition to members of the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service, six nearby members of the Bakony Cave Rescue Service also assisted. Special thanks to the four-member Cave Kidz caving team, who, instead of their planned underground trip, helped on the spot with transporting our equipment.
The Mátyás-hegy Cave is part of Hungary’s longest cave system, the Pál-völgy Cave System, with a total passage length of about 32 kilometers. Exploration of the Toldy-branch took place around 1965, when a group of students from Toldy Ferenc High School, through dedicated and lengthy work, discovered and mapped several hundred meters of new passages. In caving folklore, there is a recurring theory that the Toldy branch is so narrow because it was dug out by children, who shaped the passages to their own size..
This year, the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service celebrates the 65th anniversary of its founding, and we are organizing several programs and meetings to mark the occasion. One such event will be next Saturday, April 18, at the Earth Day program of the Danube–Ipoly National Park Directorate, where we warmly welcome all interested adults for a talk, children for games, and everyone to our traditional afternoon rescue demonstration in the doline in front of the Pál-völgy Cave, at the Cave Rescue tent.
For some, the excitement of today did not end with the successful rescue or packing the equipment back into storage. On his way home from the depot, our incident commander came upon a road accident on the Árpád Bridge overpass, where a car had fallen off the overpass right in front of him. Within moments he was at the victim’s side and began resuscitating the seriously injured person until the ambulance and firefighters arrived.
Photos: dr. Gergely Ambrus, Zoltán Tóth