My first cave, by Maurizio Sagnotti

My first cave
by Maurizio Sagnotti

I discovered Spelaeology thanks to Parachutism: this was a very common thing at that time.
    It was the year 1965 and I already had devoted myself to several sports: some I practised like an amateur, others I practised in the agonistic way. So that was the time to throw myself in the air and I entered the school of parachutism of ANPDI in Rome.
    The " parachutist secretary" was a speleologist: Alberta. We suddenly felt mutual liking and she introduced me to the Speleo Club where Giorgio threw on me many stimuli to become a member of the group.
    So the president took a liking to me, maybe because I practised so many different sports, and he soon trusted me; in fact he thought that I could go down the Consolini Abyss for my first day of caving.
    I remember very well that few days later we were eating in a restaurant and Giorgio, holding a glass of wine in his hand and speaking with his baritone voice, said addressed to Alberta (she turned red): "Good, good, you've found a polysporting boy! I hope he will take a great interest in caves, I am sure he can be a strong caver."
    I became found and how!

    I really had the thought of exploring a cave since I was a teen. When I was 15 I was a Boy Scout and, with three or four madcaps, I organised a few explorations in the old quarries of gravel in locality Grottarossa, but we called them caves.
    We reached those caves with our bikes or getting on the train of North-Rome Railways, carrying all our trifles with us.
    We used a ridiculous equipment: we had carpenter nails (we thought we could put them somewhere thinking they could stick inside the rock), a hempen rope, old row-boats of the last World War that we bought at Porta Portese (a second-hand market of Rome: note of the translator), sulphur torches that we "took" from our Parish and some Adrian military helmets coming from the First World War. On my helmet I sticked with a plaster (at that time there was no adhesive tape) a little pocket torch.
    In that way we went through tunnels and underground lakes. We were only at a few ten meters from the entrance that looked very far for us, and we always felt afraid when we could not see the light of the outside. The anxiety of going further and the fear of loosing ourselves in the tunnels, or maybe get some troubles, well knowing that nobody, neither our parents nor our Scout Leader, knew where we were going, fought inside our hearts!

    Let's go back to the 1965. Although I was trained, 91 meters (that is the first pit of Consolini Abyss) are always a lot.
    Before going to sleep on Saturday night, I drunk camomile-tea and thought that if Alberta the expert and Pasquini the leader believed that I was fit for the Abyss maybe I should not worry. Anyhow I did not sleep very much.
    The next morning Alberta came late at the appointment with me and so, when we arrived at the club, the others had already left (mobile telephones did not exist in the 60s and, of course, we could not call the people at home so early on Sunday morning or we would wake up their families).
    What could we do? Alberta affirmed that surely they wouldn't go to Consolini Abyss because they were only three, but we would go there anyway to see the entrance.
    So my first spelaeological day turned into a wonderful walk on Pian della Faggeta, Mount Semprevisa, Consolini, Sella delle Salere from whom we saw a wonderful sight of the sea and then... we went at the Sora Nanna restaurant of Carpineto Romano!
    Giorgio with the other two, we knew later, went on reconnaissance in the zone of Orvinio-Scandriglia and, the next Tuesday, gave us the news of two little caves that needed to be explored and surveyed.
    The next Sunday me, Alberta and Virginio Di Lanzo went there and looked for those caves. At the end we discovered only a little horizontal cave, whose entrance was only 50 centimetres high, hidden behind a bush. Inside the cave was a little higher. I was the first to enter and, a few meters further, I discovered a piece of an human skull, the occipital bone, and I took it away so it could be examined.
    But I really wanted to try those famous ladders because everyone told me that climbing on them was tiring, and also they could wave a lot so people used to say that it was not very easy to "understand" them.
    So much I pestered that Alberta decided to go that afternoon to Pozzo di Cineto.
    Virginio was the first to go down: he stopped on a ledge where he found two mortar bombs and stayed there for one quarter of an hour. He couldn't hear my oaths I addressed to him while I was waiting all excited for my turn.
    When he came out from the pit he simply said to me that he tested his caving stove making himself some tea!
    I tied the belay rope at my waist, I slipped between the iron rods placed at the entrance of the pit and I went down the waving ladder. I suddenly found the right position and went down for 50 meters (the ladder did not reach the bottom of the pit), then I came back.
    I tried to keep the belay rope in front of me, beside me, on my back; I climbed placing into the ladder with the tip of my feet, then the heel; I finally placed one foot with its tip and the other with its heel.
    I reached the top of the pit without any pause and I wasn't out of breath : I had understood the right way to go on ladders!
    My twenty years of caving was already started!

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