On May 10, the expert caver set out on a pioneering mission to explore one of the many uncharted tunnels in the world’s largest cave system. High up in the remote mountains and deep jungles of west Vietnam, near the Laotian border, rests an all too familiar sight for the 38-year-old caver: Thung Cave, today the frontier of a new discovery.
Routes and safe passage had long been charted through the famous Thung Cave. Yet at every turn, explorers noted obscure rifts and black cavities, some perched on high, beyond reach—for years these waited, taunting and beckoning them. Today, one such side quest beckoned. A long-known black hole, high on a chasm wall, was to be explored.
Mr. Dung Luu Le headed a jungle excursion from the lonely Road 20, in Quang Binh province. Up the usual path, the group ascended limestone mountains, whose bodies had been hollowed out from the insides by an underground river system.
The dizzying descent is one reason why Mr. Le’s clientele must be fit. Hanging by a line over such vast, empty air is vertigo-inducing, surely not for the frail. But it’s routine for him and his team, who drove the first anchor pins into rock and trees here, and now clipped in their ropes and abseiled with ease, entering the vast and otherworldly space.
Sunlight streamed. Mists hung like curtains. Sub-cavernous mosses carpeted the rocks. Just another day for Mr. Le and his Jungle Boss team. But not for long.
Today’s goal lies down a long-known nook, on high and out of reach. Here lies an abyssal where an underground river runs 50 feet below. For a novice caver, the climb would rack the nerves; to trace along a narrow, uneven ledge hanging precipitously on a cliff is the only way. On this initial exploration, for the team, there would be no ropes.
“That’s the only way to get there,” Mr. Le told The Epoch Times in able English. “That’s why we need to set up a safety line along the wall.”
As frontier forays go, this one was done with meticulous care. Mr. Le, a caver for nine long years, moves with confidence, following a ledge no wider than a few feet. It is neither wet nor slippery, fortunately, but their only light comes from torches on their helmets. Although the goal aims high, the abseil landed them far above the cave’s main level, on level with the black hole, into which they now plunge. The walk is direct yet perilous.
“The cave is not flat,” he said. “The main river passage is about 15 minutes down from where we were after we abseiled.”
Delving deeper into the back of the cave, torchlight soon falls on what they could not see before—nor perhaps what any human had ever seen. The sight was startling, almost dreamlike. Upon an enclosed shelf on the abyssal, a raised lake lay before them, pure and blue-green. Rolling rock formations glisten on all sides. Some seem to float on the very surface, others tower like huge wavy hills and columns.
A wildlife conservationist by training, Mr. Le at first fell short finding geological terms to explain what looks like a floating rock island, disk-like, at the lake’s center. Without base, it’s suspended from above by a jagged arm of rock and jutting elbow joint. A bridge fixes it to the cave wall. The “elbow” appears to be a strange stalagmite, but Mr. Le later learned it was actually a flowstone.
“Unlike stalagmites which are formed by water dropping from the ceiling of the cave, flowstones, known as dripstones, are formed when the water runs down walls of a cave passage,” he told the newspaper, adding that this water is rich in calcium carbonate, aragonite, and other minerals, which form deposits.
“Flowstones form both in the open air and underwater and assume a variety of forms,” he said. “Formations can look smooth and glossy, or create hanging curtains and draperies.”
This “floating” flowstone and the hanging lake itself were what inspired its name: Floating Lake.
“Wow, man!” he said. “In Thung Cave, there’s hundreds of lakes, but this lake is totally different. This lake is located on a very high area, and it’s big. It’s much bigger than the other lakes and much deeper than the other lakes.”
The team, including Mr. Le, couldn’t help themselves. The pristine, clear water made for a quenching swim after their labors, their hiking and kilometer-long spelunk. Its surface spans several hundred yards, its depth laying at over 20 feet. “It’s very cold,” Mr. Le tells the newspaper.
This was just the start for Mr. Le and his team. In the weeks that followed, they mapped out the routes and safety guidelines for tours—every inch would be planned—then drew up itineraries, planned logistics, and wrote a proposal for officials. The Quang Binh National Park People’s Committee would review. Jungle Boss has been granted exclusive access to this national treasure of caves.
A tour to Floating Lake costs about $470. It’s a multi-cave, three-day junket that ends with a blissful winddown swimming in a blue lagoon called Mada Lake surrounded by jungle. For hopeful cavers dreaming of floating stone islands, Mr. Le wants them to come prepared. The jungle trek is fraught with fallen logs and river crossings; the cave tour winds up and down and even underwater; and Floating Lake ranks “strenuous” on Jungle Boss’s difficulty scale, a 5 out of 7.
“This tour is not for people who have heart problems, high blood pressure, people who have knee problems,” he said, adding that 70 percent of his clients are foreigners. “They just love the jungle and the environment here. And the cave is just amazing.”
