Imperial College Caving Club
Much like CUCC, the caving club for Cambridge University, ICCC is a collection of caving inclined misfits, most of whom are no longer students at Imperial College. We can most commonly be found upstairs in Southside bar every Tuesday night at 9:00 or by reference to the website http://union.ic.ac.uk/rcc/caving.
During term time trips are commonly run every other weekend to Yorkshire, Wales and Derbyshire, the three main caving areas in the UK. Less common are ICCC trips to the Mendip caving area on account of its excessive muddiness. Weekend trips usually entail setting out on a Friday night in a minibus to one of the aforementioned areas to stay in a hut, where we usually sample a couple of beers and play cards before settling down for the night. Breakfasts are greasy because it is important to pack as many calories in as possible in preparation for caving. Much time must be spent faffing before caving can be undertaken. This is because it is exceedingly bad luck to go underground before midday thus many ICCC Saturday trips emerge very late at night. Saturday night is invariably rowdy. Much beer is always drunk and much food eaten. Sunday trips are usually shorter to leave enough time to drive back to London.
As well as weekend trips within the country, the club usually runs a Winter tour and an Easter tour. In the past these have taken members to such glamorous locations as Mallorca and Slovakia. However, the highlight of the caving year for our club is the annual Slovenian Caving Expedition. This was started around ten years ago by a handful of dedicated PhD students. Inside Migovec Mountain in Slovenia, the club has discovered two huge caves. System Migovec, which was originally entered by Slovenian locals, has been heavily explored and surveyed by members of ICCC. Gardener's World, named after it's muddiness for the first 100 or so vertical metres is currently around 600m deep. Cave exploration on Migovec is primarily undertaken on ropes, as the caves in this area tend to go straight down in huge vertical shafts.
Anyone living near London and reading this is welcome to come caving with the club. The best time for a beginner to join would be around the beginning of the Autumn term, when we are training the next generation of caving freshers.