Bulmer Cavern

Bulmer Cave entrance room and the first pit, New Zealand. A caver stands near the right edge of the photo.
A caver descends the first pitch inside Bulmer Cavern's main entrance.

Bulmer Cavern is New Zealand's longest cave system, running for 74.3 km (46.2 mi)[1] through Mount Owen in the Tasman region of the northwest South Island.[2] John Patterson discovered the cave on New Year's Day 1984, by dropping a rock down and counting the seconds until it reached the bottom.

Bulmer Cavern was the location of a major cave rescue effort in 1998, when it took 80 cavers several days to extract another caver who had fallen and broken his jaw deep in the cavern.[3]

  1. ^ "Cave statistics". New Zealand Speleological Society. Archived from the original on 16 January 2024. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
  2. ^ Caving in New Zealand (from Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand)
  3. ^ Caving equipment and culture from Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand)