Lëpushë is a settlement in the former Kelmend municipality, Shkodër County, in northern Albania. It is a remote area with just one road through, and is skirted all around by the boarder with Montenegro. It is situated at roughly 1,300m altitude and has deep snow from October through April. The increasingly excellent accommodation at the Alpini Hotel is gratefully used.
The Eldon Pothole Club first had a recognisance to the area in 2009 and have organised a return trip almost every year since. The exploration has concentrated on a high karst area to the south with peaks reaching over 2,500m in altitude. The ascent each morning is strenuous so it is only fitting that the caves are also extremely demanding. Typically vertical in nature and with many spacious shafts, any horizontal development is generally very tight and awkward. At least they are mostly clean. The deepest to date is Madhe Ben which was concluded in 2011 at a depth of 435m at a sump.
So far exploration in all caves has been stopped either due to snow plugs (near the entrance), too tight rifts, or sumps. All sumps are still above valley floor and may well hide exciting secrets beyond, especially as all known resurgences are far away and much lower. Although the tight nature of the known horizontal, vadose development suggests the sumps may well be on the small side.
This 2019 expedition team of 5 was to concentrate efforts in an area with a number of caves already reaching a good depth, predominantly Dragon Cave, and to hopefully give a few new leads for future trips.
The report can be found here:
In late 2011 a small core team returned to the Hill to continue pushing some of the existing leads and to search for more. Some good work was conducted in Vaso, but the main highlight of the trip was in a new cave, further down the hill. Description below from one of the team:
It’s an excellent, sporting, descending canyon passage which we surveyed down to about -120m via 8 pitches. At this point we were at the base of a shaft approx 50m high and 8m diameter. Leading off was a small rift which immediately opened out onto something rather interesting. We started to drop the pitch with the rope we had to hand. Unfortunately it was that blue knicker elastic stuff. At -40m and the end of the rope which was free-hanging in space, a pendulum was managed to gain a wall to get a bolt in. Returning the next day with more rope, we re-rigged with a 100m length of new 9mm. When this ran out, we continued with a further 35m length which got us down to a 2nd ledge – still in the same shaft remember. At this point we still could not see the bottom, so cobbled something together using that 40m length of blue crap. This reached another ledge, but not the bottom. We ran out of rope at this point. The shaft continues – draughting strongly. We must be looking at a possible (but stupid) free-hang of 450 – 500ft in an oval shaft of 6m x 10m which is now breaking into the side of a large rift. The cave entrance is lower than Vaso and we have now passed below the level of the valley floor. As it is evident that the cave does have the ability to become somewhat aqueous at times, the question is – where does it all go?
Needless to say, an excited team will hopefully be returning this summer to continue the good work.....