From 10 to 18 March 2023, the 3rd International Expedition to the salt caves of Mount Sedom, organized by the Israeli Speleological Association (ISA) and sponsored by the European Speleological Federation – Fédération Spéléologique Européenne and KORDA’S ropes took place.

The expedition’s main objectives were to re-survey Sedom and Peteq cave systems as the old maps were from the 80ties. Both of the caves are located on the eastern side of Mount Sedom and both caves have an outlet to the Dead Sea.

Mount Sedom is a salt diapir, about 11 km long and 2 km wide. It is located on the western side of the great rift valley, on the shores of the southern peninsula of the Dead Sea, Israel. Mt. Sedom rises about 250 m above its base (about 160 m below main sea level).

After the successful completion of the Malham mapping project the focus went to a nearby cave Sedom, which also has a huge potential to become one of the longest in the world. According to the old map from the 80ties, Sedom cave has total length of 1799 m. During the expedition, about 2.7 km were surveyed, new passages and new entrances were found (currently 9 in total) – some of them were surveyed, the others remained as an objective for future explorations. Sedom cave is an amazing and complicated maze system with galleries on different levels – in some parts more than 5.

The other object of expedition was surveying of Peteq cave as the old map contains only the main branch and the main pit with a current total length of about 200 m. After the mapping total length of the cave is 966 meters with still unmapped parts.

Read the full report.