Martel and the Bramabiau: the chasm devouring humans
And also
The tops
A mooing ox!
Once upon a time a stream known as Bonheur (″Happiness″): its source is in the mont Aigoual.
In Camprieu, it goes inside the causse… after a 1 kilometre travel, it goes out again by a little crack and flows into a cirque.
When the water of the Bonheur is full of rain water, it goes out by the crack with a weird sound, which gave the name bramabiau, the ″mooing ox″ in Languedocian!
The story
Martel did it again!
The famous speleologist Martel discovered the chasm for the first time on June 27th and 28th 1888.
Bramabiau would cause them trouble, he and his friends: they found 7 kilometres of underground galleries!
A man-eater chasm
Martel doubted, in the beginning: was it really prudent, to make an expedition here?
Local people told him they tried expeditions, in the past, but, because of the water’s crash and the darkness, they turned back.
They even told them birds lost themselves in the chasm: they only found a little heap of feathers, at the chasm’s exit!
Not to mention all the suicides and accidents, all the bodies who disappeared inside…
Like a man named Vidal: on February 7th 1888, he vanished next to the chasm. People thought the Bramabiau was his grave… because his corpse never came back!
But when Martel came in June 1888, he was bothered by a smell of a rotten body… They discovered a man’s last remains few months after... Brr! Scary!
The exploration
But Martel didn’t lose countenance and decided to go by himself.
With 10 men (including a friend of him, Louis Armand, the one who found the famous aven Armand), he came down in the dark depths of the Bramabiau...
The exploration’s report says: they entered with their boat by the chasm’s exit. They crossed 2 underground cascades.
But at that place, a third cascade was impassable for the boat. The next day, they tried to come down the cascades, at 8AM. At 10AM, they get to the underground river.
There, they had to walk in the water. The walk was long, difficult, but they finally reached the place where their boat had stopped, the day before.
One hour after, they went out, out in the open.
The visit of Bramabiau
The visit lasts about 1 hour. Inside, the temperature is between 8°C and 10°C!
And now we enter in the chasm. After an amazing gallery, here’s the Big Aven. Then, the Martel Gallery, the Pas du Diable, the Small Maze, the Star Room…
There’s water everywhere, but don’t forget the gorgeous concretions… and the dinosaurs’ footprints!
Whoa, we feel very small, here, far from modern life… Back to a primitive era!
Water sound is everywhere, a real mooing! Inside, Martel used to talk about a real racket, a big roar.