, Auditorium
Since 1978, the Mulu Caves Project has been steadily exploring the caves of Gunung Mulu National Park in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Over 34 expeditions later, the project has surveyed over 435km of passage, including the Clearwater Cave System, currently the 7th longest cave in the world.
In 2025, a 10-person international team returned with the primary goal of pushing exploration deep within Clearwater Cave. To maximize time in this remote section, a team of 6 established an underground camp for 9 days with a mid-expedition resupply. Two objectives ran in parallel - completing a major climb in the Velodrome - a large chamber discovered in 2023, and looking into leads in the upper Armistice level that had been dormant since 1989.
The Velodrome climb yielded around 500m of passage, including richly decorated formations. But the defining moment came in the Armistice section, where pushing through a long-standing choke opened "Reputation", a towering 40m high fossil passage nearly 2km long, with multiple unexplored leads branching off in every direction. Together with connected passages the team surveyed over 3.4km of new cave. A return to the area is planned for the fall of 2026.
Christine Saw and Kevin Liow