Post date: Aug 10, 2011 4:28:23 PM

Cavers: Steve Bus, Al

Trip time: 4 hours

Brought in 3x 1.5m lengths of scaffolding, and a spanner.

I dug away the base of the aven slope to slide into the small tube. It becomes even more blocked after a body length or so, and can be seen to continue in the same direction for 3 m.

Steve climbed the aven which is beside the rift dig, finding a snoopy loop here and also that it connects with the rift dig lower down. Only prospects lie upwards in some dodgy hanging death, including a 'half mini sized boulder' perched in an inlet. No way down again to the main passage.

Blocked aven checked, this still looks unpromising but i noted later that the '94 survey shows dotted lines continuing beyond the blockage here.

Spent some time digging out a low phreatic tube in the south wall of the main passage, just downstream of 'L'. There was a little gap above a mud-gravel-vegetation fill. A draught increased as we progressed and we could hear the sound of a stream. After an hour or so we reached a corner, probably the limit of the passage on the survey (the longer of the two southward trending passages). Our theory was that we would intersect the stream which sinks at the prominent corner before the final length of main passage, and bypass all the horribleness via a new streamway.

We took a break and had a few pieces of gritty KitKat, the remains of 3 that had been carried in with the tools. Then climbed an aven at the end of the dashed passage leading north between 'K' and 'L'.

Returning to the dig, Steve managed to push around the corner where the gap above the fill increased, and began wormholing his way. After a body length we swapped, and i continued to squeeze to the streamway, meeting it at a T junction. To my amusement, the streamway ran from right to left, which was unexpected since if it came from the sink in the passage it should come from the left. It poured into a small sump. This at least would allow a space to turn, so Steve came to the junction while i wriggled on up the streamway. After a few more body lengths another T junction was reached with a pool, the water coming from the left. After a soaking in the pool i discovered that this was the end of our big new extension, all 20 grotty metres. I shuffled back, we turned, and left. We postulate a connection from the pool at the end of Bus' Holiday to the static pool just off the main passage.

We have re-warmed to the idea of continuing the rift dig, although it will need more than a hammer and chisel. Alternatively, the route might go through the blocked aven?

An extract from the '94 survey showing the end of the main passage

A sketch of the end