Post date: Jun 23, 2010 1:04:40 PM

Steve & Al, 3 weeks ago...

Steve - enter a witty and engaging report here: ---

We all bailed on this trip.

So what follows is a superlative account of armchair caving in the Glens of Antrim...

Bailers: Bus, Sometimes Coherent, Penguin

Our Plan was to try and bail the seemingly bailable upstream sump. With this in view we speedily caved in to it, although it being Petie's first trip into Blackburn he couldn't resist throwing a big rock down a small chossy pitch. Anyway, we got to the sump passage with the bucket relatively unscathed. I had brought my mask and went in first through the chilly duck and stuck my neb in the water to see the shape of the sump. It was rather different to my memory of it from the previous trip - longer and shallower and less like a U-bend. Steve, also in a wetsuit, joined me at the sump. Petie, in a furry, stayed dry on the other side of the duck. The water level in the duck-canal was the same as in the sump, with a lip just a tiny bit lower than the waterlevel between the sump pool and the canal. So we had to drain the canal first before bailing the sump into the canal. And so on.

We settled into this, Petie bailing the canal, then passing the bucket to Steve and me to bail the sump (while Petie was bailing the canal we made some brave and inefficient attempts with our wellies in the sump to try and speed things up, but soon put them back on). Having the thickest wetsuit (not clever) i got the choice job of reclining in the sump to fill the bucket before passing it over my head to Steve, who would then pour most of it down my neck and some of it into the canal. We worked like Trojans for a few hours, dropping the level of water in the sump pool by a good 18 inches. But there was still a bit to go and our gains started to be measured in mm each session while our shivering went up exponentially.

Eventually we called it quits and shivered out, heading downstream to the terminal choke for a warming look-see, and then out. The climbs were swiftly passed by Steve and myself, and we exited into the warm, midgeliferous air with one desire to get dried and warmed up. Ten minutes later this was accomplished and we realised that Petie hadn't joined us. An indistinct conversation down the entrance tube established that something was wrong, exactly what we couldn't make out, but it did seem as though he was still alive, or at least making noises. Changing back into a wet soggysuit didn't appeal so i just stuck my helmet back on and set off down the entrance to look for Petie. Anyway it transpired from further noises that he was now making his way up the entrance tube unaided so i didn't have to go that far. When he exited he revealed that he had been fighting a rear-guard action against a cave bear on the final pitch. His cuts and bruises bore testiment to his valour.

Al