Post date: May 9, 2009 12:51:16 PM

Arthur, Al, Emma and Jock.

Surprisingly we managed to get in for our first trip to Blackburn on Saturday. I was expecting it to be full of water but the river was completely dry the whole way down from the main upstream waterfall pool. Its took us about and hour to dig out the last years flood debris before breaking into the rebirth-esq leftward trending tube that leads to the initial large chamber.

We had a nosey round some of the upstream rifts and pushed down stream to a small stream way and eventual boulder collapse. I'm assuming this boulder collapse can be bypassed via the rifts close to it on the right or further upstream on the left. However I had to leave early with Emma to get rid of the of some Friday beer that was stuck in my throat (not good) so I didn't get a chance for a proper nosey.

I was surprised by how generally dry the system seemed to be. Al and Arthur poked around at the choke for a while probably wondering why I hadn't returned with the crowbar. In total we were in for about 2 hours. All in all a really beautiful and very unique caving experience.

Afterwards we went up for a 'poke' around in the main upstream water fall sink. The intention was to see if there was any obvious diving potential from the large pool at the head of the dry stream way. The pool is not so large now as the removal of a couple of boulders where the water appeared to skink on the edge of the pool lead to a surreal collapse of the dry stream way under out feet. This also dropped the water level of the pool by a couple of feet. I felt quite bad about this as it is very picturesque and I was worried in case it was too noticeable and pissing off the very friendly local land owners. We filled it back in as best we could and the pool appeared to be damming up again. Next flood will probably wash gravel back into the gaps and hopefully put everything back close to the way it was. I suspect if we had moved a couple more boulders we could easily have drained well over 4 feet out of the pool if not emptied it completely. The flow of the water out of the pool after a minor disturbance was seriously strong - possibly implying passage?

Also mind numbing cold after the swimming meant that we forgot to block the freshly dug Blackburn entrance again. I'll try to get up again some evening this week as I suspect all the mud and leaf debris will wash straight into the initial tube and could make getting back in again more awkward?

jock