Post date: Dec 30, 2010 5:14:42 PM

Date: 29th December 2010

Cavers: John Moore, Aileen Connor, Stephen (muh) Macnamara, Petie Barry, Sean (Miner) & Stephen (Bus) McCullagh

Time: 3 1/2 hrs

Digging Report:

It was a lazy start - 4 pm and we reached the cave. The plan was to start investigating potential digsites and to do a survey so as to locate the end of the cave on the surface. Muh, Miner and Petie were doing the surveying leaving JM, AC and Bus to do the digging.

Firstly the LHS of the boulder choke was invesitigated. Two places of interest were found the lowest point where the water enters the choke and a tight hole about 1m above. Unfortunately after an hour of digging, prospects were looking poor therefore it was decided to look at the other side of the choke (RHS). This side of the choke has had a bit of attention in the past and it doesn't look much more encouraging than the LHS apart from that is a faint draft which can be detected at the lowest point in the choke. As a faint draft is better than none JM, Bus and Aileen started digging in one of the abandoned digs (originally dug by Les Brown et al) with the hope of intercepting the draft further on.

In the dig the wooden shoring looks good (that is until you put your finger right through the struts) and it follows a good solid wall with a solid roof in parts. About two hours of digging took place with 2 m of progress, however it ended with us intersecting one of the other digs! This area seems as good a place to dig as any so this is where the Co0larkin dig will continue.

Stevebus

Surveying Report:

Starting at the choke we took a series of refreshingly long legs back to the surface, eventually ending up at the top of the steps into the shakehole. We hoped to survey back to the surface shakehole in order to see how it related to the choke below. It was dark by now so we realised there was no hope of surveying into the woods and hoping to come across the shakehole so we wandered off into the woods to find it and survey back to the top of the steps. We wandered about among the bushy conifers for a bit and eventually decided to try and find Co0larkin instead and then reverse our survey legs until we reached the shakehole. After a good while scrambling about in the undergrowth we got to the top of Co0larkin above the waterfall and started stringing out the tape and sighting backwards until we got to where the shakehole ought to be. We wandered off and a minute or two later Sean Miner shouted that he'd found a big hole. This is 20/30m from where the reverse legs said it should be so either we made a mistake somewhere or the shakehole doesn't lie above the choke. The shakehole itself was a bit of a dissappointment, being small, overgrown and boggy. Surveying back to the steps seemed an impossible task so we headed back through the annoying undergrowth to see how the diggers were getting on.

Petie