Post date: Aug 30, 2010 6:07:18 AM

Roisin Lindsay (R), Gaelan Elliffe (G), Una Dunahue (U) & Stephen McCullagh

Trip Time: 5 hours

This was a quick Recce trip to see what was down there; the guide book suggested that this cave had three pitches with each one rigged off naturals but being prepared we grabbed as many slings as we could plus two metal stakes and the bolting kit. It turned out that we needed them all.

The first pitch is rigged off a convenient tree and into the small entrance chamber. We used one of the stakes as the primary anchor point to get us down the pitch. The pitch itself is quite tight at the top which meant there was a small bit of roperub. Further down, the pitch opens up into a large rift. From a rigging point of view it is best not to go to the bottom but to swing away from the top to find a ledge 10 m down where you can then easily free-climb down. The rift slopes downwards from this point under the entrance waterfall to the top of a couple of easy climbs leading to a pitch with a view of a large chamber. If you traverse across this pitch you come to another hole which appears to join the same chamber. From here it looks like another traverse could gain a further pitch. Back at the first pitch I climbed down and spotted two spits for rigging a Y-hang (these are not mentioned in the guide book). From this I rigged down into the chamber which turned out to be an unstable slope leading directly to the big pitch. R, G & U joined me. From there using the previous Y-hang I abseiled down looking for rig points. With no artificial anchors obvious and all the naturals being made of dubious chert I put in a bolt about half way down the pitch to use as a deviation. The deviation got us to the bottom of the pitch with just a bit of rope rub.

R,G & U joined me. At the bottom, the rift peters out in boulder breakdown however on one side there is a small hole 3 foot up on the wall. I poked my head into it and there was another pitch (not in the guidebook). We didn't have enough rope, but fortunately by reorganising the ropes in the pitch above and grabbing the second metal stake the next pitch was rigged. The pitch is best entered backwards and the stake is placed accross the rift providing a freehang of 4 m to the floor. At the bottom a slope leads to the top of another small pitch/climb. I decided to climb down but quickly regretted this decision as the two walls are made of extremely fragile chert. Climbing down I found the terminal sump / pool. It is unclear whether this area was explored previously; it does seem pretty obvious, however the chert had no evidence of being broken by previous cavers. Looking at the survey there does seem to be a sump mentioned so it might be possible that the cave was explored in wet conditions with the bottom pitches being flooded.

On the way back out we had a look for the 'pretties' chamber and it doesn't disappoint; there were a number of 3-foot pure white stalagmites. Visitiors should resist the temptation to traverse the last bit as there isn't much on the other side and it is impossible to avoid crunching the delicate calcite.

Stephen