Pollprughlish 9 Oct 2021

Petie Barry & Stephen McCullagh

~4 ½ hours

It was the second Saturday of the month and only two people wanted to go caving. Our plans for the day only coalesced after Petie suggested we should try exploring a recently spotted dig in Pollprughlish. This lead had been identified during a recent resurvey effort by a joint Irish / English caving trip. I hadn’t been down Pollpruglish since the infamous rescue back in 2009. On that night, I had spent several hours drilling and capping limestone at the far end of an unpleasant body sized passageway. I didn’t really fancy having a return trip, but with no better plan, I figured why not.

I picked Petie up at the bus station and drove directly to the Gortalurgy view-point. There we were greeted by an unenticing pissy-mist coming off Cuilcagh’s Eastern slopes. We changed quickly and took off across the moor towards our proposed target. On the way we scouted for Peter Bryant’s hole again (not to be confused with the better-known Peter Bryant’s Bullock Hole). I tried to mine my memory vault for landmarks but couldn’t find the entrance either – seems like something has changed up there. Calling off the second in-vain search, we strode off across the heather and bog until we came to the Pollprughlish entrance.

Petie agreed to rig. The first pitch/climb he rigged it as a rope climb; requiring awkward bridging on “trustworthy” chert. The second pitch was easily rigged off the Y-hang down to the top of the 3^rd pitch. The 3^rd pitch provided a bit of excitement for Petie when he realized he had run out of rope half way down the pitch. A hasty re-rig got us to the bottom. From the rope end looking down the rift towards the Pollnatagha connection we turned to the right and crawled through a short section into a parallel shaft. From there, a short thrutch up into a rift took us to the beginning of a wormhole sized passageway.

This wormhole passage looked to have been pushed previously, but channeling my US caving spirit, I made the executive decision to make it a bit more “American” size i.e. larger. I took the lead using a combination of the crowbar and lump hammer to dispatch the mud and chert nodules. A few meters on, the tight passage relented slightly and then closed in again to what must have been the previous end of exploration. Blocking further progress was a cluster of rock nodules. These were quickly dispensed and allowed me to squeeze head-first down into a U-tube shaped continuation. Here I was prevented from further progress. Using a one-hand press-up maneuver I backed out of the U-tube and then reversed feet first back down the wormhole passage.

Petie took his turn at the front and swiftly dealt with a couple of rock protrusions before corkscrew squeezing up into a higher rift. He made this section a bit more “American” as well. The onward passage dropped into a small room with a climb in the roof (4 m vertical and ~ 4m horizontal) and a narrow descending rift that emitted most of the air. We took turns bashing chert bands and made what a not-very-promising hole into a slightly more enticing lead. Petie slid feet first down into a second, perpendicular grotty rift; from there the only obvious lead was a simple climb into a pretty, flowstone and mud, coated chamber. No further leads were found and there was no indication where the previous air was coming from. This marked the end of our exploration and we surveyed out. The new passage (22 m) is named “American Sized Rift” (In honor of the beauty of the passage I wanted to name it American Sized Squeeze hole but was overruled). No further progress should be expected here.

Back on the surface the weather had changed. Petie and I were greeted with the most pleasant East Cuilcagh conditions I can ever remember. Almost balmy with no midges. We took the opportunity to clean gear in the Pollnatagha surface stream and made it back to the car before 4:30pm.

Stephen

Below, the survey sketch, with it's location in the survex model circled.