Post date: May 17, 2012 9:35:11 AM

Well it’s only taken an excess of what must be 6+ years of dreaming about it but I finally got my head wet in an Irish Sump and no better place to do it than Marble Arch – Skreen Hill 3, especially when in the company of Al Kennedy and Paul Mackrill :-) “How long have I been wanting to this for Al?”; “Eh, all the time I’ve known you Steph”.

The aim of the trip was to dive the Skreen Hill 2 sump and have a look/poke about in the terminal boulder choke (Vicker’s Choke) in the hopes of finding a way into Pollnagollum of the Boats. A compromise and probably more realistic goal was to at least make a voice connection with Jim and Éabha who were checking out a sump on the Pollnagollum side. So off we went looking thoroughly overdressed for the “challenging” walk down Marble Arch show cave. Still to this day the comedy of peoples reactions as you walk past makes me giggle, especially their curiosity and disbelief as you pass them by and wade into the waters beyond. These were pleasantly low and we proceeded to what I vaguely remembered to be easy caving. Eh oh, Nope! that would be the oversight of a beginner diver. I thought I was being so smart getting everything stuffed into the one big bag while looking at Al with his three separate pieces but alas he deffo got the last laugh as my bag jammed again and again in the blasted crab walk (which had now become the crab thrutch) and caused me continued heartache up & down the spiral stair case :-( Lesson Learned!!

Thankfully not before long we arrived at the sump and a pleasant looking one at that too. We kitted up by the stream, myself and Paul with our pair of two’s but soon Paul was down to one as his high pressure hose made an impressive boom as it ruptured under pressure :( I’d have hated that to happen on the wrong side of a sump. My clobber included a Dragon dive harness, flippers, search reel, compass, two daggers, two little cans of air and about 10lbs of lead. So off we went, I followed Al as he fixed up the line, adding a belay in order to tighten up the traditionally, but none the less, well laid poly prop line. The sump itself was fantastic and the vis like swimming through a bottle of spud. I’d never seen anything like it before. It was so clear that Al looked like he was floating in air – what a novelty! Twas a really cool experience to watch someone swim through the middle of a cave passage, under a lovely rock arch and back up the pebble slope ahead. If only the vis was always this good. Al mentioned it was the best vis he’d ever seen in Fermanagh – must have been a woman’s good luck ;-) The sump itself was straight forward, spacious, about 20 m long and lined through the middle of a pea sized gravel floor, negating the need for buoyancy if weighted correctly, but it ended all too quickly. We surfaced what seemed moments later, elated but disappointed it ended so fast. I was cheering out loud feeling inebriated with the joy of having finally dived at home, after years of listening to all those enticing stories of Al and Artur’s.

The way on was a railway tunnel of some of the more pristine passage I’ve ever encountered. Big stream passage, untouched mud deposits, lots of pretties and piles of loose & broken boulders! Hmm, twas no mystery where these fell from. We did quite a bit of poking and snooping about trying to find any undiscovered leads and upon our travels we encountered a lovely aven on the east side of the passage, dripped in calcite, that hadn’t been documented before. Something definitely worth looking at again with a bolting kit.

Then we continued on upstream through some sections with particularly beautiful formations followed by big swimming passage. Once here there was no doubt in ones mind that this was clearly a continuation of Pollnagollum of the Boats. I swam along excited at the prospect of being able to connect the two and questioning my sanity for having left a country whose caving is still very much in its golden age of discovery. Paul was feeling as enthusiastic as me while Al gave us a tour of the significant features underground explaining parallel digging objectives and the hydrology of the Marble Arch system. We came to Vicker’s Choke and yes she was as stable as a depressed women during her time of the month.

A little way into the choke, just before it started closing down among large boulders, Paul discovered the (surprisingly obvious!) west-trending inlet discovered by Martyn Farr and marked on the survey. There was a tiny trickle of water falling over a free climbable waterfall, at the top of which was a pretty crawling passage, showing the marks of the last caver through; the ceiling was well decorated with straws. At the end there was a bit of a mud bank and the water emerged from between two moveable rounded boulders; beyond the continuation was visible for several metres and of similar size to the passage before the blockage. Definitely a promising dig, just needs a crowbar and maybe a hammer.

We gingerly proceeded as far as we could in various directions – up, down & under - trying to find a way on. We managed to clamber and squeeze our way beyond Al’s previous limit and back down into the streamway, into an area of cascading water very similar to the unstable boulder choke Al had been into on the upstream side of Pollna G. This was looking very promising, could I actually be this lucky? But alas no, the way on was collapsed in all directions so Al & I resorted back to plan B, screaming and shouting till our throats were raw.......then listening.......but there was no response :(

Getting short on time we turned around and tried to find Paul who was running about the choke and various other leads with the speed and stealthness of a racer snake. We eventually found him after following the echo of his excited giggling. He had come across a very interesting aven or high-level passage above a load of collapsed boulders – that went up for 10 m or so into a large space. Feck, if only we’d had some rigging gear or protection with us but all wasn’t to be lost, Paul and Al stood upon a large boulder and bridged themselves across the gap between the boulder, the solid wall and the drop below. I climbed up Al, then up onto Paul (as dodgy as that sounds) and had a look. “Yup lads its deffo looks like a passage alright” and it was headed right in the direction of Pollnagollum. Could this be another way on? Stay tuned to find out...!

Steph Dwyer