Post date: Nov 23, 2017 11:07:18 PM

Team: Al, Petie

Time: 4hours-ish.

Aim: To get into Niger Rift and find out what the hell was at the end of the cave.

After tagging along up to Fermanagh with Hugh and the UCD cavers with some vaugely defined plans to go surveying in Pollasumera on my own, I was fortunate enough that Al was willing to join me in searching for The Lost Streamway of the Yorkshire Ramblers Club. Pollasumera is an interesting cave - more interesting than most give it credit for. The description and survey in COFAC are very poor - the survey is grade 4 for the main passage and then just a mess of grade one scribblings. I’d been to Pollasumera three times before and still wasn’t sure how all the old reports tied together. Most intriguingly of all the report from the Yorkshire Ramblers’s 1959 trip mentioned reaching a streamway at the very bottom of the cave, which gave little indication of how it ended or where it went. The ICC then tried to find this passage in the 1970, but failed for some reason or another. I’d tried to find the way into this from the north once but failed when the only obvious passage was found to be choked. There was however a pitch into the passage from the south, which was still accessible.

Al picked me up from the Hoo on Saturday morning and we made our way to the cave. Al had never been far into Pollasumera, not out of sight of daylight anyhow. I had been here a few times, once with Artur and Ian Wilton-Jones when we’d reached the head of the pitch into Niger Rift. We also found Plug Hole sump on this occasion, which Artur later dived, finding it went nowhere in particular.

After a long damp spell there was a healthy stream sinking in the cave, and as we followed the stream into the cave it went on much further than I'd seen it before. There was fresh foam all about the place, and the usual bits of flood debris wedged in ominous places. Eventually the stream sank in a cobble floored lake and we continued in the dry towards Ramblers Rift. Before we entered Ramblers the most obvious route carried me into a choked rift, marked by what looked like a huge hairball - actually a lump of peat (take note). Backing up we found Ramblers Rift. This is a crawling/stooping rift heads south and ends in the roomy Leeds Chamber. Just as you come into the chamber there's a horizontal slot in the wall about 2m up, which is the way into Niger rift. Here you pass through an awkward tight L-shaped tube and pop into a parallel rift, heading back north, climb up a boulder slope and reach the head of a 6m pitch. Al put in two spits to drop this. Surprisingly there was already a spit here - a bit rusty and full of dirt but probably usable if we’d had something to clean it out. I’ve no idea when it was placed since I wasn’t aware of anyone having dropped the pitch before.

At the bottom of the pitch the rift continued off to the north, and I spotted another pitch dropping down beneath us. I caught up with Al who’d headed off down the rift as far as an unusual (and sketchy) scree slope made up of large rounded sandstone cobbles, ground to a white finish by the water that rushes up in flood from an arch at the bottom. We clambered down this very gingerly for about 2m and into a chamber with two ways on. There was a tight climb dropping down to a pool of water to one side but straight ahead to the north led to a drafting zig-zag rift. At the second zag I tried and failed to contort myself into the ongoing passage and reversed to give Al a try. After an initial failed attempt he picked up a big cobble and used it to smash a flake off the bottom of the squeeze, and thus managed to wriggle through. Just beyond this he encountered the huge hairball we’d met on the way in through the main passage, and thus established a new circuit. After Al wriggled back to me we headed off to go down the tight climb. This led after 4m to a sump. The passage continued beyond this as a 10m high rift head back south, again parallel with Ramblers and Niger Rifts, and climbing up and getting muddier until a rubbishy choke could be seen ahead. This was apparently close to the surface and seemed to be a flood sink as there was leaves everywhere and the mud was obviously washed from above.

We headed back to the foot of the pitch and took a look at the next pitch beneath it. There was a series of ominously jammed boulders at the head of this. Al pulled over the rope from the pitch above and carefully climbed down this attached to the rope. At the bottom he was able to climb down another 3m and could see into a crawl going off for 10m. We decided to leave this for another time as we were surveying and it looked like it might go on for a bit. We surveyed back as far as Leeds Chamber before heading out. Passing by the hairball I decided to try the squeeze and see if I could get through into Niger Rift without resorting to the pitch. However it’s clear that I won’t be getting my 6’3’’ frame around this bend without a lot of capping. The pitch it is.

Back in Dublin I read up all the old reports I could find and tried to make sense of it all. I’m pretty sure there was a third way into Niger Rift which was used by both the YRC and the ICC as it’s the only way their reports make sense. The ICC clearly got into Niger Rift somewhere between the pitch and the Scree Slope, and the grade one surveys seem to confirm this. Also, the Hairball squeeze that Al got through would have been more or less impassable before he widened it out.

The sump appears to dry out in dry weather because a grade 1 passage is shown heading off from it’s location on the map, and there is a vague mention of ‘ending in tight rifts’. More interesting is the final pitch that Al climbed down - this is not on the survey and the YRC report make it clear that this is the way to the lost streamway - the ICC didn’t go down it as they didn’t trust the boulders at the top. The YRC claimed that this descended for 30m before meeting the streamway. Probably best to go back after a drought.

- Petie