Post date: Aug 18, 2010 8:49:13 PM

After luncheon Gaelan and I kitted up at the Hoo and began the trek to Carrickacoppan. The object of this exercise was to find Carrickacoppan 3, and clarify the brutal report in COFAC, which didn’t really say what was preventing the northern continuation of the cave. The water passing through the cave later appears as the stream in Legnabrocky way, almost 800 meters away, as proved by John Gunn. The Carrickacoppan caves are fairly broken up – First Legg Cave and Carrickacoppan 1 unite underground and rise to flow across the surface for a while, sinking into Carricacoppan 2, which ends in a choke, and then the stream continues into Carrickacoppan 3. They are found west of Pollasumera, bunched about the end of a track from the Marlbank loop.

It was raining mistily but fine otherwise. On the way we poked about in several of the holes by the track, only finding one apparently open hole, though we were put off further investigation by the presence of a sheep in the latter stages of decomposition. We reached the patch of shakeholes where the caves were and after locating the stream followed it to the hole where it sank. We found the entrance to Carricacoppan 2 fifty meters away in a largish double shakehole. I slid down into the southern entrance and went a short way underground to the other entrance where Gaelan was. We headed downstream in a fine winding hourglass passage – very similar to the Clare caves. The stream was a fairly small one, trickling along the floor, About 40 meters into the cave I found the loosish choke and I went a bit into it before it closed down. On the way back Gaelan took a high level detour. Upstream of the entrance the passage continued as before only with lots of old formations, strangely gnarled and leprous. The cave began to close down to a flat out crawl in the stream as it neared the sink but I wasn't really bothered. A fun little cave with about 100 meters of passage.

Once out we went looking for Carricacoppan 3, which was where the disappointment began. The entrance was somewhere to the north of Carrickacoppan 2 so we began to look into all the shakeholes, however no obvious entrance was forthcoming. After another check of the shakeholes Gaelan was getting disorientated and I was getting depressed so we decided to call it quits and head home.

Reading COFAC back at base I was informed that the entrance was in a small hole in the northernmost shakehole, which doesn’t really tell me anything since there were three shakeholes to the north, all in a line with small holes in their bases. Perhaps the entrance has collapsed or been filled in with debris. A look at the original survey report might clarify this. A look at Gaby's map in IS 3.2 seems to indicate that we may have been looking too far south.

Petie