Post date: Jul 22, 2012 10:10:43 PM

Team: Al, Petie

Time: 1.5 hours

This cave was spotted on a hike round Brookfield with Gaelan, the two Steves and Lina. Just 200m east of Harry Jacques pot a loud stream could be heard tumbling into a shakehole. Upon scrambling into the hole I spotted a descending hole and immediately began clearing loose boulders from around the edge of this. This quickly got out of hand as I just kept exposing more looseness and I seemed to be filling up the bottom of the shaft. Looking 2m to one side where the stream sank I pulled a log aside and revealed a roomy entrance that allowed me to clamber down over a boulder ruckle to the bottom of the sink, 4m down. I slid down another metre over my own stupid pile of debris into a narrow rift where the water was flowing off. This pinched off but I could see past a jammed rock into what looked like a small chamber about 2m away. I got out quickly, apprehensive about the stability of the rocks over my head.

I returned with Al of a windy Sunday. The stream was reduced to the merest of trickles. We descended into the cave, gardening the loose boulder slope as we went. This has distinct air of instability about it. The roof above is just jammed boulders. I slid down into the rift at the bottom and had a proper look at the end. Yelling produced a healthy echo, there was also a pleasingly persistent draft being sucked up out of the cave. Al suggested I toss a rock ahead into the small black void. I did so, and to my surprise, it clattered down a rift and landed in a pool of water with a splash. The tools were brought into service and the first rock at the far end was prodded down the rift. Then another. The draft picked up. Soon we had opened up a most appealing sight. We were digging in a tight rift that came into the side of a larger, more spacious shaft. After further digging at the rift floor we could see a bottom to it, about 5-6m down. Unfortunately the rift is too tight to descend, excepting the inhumanly small. The current plan is to shore up the unstable boulder slope down into the cave before attempting to dig away more of the rift floor.

After this we went on a short walk to the east of Komarov Cave to look into some of the other holes. There was a 2m drop down through boulders in the first deep one we found, the next one over was also a large and deep depression, this one seems to take a considerable stream at times. At the bottom a cave entrance beckoned, we scrambled 4m down a steep slope over loose cobbles to the end - a small choked rift with a faint draft. Quite diggable, though no human sized passage to dig into at present.

On looking in COFAC the closest description to Komarov Cave is:

Sink: H1433 3331

A big dig here resulted in a massive collapse. Very loose and wet. Chamber 5m down with choked rift for a further 3m. Water sinking in chamber under about 5m tons of surface dig fall-in.

Which seems about right, the grid ref seems to match too. So 40 years of settling has gotten us to where we are now, which seems reasonably stable - though it's previous history of collapse hardly inspires confidence when clearing out the rift beneath it...

Petie