Post date: Feb 10, 2010 10:41:47 AM

Present: Steve Bus, Tony Furnell, Artur Kozlowski, Steve Muh, Earlene Armstrong (sort of)

After a quiet night at the pub, something kept gnawing at us in the morning as we tried to decide what to do... oh yes, it was Artur! Persuading us to return to Carrickbeg -- I think he still wanted to get his flippers wet :-)

So given that we still had access to the tools, the scaff, the people (well, half the people from the previous day) it did seem like a worthwhile idea to make the most out of the couple of days' dry (and frickin freezing) weather. Artur, Stevemuh and I went back to the cave, while Stevebus and Earlene pansied off for a walk or something, and we got straight down to business. Pushing on past the ex-squeeze, I reached my previous limit amidst boulders, but this time it didn't look quite as dodgy. Any boulders that you're in direct contact with appear to be sound; the first sign of dodginess for me being a ceiling on the left apparently built only of fist-sized rocks. Some careful shoring here would be advantageous, but for the time being there's no need to touch it so I headed on past.

Just after this is an upward squeeze into yesterday's "black hole", which turned out to be a small chamber between large boulders. Looking back at the squeeze I realised that while one side is a massive, well-settled boulder, the other side is a rock the size of, say, a large duck, which appears to be balanced between roof and floor while holding back an extensive pile of small loose rocks, which in turn appear to be miraculously holding up a much bigger boulder. Not a pretty sight when it's your way out. This looks to be our first major shoring/gardening task; I looked at it for a while before squeezing into the other side of the chamber, with a solid floor and beneath a solid wall/ceiling on the left... from the second part of the chamber it was evident that the wall on the right is in fact an enormous boulder in mid-lean, with nothing underneath it. So this would be the second major obstacle.

As Stevemuh joined me, to prove that the chamber almost fits two people, I planted as many small rocks I could find into the space under the leaning troll. Next trip, some cement here and perhaps a wooden chock would be worthwhile. While Steve examined the loose rubble pile and the possibility of removing the offending stone while still in the squeeze, I ventured on around the corner. The next section of passage is boulder-filled again, but this time more open. The ceiling looked like it might be ok, but required some closer inspection. Unfortunately the floor was the next thing to move, so I retreated again. It might still be the case that the ceiling is reasonably sound, and that the floor just needs a bit more traffic to make it settle -- but before going back I'd want some shoring done on the leaning troll, the rubble pile, and the loose ceiling beforehand!

Good points of note here: looking to the far end of this section of passage (only 3-4 metres), there is a solid fluted wall, with water running along the floor at its base. I think that once the shoring is done and we are through this passage, the stream passage is very close, potentially even starting here. I filmed a video in the passage which shows the space well, it's too big to upload here. Back at the boulder chamber, Steve headed back throught he squeeze to report back to Artur and I placed two scaff bars to begin shoring loose slope; These will help hold back the big stuff at least, but a few smaller crossbars would be good to shore up the rubble pile... maybe even some cement here too.

Steve Bus arrived as we were exiting and went in to take a look; plans were made for a return trip to do some preparatory shoring and to pull out the offending rock with a rope.... a fairly long one!

Fat Tony