Post date: Apr 13, 2019 3:46:50 PM
Stephen Macnamara and Claire Dunphy. Approx 5 hours
After a gap of over 2 years, we finally returned to our scaffolding project in Poll Keeran. We managed to acquire some scaffolding and brought up 7 pieces (3 large and 4 small) and about a dozen connectors.
The entrance climb down seemed relatively unchanged and it looks like nothing has changed. We left the scaffolding pieces in the first big chamber and continued on down to see what the rest of the cave looked like. However on climbing down the scaffolding into the next big chamber we noticed that a medium sized rock had fallen from the ceiling and was precariously balancing against two other rocks. With the use of some slings we manged to manoeuvre the rock into a safe position. We placed two pieces of scaffolding in the climb down just above this area. We then went down to the final chamber where we removed some large loose boulders from the floor and placed in a piece of scaffolding against the far wall, near the wall that we had built last time we were down here. From here we can see down about 4m vertically and it seems to be more stable at the bottom and possibly going into some form of bedding plane. Next time will have to get down there to check it out.
We had some incense sticks with us to try and determine if there was any draught anywhere. However even though we tried them in a few different locations throughout the cave, it wasn’t very conclusive.
We left 7 pieces of scaffolding and 10 connectors in the cave for future use. Next time we return we hope to climb down the last section and hopefully the digging will commence.
Claire.