Mistake Passage, 6 Mar 2016
Post date: Apr 6, 2016 9:45:50 PM
Stephen Macnamara, Claire Dunphy, Aileen Connor, Rob Mulraney, Róisín Lindsay. 8 hours.
Steve Bus was supposed to be joining us from the US but last minute work commitments prevented this. However we did have Róisín from London, who is arguably even better.
The plan was to survey from the high level digface in Mistake to the boulder choke at stream level, to find the relative positions. We had the usual fun at Swingers' Corner - the people who fell in will remain unnamed. Once we got to the end of Mistake, we split up - Claire and I to do the surveying using DistoX & PDA, and the others to start digging.
The survey started from the last point on the official Shannon survey (about 15m into the boulder choke), and went back downsteam and up the bank towards the high level. It's a grim enough passage to survey - sharp, tight and muddy in places - but we eventually reached them at the upper digface.
They had made a couple of metres' progress into a tightening space and were on their way out when we met them. We continued on to finish the survey up to the very pointy end, and also catch the small bit of passage 20m back from the current digface.
The survey is useful, and shows the digface to be directly above the start of the stream level boulder choke. There is still a good distance to go before we get the same upstream penetration as the stream level way does (30m at least?).The draughting dig a little way back from the current digface seems to be going in a strange direction but may be worth some attention.Time was getting on, and by the time all of us were out it was quite late. I sprinted ahead but spent at least 15 minutes trying to get a phone signal - so it wasn't surprising when we learnt that a rescue had been in its early stages...Treated to a fantastic view of the Northern Lights on the way back down the motorway.Steve.Survey drawn in cave using DistoX and exported directly from PDA.