Shannon, Mayfly Bolt Climbing, 12 February 2023

Team: Petie Barry, Steven Macnamara

Objective: Bolt climbing in the Mayfly Series

Duration: 9 hours

You’ll all remember how between 2016 and 2019 we all went a bit made surveying the high levels in Shannon. While pretty much everything accessible was hoovered up in this time, there was a few missing sections of high-level passage, where there must exist at least a few hundred metres of large passage. One of these sections is before the Balcony Dig, where the last section of high level passage back from this is a section we called Midway Chamber. This was for the most part a big big chamber with a crawly thrutchy section leading in a downstream direction towards Balcony Dig. This ends in a sandy bedding-plane dig, which Steve Bus always was quite keen on pursuing. But a more prospective route up into the missing high levels lay further downstream, where the stream suddenly runs down a chute into a bypassable sump, there’s a tall canyon passage off to one side which climbs up high into an inaccessible chamber. 

I’d always rated this as a very very good lead, and having recently accumulated the bits and pieces needed to undertake a bolt climb, decided this was spot to undertake my first climb. And so, I recruited Steve Muh to join me in an assault here. We reached the cave early on Sunday morning, entering the cave at a relatively early 10am, needing to be out in time for an 8pm bus back to Dublin for me. We made our way down to the end of the cave, after a near 4-year gap between Shannon trips for me. Georges was still intact, thankfully, and not long after we reached the base of the climb. This was a bit muddier and overhanging-ier than I recalled but I found a bit of wall that looked fairly clear and placed my first screws. With Muh below talking me through the process I was able to make fairly steady progress upwards in spite of the tricky conditions. After placing a screw into a large boulder solidly stuck in a mud wall, I was able to get over a lip about 6m off the ground and clear enough claggy mud off the wall to reach something of a ledge. The best way on was a bold step along this ledge onto some solid ground to the side, so I placed 2 through-bolts for a Y-hang and fixed a rope for Muh to come up and join me. 

Once Muh was up, he belayed me around the sketchy ledge and I stepped onto the base of a boulder slope rising up around the corner. Sadly this choked off in mud and boulders in all directions. At most I’d say I got about 12m off the ground. The way on appeared to be directly overhead from where I’d placed the Y-hang, where there appeared to be some shadowy black voids heading off. It looked difficult to access though, with the obvious vertical way up appearing to be made of a mud and boulder wall, and no clear and obvious route up it. The opposite wall was solid rock, but was overhanging… I’m not sure how feasible it is to reach the high level from here… 

I placed a bolt into the wall of my ledge to make safe the return to the head of the Y-hang, and after some re-arrangement of the ropes by Muh we made it down. With time being tight and no passage of note explored, we left the little extension unsurveyed. The trip out was a proper trudge - I think both of us were lacking the requisite Shannon fitness and the vigorous crawling in the day’s before cave had left us pale and wan and bereft of vigour. But a good primer for me before heading off to Mexico for the rest of the spring. 

- Petie