Post date: Sep 1, 2010 7:39:29 PM

Al Kennedy, Eabha Lankford, Pavel Cesnak & Stephen McCullagh

Trip Time: 9 hours

The idea was to get a reasonably early entry into the cave and dig in the rift at the end of Mistake passage.

We entered the cave around 11 am and made our way slowly down the cave to Mistake junction.

Apart from Swinger's corner, which provided the usual shenanighans, the trip in went quickly. We entered Mistake passageway through the high-level (dry) route and made our way to the dig.

The dig is situated in a high rift like passage which seems to be following a fault with extremely friable rock. The rift passage reminds me a bit of the Snake Escape with us having to dig through the tight squeezes while negotiating muddy, slippy walls.

Guarding the dig is the now infamous 'Russian Roulette' squeeze. On the way in one 'person' accidently knocked a large boulder (~40 kg) on themselves. All of us were on the dig side and it took us about half an hour to get them free. Offering to eat our way through with a spoon provided a bit of additional motivation. After the boulder was repositioned the 'person' was allowed to have a couple of cigarettes to calm their nerves.

Official Shannon policy will be amended so that there's now only two places in cave you can have a cigarette - George's Choke and 'Russian Roulette'

At the digsite we had a bit of fun with kerplunk trying to remove the boulders we left from the previous trip. After a spontaneous boulder collapse a large hole opened at the top of the pile and we were able to clamber over. Ahead we could see about another 4 metres of tight passage. At the end we found a small hole where small stones seemed to go a long way. For the next hour we engineered the small hole to be a bit bigger. The draft became quite strong.

I managed to get myself positioned so that I could peer into the way on. Below the rift there was a small chamber about 10 foot deep. Unfortunately we didn't push it as we ran out of time. The next trip at the dig will be very interesting though we do need a skinny volunteer (Steve has 'volunteered' but don't tell him yet).

On the way out we chose the wet exit to wash our gear. At 'Swinger's Corner' Eabha demonstrated her amazing acrobatic prowess never has somone made such a graceful landing...

Stephen

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(photos by Pavel)