Post date: Jan 12, 2009 8:19:06 PM

Stephen 'Jock' Read, Stephen 'Bus' McCullagh

(Total Trip Time 9-10 hours)

After the black lung sickness or man-flu (can it be man flu if Aileen caught it??) of the cancelled trip on the 28th it was our opportunity to go down Shannon on the 29th of January. It was my first trip in there in about 3 months but after the 15 trips I had in there last year I needed a rest. Jock and I had two objectives. The first one was to grab the charcoal detectors installed by Les, Tony, Gaelan, Eoghan and stevemuh at various strategically placed positions and, if we still felt up for it the second objective, was to do a bit of high level passage bagging.

With a combination of getting an early start (well for Jock anyway) and the fact that we had no bags to haul we managed to get down to the far end of Shannon around 1pm where we met Tony and steve investigating some of the higher chambers (See Tony's report). At that stage there was only one detector left it was quickly found and we rejoined Steve and Tony to investigate the big chamber above the roped climb down.

After an hour of getting our bearings Steve and Tony decided to head on out. Jock and I decided to get the mouldy remains of Damien's sleeping bag and investigate the large chambers beyond the campsite. This was the first time Jock was in this area so we had a good look around we can now confirm that there's no open leads in this area however if people are very keen they could do some digging at the far end. This area still needs surveying but shouldn't take too long.

We then headed out without too much faffing around. All in all a nice trip.

Bus