Post date: Jan 26, 2010 10:22:54 AM

Surveying, filming and some waterway engineering

Cavers: Aileen Cónnór, Steve Bus, Steve Muh, Rónán O'Ceallacháin, Tony Furnell, Artur Kozlowski.

Time Underground: Around 30 hours

Cavers: Aileen Cónnór, Steve Bus, Steve Muh, Rónán O'Ceallacháin, Tony Furnell, Artur Kozlowski.

We entered the cave around 11.30am on Saturday morning, with the intention of heading to the Easter Extension to finish exploring the remaining leads and to complete the survey to the 'Just Try Me' Sump. On the way in, Steve Bus and I deviated from the main group to drop off camping gear and food supplies at Camp Camp. We met up with everyone in the Snake Escape and made our ever-pleasant way through that lovely bit of passage to the Starlight Aven. Steve Muh and Steve Bus got to work on finishing their bolt-climb up the Aven at the near end of the chamber, while the rest of us headed on through the Serpent's Curse. Artur and I spent considerable time not doing very much while Tony got into his gimp suit and Rónán slagged him off about it (simultaneously filming the process). When kitting-up and slagging were duly completed, we started surveying. We only got a few stations done before Steve Bus and Steve Muh caught up with us; it transpired that their bolt-climb led to a solution pocket. Shortly enough we came to the lovely duck which required nearly full emersion for a few seconds. Steve Bus reckoned it could be drained down / widened and duly attempted to do this, with pretty unsuccessful results. Tony (all gimped up and bone dry because of it), Artur and Steve Bus decided to take the plunge, so to speak, and headed on through the water. Tony got the unenviable pleasure of lying in the water to take the readings, but he was wearing a drysuit, so sympathy was limited. Steve Muh decided to head on through to help the guys out (plus he was bored) and took over my task of writing the survey notes. Since I wasn't too keen to get soaking wet and freezing cold again in the line of Shannon-duty (if someone wants to dive the Garvaghy Road Sump, they can count me out of the portering trip), I happily passed the task over to him. Rónán and I then set about widening the stream to try and bring down the level of water in the duck, with rather more success than Steve Bus. Admittedly, we spent a lot more time at it.

We finished up before the guys finished off their surveying on the far side of the duck. So, being a bit bored I climbed up to a high-level opening we'd spotted over the duck. It was a bit of a tight climb up, followed by some tight squeezing through meandering passage, followed by some crawling, a tight squeeze round to the left (a bit of digging was required first), then a tight squeeze on straight (more digging required). The passage then widened out to the right, and dropped slightly into an in-filled floor. The way on was on the left hand side (as you're facing when you drop down) of the chamber, under a section of the in-fill and was (of course) tight. The passage then sloped up slightly and a lot of digging out of in-fill was required to get through a tight constriction. The passage then dead-ended to the left, in what looked like a fairly substantial and (let's not forget) tight boulder collapse. I made my way back out to find Steve Bus attempting to make his way in to see where I'd got to. He decided against going on to the end of the passage, as possible rib-loss might have been needed for him to get through. We made our way back down to the main streamway and waited for rest of the lads to come back through the duck.

The next stop on our itinerary was the Baptismal Font, at the bottom of the Midnight Mass Pitch, so our trusty gimp (aka Tony) could go a-swimming round the corner and tell us if I had indeed managed to find another blasted sump. We deposited Tony in the water and waited for the outcome, which unfortunately turned out to be that it was another blasted sump [Although a damned impressive one! The chamber is approximately cathedral-sized (30 m length x 15 m width) and the pool is of unknown depth (if it's similar to ceiling height, then around 15 m) and definitely connected to a water system beneath, because the water had a new dark peaty hue, to match the current stream colouration. -TF]. I'm now considering leasing my sump-finding services out to caver divers. Tony shouted back a few rough survey estimates for us before making his way out of the water. We all made our way back up the pitch, where Steve Muh, Steve Bus and Tony stayed to do some bolt-placing to improve the rig, while the rest of us headed back to the campsite. We had some grub, waited for Tony and the Steves to arrive back, then gave them some grub and had a few hours well-deserved sleep.

On Sunday we tidied up the campsite and pulled out a lot of the foodstuffs and various bits and bobs that had accumulated there. This unfortunately meant that our bags were just as heavy on the way out as on the way in, which seems sort of karmically unfair, but we made decent enough time and were out by about 5pm.

Aileen