Post date: May 8, 2017 7:48:38 PM

Team: Éabha Lankford, Rowena Sheen, Becks Kelly, Petie Barry, Rob Mulraney, Michal Spiegal

Plan: Camping trip to survey and photograph in St Patrick’s Extension

Time: 32 hours

A trip to survey the high-level bits in St Patrick’s Extension, and for Rob to take photographs of this fine passage, never adequately photographed. This was to be the first camping trip into Shannon in some time, and the first trip that we knew of beyond Georges Choke in 3/4 years. Only Éabha had camped underground before, and only she and myself had been beyond Georges, so it was to be a new experience for most of us.

We went underground at 10:30, sunny and blustery on the surface. After a long dry spell the stream in JCP was a dismal trickle, but there was still a nice bit of water coming into the system at Pollahune and at Mistake, so not quite drought conditions. This was the first trip that we knew of that went beyond Georges Choke in 3/4 years, so it was a relief to find Georges still in good nick. It was also a relief that Michal made it through, possibly the largest individual to have made it through thus far. Since there was several newbies coming this way, on the way down I made sure to do the usual tour-guide thing and point out all the famous landmarks that Shannon is famous for - Les’s Wine Cellar, the Turnip Patch, Aileen’s Pebble, the Haunted Cat, Lady Gaga’s Climb, and the ‘Sandbank that looks like Garret Fitzgerald’. They were enthralled.

Camp Camp was reached after about six hours, we cooked a slap-up dinner before packing up and setting off for the evening activities. We all journeyed down towards the Terminal Sump together, before splitting up - Petie, Éabha and Michal to go surveying, and Rob, Rowena, and Becks to go photographing.

The surveyor’s plan was to start by surveying Ten Years Hard Labour and then whatever high-level bits we encountered along the way upstream. I’d hoped we could go to the sump and then survey in and upstream direction, but just before leaving Dublin I’d noticed that the 'to-be-surveyed' spreadsheet on the Shannon Group website mentioned that the terminal sump was inaccessible due to a collapse near the sump. I wasn’t entirely convinced this was the case since no-one had ever mentioned this before but crawling towards the sump we indeed found the way on blocked by a boulder collapse. It might have been possible to wriggle through this in the stream, but we had no interest in doing this. Instead we headed back upstream to find the upper entrance to Ten Years Hard Labour. Frustratingly, this failed to materialise, despite several sweeps of the passage. Any possible crawl near stream level was just a short oxbow to the stream. We climbed up high where the passage is shown exiting the main streamway on the survey, but found only virgin mud slopes climbing 8 or 10m up to the roof of the passage.

Rather than waste any more time looking for this phantom passage we headed upstream towards a series of large chambers previously explored and surveyed, but in need of re-survey. The climb-up to this was easily found and we entered Daylight Chamber, a large, wide, sand-floored chamber. A climb down and some boulder scrambling led up into the stomping Tidemark Chamber, about 15m wide, about 1m high at one side and sloping down to about 5/6m high at the other. All the way along a series of huge sandy funnels led to drops of about 10-15m down to the streamway. A few huge legs got us to Orange Hall, which ends in a gaping 15m drop back down to the streamway. Leaving an obvious cairn on a ledge we journeyed back down to the streamway and eventually spotted our cairn above us and shot a tie-in leg. 215m of passage surveyed in this section.

Further upstream we found the steep climb-up to Bat Chamber but given that it was almost midnight, enthusiasm for making the climb up was limited. Instead we made our way back towards the campsite high-level series and headed to the downstream end where there a chamber to be surveyed. Here you squeeze up through boulders to arrive into the bottom of a big sand funnel. At the top a flat-out crawl through amazing fluffy white sand leads into a low extension with a smell and sound connection to the campsite. On the way back out of the crawl Michal found a short crowbar buried deep in the sand, now back at camp. 80m of passage here.

Back at camp we met the photo group, ate our instant-noodle-chilli-con-carne/vegetable-korma-tabasco-sauce concoction and then tried a selection of whiskies sitting in plastic bottles at camp. There was 250ml of Tullamore Dew and the same amount of some unknown burbon sitting at camp. Becks brough two naggin’s worth of Jameson and Rowena brought a naggin of Powers. We weren’t short of whiskey. With Éabha and Rowena safely banished outside the tent, we went to bed a little after 2am.

We rose again at 9:30, and while breakfast was being prepared Michal, Éabha and myself surveyed the section from the top of the handline climb up from the stream, past the campsite and on in to the long, low sandy chamber-passage beyond. This is another fantastic bit of passage with the same powdery white glittering sand everywhere. It has been surveyed before, in 2010, but apparently not drawn for some reason, so there was no harm in resurveying it. This took about half an hour to survey 115m of passage.

Breakfast consisted of everything we hadn’t eaten by then, which made for some odd flavour combinations. We were on the road by 12:30, and made it to the gloriously sunny surface by 6:30. And what a surface! After 32 hours underground everything was almost hallucinogenicly bright and the colours wonderfully intense. It was time to stop worrying about the impending callout and time to start soaking up some rays while waiting for everyone to make it up the pitch and onto the surface. Happy days.

Closing remarks: A few small bits aside, Bat Chamber is the main bit of passage left to be surveyed in St Patrick’s Extension. As for Ten Years Hard Labour, I’m not sure what the story is there. Possibly we missed it, possibly it’s filled in/entrance collapsed… Reading back over Tony’s trip report from 2008 he does mention the possibility that bits of it could collapse and block it up… I'm in two minds about going back to search again. Another camping trip might happen in July to knock off these remaining sections of high-level passage and take more photographs. Also, despite an intensive search, Tony’s Bivi bag was not found. Hopefully we can now close this sad chapter in the Shannon Group’s history.

- Petie