Post date: Jul 14, 2019 9:40:45 PM

Team: Veronkia Schroeder, Emily Punzalan, Paul ‘Pole’ McCarron, Petie Barry.

Time: 9 hours

Aim: Climb Turtletime, shift old digging gear out of the cave if possible.

Last March Emily, Adam and I found a short high-level passage in Mayfly Series. This ended at a climb rising about 7m up into what looked like a chamber, but this would have involved climbing some very dodgy boulders to reach. It looked however as if it might be possible to climb around the worst of this by placing a few bolts to aid climb up and over them. Prospects were to find maybe 100m of passage filling in the gap between the high levels of Midway chamber and Fionn McCumhaill’s Boulder Store. We called it Turtletime.

Now the proud owner of a drill and some rock-screws, it was time to put them to good use. Our plan for the day was to push Turtletime, and if there was time left over, move some old digging gear out of the cave. Arriving at the Naked Turtle we climbed up to Turtletime. The climb was pretty much as I remembered it, a nasty stack of large boulders on a ledge with a slightly exposed vertical chimney of 4m above it. My plan was to avoid stepping on the dodgy stuff by placing a bolt in a large stable boulder to the left, and then climb up using a few bolts for protection. Out came the bolting gear, and I began drilling he first hole. Immediately the drill began making worrying noises, and after drilling less than 1cm of a 6mm hole it gave up. Despite being under the impression that I’d charged both batteries during the week, clearly I'd cocked up somewhere and ended up bring a dead battery into the cave. To compound this, since I was expecting to only have to drill two it three holes, I'd brought only one battery. So no more drill.

This was pretty frustrating, but I had a go at the climb anyway, climbing up to a slippery ledge about 3m off the floor. However there was no way of doing the climb without taking a huge leap of faith and striding on to the top of the nasty stack of boulders, so I climbed back down.

The objective of the trip then moved to doing a clean-up. There's many bits of old digging gear about the cave that need be removed. So we headed off down the cave until we reached The Bridge of Kazad-Dum. Here there was a coiled rope of about 20m length. Back up the passage a bit we found a large steel poking bar and a 1m length of scaff on a ledge. These we carried back through the Balcony Dig. At the Balcony Dig we picked up two drag trays and a load of old digging rope and slings. We also pulled out the lino from the dig. Old and brittle, this was folded over and it snapped neatly into small sheets. Emily bagged up about a third of this to take out, and the rest was stacked at the start of the dig. There's still several lengths of timber and a saw here to be removed.

Half way along Mayfly we stopped so I could install a handline at the climb up to Midway Chamber. This is a fairly easy climb up, but the return is bit sketchy, so I installed a short length of knotted rope. A short time later we reached the Naked Turtle, where we'd ditched our gear. Since I was carrying a large steel poking bar, I decided to go back up to Turtletime and see if I could do any gardening that might make the climb doable. With Veronika's help I got back up to the slippery ledge and gave the big boulders a good roughing up with the bar. These were certainly mobile, but they didn't look like they were going to collapse downwards any time soon, and seemed safe to stand on. All the same I still really didn't fancy the climb.

Beyond these boulders however there was a black space - a passage perhaps? As a last hope I climbed back down and checked underneath the teetering stack of boulders. There was a 2m wriggle under some sketchy stuff, then a rising cleft between boulders and the wall. After clearing some boulders I very gingerly thrutched up for about 3m to emerge in a bouldery passage. On the left was a window out into the main climb, but to the right an open passage led off. I scrambled along this for about 6m, when it emerged into the foot of a huge passage 10m wide by 5m tall, steeply rising into the distance 20 or 30 m away. It was a wonderful sight! I roared to Veronika to go back and get the surveying gear, and to bring up Emily and Paul.

While the troops were being mustered, I strode off for an explore, romping through a wonderful 50m of big sandy passage, reaching a broad chamber. When everyone was assembled at the breakthrough point we continued past my previous limit, along a wide hands and knees crawl in sand, reaching a sand funnel. This we crossed, and the passage got much lower. I forced myself down about 10m of flat-out crawl over sandy mud before the way in became too small. This was the exploration over, more or less.

We surveyed back out, racking up about 120m of passage. Turtletime is quite like the high-level passages found around Camp Camp, being broad, sandy and undulating. The passage is over 20m wide at one point, although this is mostly flat-out bedding crawl. It’s mostly sand-floored, and in several places there are lovely pits where water drops have punched neat holes down through the sand, ringed with miniature sand-mites. The place is a sedimentologists dream, with sand and mud sediments all over the place. Very glad I went back for a second look - it redeemed what otherwise would have been a disappointing trip. It’s earned an exclamation mark at the end of its name - Turtletime!

After packing up our stuff we carried on out of the cave. The drag trays were left at the far side of George's, the poking bar and the scaff bar were left inside the scaffolded chamber at the start of the choke. On the way out Emily ditched the 20m rope at Mistake Junction, and I left my 15m rope at Stationmaster, in preparation for a push there later in the year. A fairly active 9 hour trip, we were all pretty wrecked by the time we reached the surface - and what a surface! The last of us surfaced in time to see the glowing red sun set over Truskmore, the sky a rich blue. A satisfying end to a productive trip.

Petie