Post date: Nov 9, 2010 12:57:33 PM

Peeps: Steve Muh, Eabha, Petie.

Time: 5.5 hours

After a rather wild friday night in the Scout Hut Gaelan Al, Eabha and I decided to retire to the Hoo to get a good nights rest before tackling the final part of the Pollahune Survey. We needn’t have bothered. Al had arranged to meet Steve Muh at 10 on Sunday morning though it was never exactly said where we’d meet up. After admiring the scenery around the Hoo for most of the morning we decided that Steve probably wasn’t going to come to meet us so we decamped to McGourty’s to see if he was waiting for us there. He was not, though we did have a good chat with Farrell McGourty himself, commenting on the weather and his lovely new pup. We eventually located Steve getting out of bed and into a fry at the Scout Hut with the Queens lads. By now it was half 12 and Al and Gaelan were expressing doubts as to whether we could get into Shannon, finish the survey and get out in time to get people to buses. In the end Steve, Eabha and I decided to go ahead with the survey plans and Al and Gaelan decided to build an SRT playground in the West Gorge for the afternoon.

After this monument to disorganisation the three of us arrived back at McGourtys and kitted up in chilly but otherwise pleasant weather. Tullyard was already rigged from the previous trip so a quick descent was made through the cave to Pollahune inlet. We worked our way upstream until we encountered the fabled Hunepot formation and realised we’d gone too far and made our way back downstream until we found the last survey station from the trip last year. After instructing Eabha on the dark art of tape measurements we set off on our surveying adventure, generally through fairly easygoing twisty canyon passage with yer typical high level diversions. We reached our time limit after two hours but decided to finish the bloody thing once and for all and carried on. After about 3 and a bit hours surveying we’d reached the main stream passage again, finishing up with a (record-breaking for the day) 8 meter leg.

We blazed a path back to the exit, running fairly close to our callout time. On arrival at the bottom of the Tullyard pitch it was apparent that it had been lashing while we were in the cave as the previous dribble coming down the pitch was a good deal larger. Steve was first up with instructions to build a dam on top for the comfort and convenience of his fellow cavers. This he did, holding back most of the water for Eabha and then releasing it as she arrived at the top in an impressive cascade. It was dammed up for me again and I prussiked up under a spatter but unfortunately, either to spite me or because the dam had filled, Steve had to release the water when I was two thirds the way up the pitch and I was given a thorough soaking. After conscientously avoiding knee deep water via awkward traverses for most of the trip it seemed unfair that I had to be subjected to a torrent of cold water down my neck just as I was about to exit the cave.

We surfaced at quarter to seven, fifteen minutes before the callout with Al. We had emerged in the midst of a storm, consisting of gale force winds, rain, hail and general unsavoury weather. At least the wind was blowing down off Cuilcagh and was pushing us towards the car. At one point I spat at ahead of me only for the wind to carry my spit parallel to the ground and land it on Eabha’s back a good 8 meters ahead of me, though I didn’t tell her this at the time. All the way back I kept thinking of the most efficent way of getting out of my gear and into clean dry clothes without getting soaked or getting frostbitten testicles but mercifully it stopped raining for 10 minutes as we changed out of our sodden gear. We eventually made contact with Al fifteen minutes past our callout time, and then proceeded to miss Eabha’s last bus home.

Petie