Post date: Sep 21, 2011 4:11:33 PM

Cavers: Aileen, Steve Bus. Time 6 hrs.

A return trip into Tullyhona to shore up the ongoing dig in the Recovery Room has been on the cards for a while. With the good weather over the 12 July period, we decided to make it our last caving trip of the week before heading back to the world of work. Steve Muh had had to go to work on Wednesday, so once more couldn’t make the trip, and unfortunately it transpired Eabha wasn’t going to make it either, as her wetsuit had also ended up making the return trip to Belfast in Muh’s car. So, Bus and I packed the cement, hammer, chisel and munchies and headed into Tullyh0na about 12pm. I had been slightly cold the last time, and was conscious that we’d be waiting for cement to dry this time, so I layered a few more thermals than normal under my wetsuit. This unfortunately made the Fenian Terror bypass very hard work, the few extra centimetres of padding meant that I’d a lot more squeezing to do than normal, still it was over with fairly quickly, and I certainly wasn’t cold by the end of it!

We made good progress through the cave and I was soon past the Straitjacket. At this point Bus spent what seemed to be a few enjoyable minutes taking revenge on the Straitjacket – he pounded it a few times with a lump hammer. I commented that he was irreversibility altering the character of the squeeze by doing so, his reply was along the lines that it wasn’t a particularly good character to begin with and could do with some alteration. Apparently the squeeze is now a ‘bit’ easier on the way in, but is still awkward, so I think the main point of the alteration was revenge.

Anyway, we quickly climbed up the Rocky Road and set about mixing the cement to stabilise the dodgy boulder. I quickly realised that we hadn’t brought anything to carry water in, so after an initial donation into the daren drum, squeezed back down to the streamway to refill my wellies with water. Bus quickly mixed up the cement and plastered it in to the crevices, while I hunted about for limestone rocks to set into the cement. Once this was accomplished, we left the cement to set and went and surveyed from the furthest point of the new extension (the small chamber past the pointy rock where I’d failed to push the awkward lead) back into the Recovery Room. Once back, we stopped for some snacks and then inspected the cement (quick drying I should probably point out at this stage). Deciding that it looked decently set, Bus started work on cleaning out the way on behind the rock, and was quickly through. I followed tentatively, as the way on was an awkward combination of tight rift, with a sharp bend to the right and some loose rocks to be wary of in the ceiling. The chamber we found ourselves in was small, with a further climb down along the left-hand wall. This led to a small chamber with a few obvious leads heading off from it. I squeezed into one, a gravel crawl with a low ceiling, and conscious of the result of the last time I’d been in this situation, asked Bus for the crowbar so I could dig the ground out before pushing it. It led to a choked down, small passage, which headed back toward the direction of the Straitjacket, so I clambered back out and we had a further nosey around. Bus located another in-filled rift along the same wall, which he set about digging out. It cleared fairly quickly, but was horrendously tight to get into, thanks to an awkward lip of rock protruding from one of the sides of the rift. Bus managed to whack a lot of it off with the lump hammer and I did an exceedingly awkward manoeuvre to get my hips over it and slide down into the passage beyond it. The rift is about 1.8m long and slopes about 40 degrees. It is filled in at the bottom with loose rocks, and to the right side of it, just past the awkward lip, a low passage is visible. It looks wet and slopes down toward the Straitjacket, but also looks like it might be accessible going the other way. Unfortunately, I couldn’t contort myself enough to get into it, the dimensions of the passage I was in made it too awkward. As it was, Bus had to get a hold on my belt and haul me back out over the offending lip of rock, as gravity being against me this time, it was proving very hard to get past. Under my own steam, I reckon it would have taken me a good 20 mins to inch my way out, but fortunately, with a helpful Bus to hand it took about 5mins.

We packed up our gear and made our way out the cave, in an ongoing trend, Bus had managed to hit his thumbnail off a rock while clearing out the rift, and it was blackening nicely by the time we started out. The Straitjacket was easier on the way out than last time, thanks to Bus’ character re-shaping. However, while going through the Fenian Terror Bypass, we both managed to gimp ourselves on the same rock, by doing the same daft thing. I popped out into the streamway and confessed to Steve that I’d taken so long to get through because I’d been pushing my bag in front of me, got it wedged, had a fight with the rock it was wedged against and in the process walloped my chin off a rock in the ceiling (I’m not sure how). He confessed to doing the exactly same thing, except he’d hit the corner of his eye off the rock. Duly beaten up, we made it through the rest of the cave without mishap, exited about 6pm, got changed and headed back to Les’ to sort out our gear, get some food and nurse our self-inflected injuries.