Post date: Jun 4, 2018 3:26:56 PM

Team: Angela Prior, Joe Rathborne, Liam Woods, Sheldon Hencke, Emily Punzalan, Petie Barry

Time: 4.5 Hours

Mostly just a tourist trip as far as Sump 2. Initially a team of 6, Joe and Ange turned back at the Ducks as they didn’t have wetsuits, and Liam went with them. After Emily, Sheldon, and I reached Sump 2 we turned back and I was able to execute my ulterior motive - checking out the side passage heading west from Oxbow Inlet.

Oddly, this passage isn’t on the COFAC survey, though it was drawn on the original survey. Years ago I was in the SUI library and I found the original drawing of the Tullyhona Survey, on an A1 sheet of tracing paper. The side passage was drawn on, then scrached off with a blade. How suspicious. I’d assumed that this was because the passage was extremely well decorated and the Reyfad Group didn’t want people going in there trashing the place. I also vaguely recall mentioning this on the Shannon Group mailing list and getting a reply from Steve Bus who cryptically replied that it ended in an ‘interesting climb!’.

Leaving Emily and Sheldon behind I set off for a look myself. A scramble degenerates to a flat-out crawl, drafting strongly. The passage has a small trickle, though obviously takes a bit more water from time to time. After c.30m you emerge, surprisingly, in a large rift chamber, maybe 15m high. Climbing up a rock slope at the end, I could see a promising bolt climb at the highest point - perhaps 8m up to what looked to be an inlet passage heading west.

The main passage continued beyond the chamber, first a tall-ish sandy rift, but then twisting through a small clean-washed crawl. This reached a small drafting aven, with a 5m climb and the passage apparently continued at the top. I was about to head up but decided to go back to Emily and Sheldon since I’d only only mentioned going for a ‘quick look’. Since the passage doesn’t have a name, I’m making the executive decision to call it Cryptozoological Mystery Tour, as a counterpoint to Up the Junction’s Zoological Mystery Tour; since it’s a hidden passage; and since I spotted a few nice cave-shrimp in a pool on the way out. I explored about 80-100m in total.

So two good leads in this interesting passage, well worth a return. Conventional wisdom puts Hywel’s Horror being just under Whiskey Holes, but looking at the area map of Tullyhona in Irish Speleology 3.2, Hywel’s Horror is shown 100m away. Cryptozoological Mystery Tour is shown on this map, but doesn’t seem to be much more than a sketch (it’s missing two distinctive right-angle bends that would be shown had it been surveyed). It actually looks to be closer to Whiskey Holes. Also the passage isn't particularly well decorated, so I don't understand why it was omitted from the survey in COFAC.

- Petie