Aucloggeen Spring, 6 August 2023

Divers: Hugh Norton, Jim Warny

Gear: 2x12L @240bar

After spending the Saturday diving Hell and Taking part in the ICRO Cliff Rescue practice I went back with Jim to his gaff where we went onto have a few pints. Luckily we ran out of cans before we were able to do too much damage to Sunday's dive plans.

First on our list for the day was to check out Aucgloggeen Spring which I had dived two weeks previously only getting as far as -5m in a shaft due to the water upwelling out of it being similar to the output of a hydro plant. The rain had been a bit less relentless in the intervening time so I was slightly hopeful that we would be able to make more progress.

Before we went to the main spring we took a quick look at the small flood rising about 200m to the East, the last time I was here the stream coming from this carried some flow but today there didn't appear to be much coming from it. A good sign. We pulled up into the Car park beside the old pumphouse and checked out the Spring. The water level looked to be a good bit lower thankfully and Jim was suitably impressed with the site and its visibility. 

I kitted up first and set off to take a look. Jim tied off my ~20m primary to a fence and handed it off to me. After a realizing I had overcompensated with my weighting I passed off what lead I had in my pockets to Jim and set off, getting some of the pondweed wrapped around me in the process.

Visibility was a good bit better than previously, about 4m. I quickly reached the -5m mark where it became obvious that rather than being a 2x2m shaft it was actually a 2m wide North - South Rift that widened to about 4m as it got deeper. Still diving straight down I reached -15m and my small reel was running out of line so I stopped and tied it off to as good a belay as I could find on the wall. I tied the main exploration reel in which then fell down straight out of sight. Following this down to -20m where the reel had settled on the floor. A good belay around a concrete brick that must have fallen in and I continued alongside the right hand wall descending down to -27m quite quickly along a rocky slope.

Here it appeared to level out and I followed the wall into a rift with dubious looking siltbanks ahead. While putting in a belay I realised that the flow had been completely lost as the silt was not clearing so I backed myself out. Once I got back into the main passage the viz cleared instantly and I noticed a eel chilling out under a rock. Then everything went pitch black. Had been only using my Scurion as it's spread is the best for the video, Clicked it back on and nothing(This later turned out to have been the battery case flooding!). Eventually threw on one of my other backup lights and continued on to the West of the passage where the flow appeared to be coming from up over a pile of rocks that was almost at the ceiling. When I tried to pass  over this the flow was very strong and I felt it was fairly restricted. I spent a few minutes moving some of the rocks out of the way to enlarge the gap. I could have pushed through it then but decided I was coming up on my thirds so decided to let Jim push on there so tied off the reel and made my way out. I noticed on the left wall my bubbles percolating up from below a massive boulder, where I had been moving the rocks was below this boulder.  Ascent was pretty uneventful other than a small slate like rock that got dislodged just hovering in the flow in front of me during my safety stop for what felt like a minute! Even in this lower flow this is still a very high flow site.

Total dive time 23min

Jim then dived in after me and didn't end up going much further than my end of line. He went up past the rocks that I had stopped at and ended up in a silty passage similar to the one that I had turned back at on my dive. He reports that that the flow is coming from a small gap in the floor underneath the pile of rocks. This would possibly need to be dug out before any further progress could be made. Due to the presence of the Large boulder this would not be for the faint-hearted.

After such a promising start it seemed the cave did not want to give up its secrets so easily. A return trip is probably warranted at some point, possibly after some winter floods which might have moved some of the rocks at the bottom around a bit. Beyond that blockage probably lies some of the finest cave diving in Ireland!

Hugh