Post date: Jul 15, 2010 5:08:57 PM

Having being directed to the entrance the previous night by Una, the lot of us (Gaelan, Eoghan, Al, Roisin, Gerri and myself) visited Ballymaglancy Cave near Cong on Monday the 12^th.

The Ballymaglancy river flows into a low cliff in nice hillocky land and starts off as a wide bedding plane. Not far inside the entrance is a magnificent slab of dark limestone on the floor absolutely covered in fossils of the highest order. One particularly impressive fossil was of a cone shaped thing about 10/15cm long with what looked like feeding fronds/arms/i’mnotapaleobiologist/tentacles reaching out from it. Right next to this was a decadent white gour cascade which ran along the east wall for all of 20 meters, glittering all the way. The cave started to narrow but at the same time the roof started to rise above us and soon we reached the first cascade. Stepping off this the walls started to become jagged, sharp shelves reaching out into the passage and sometimes bridging across. More low cascades, heaps of formations, odd helictite crystal things, a "slide" – this is a really fun cave – even the muddy bedding crawls near the end are fun! Fun fun fun. The cave however came to an end after 300/400 meters when a spot of daylight could be seen in the distance. Stepping over Martyn Farrs diveline, an easy squeeze and then up a short earth slope brought us out.

Aware that the river only flowed over the surface for a short distance Al and I went investigating the sink about 15 or 20 meters away. An obvious hole at the bottom of the cliff dropped into a tight watery passage, 15cm water and 15 cm air. I shuffled along on my back for five or six meters until I came to a duck. Being a pathetic coward I didn’t want to get water in my ear so I let Al pass me to see if it was worth it. It was. At the far side the passage opened up into a large chamber, the stream following around by a gravel bank at the edge.

It’s worth a short diversion to explain the background to Ballymaglancy 2. All I could remember from an old Irish Speleology was that the sink was a few meters of torturous wet passage to an impassable loose boulder ruckle. Given that there was no further report of the cave that I was aware of we were surprised to find ourselves in large ongoing passage. Al suggested that due to high water levels other cavers might not have been able to pass the duck. We got very excited. This was dashed however 45 seconds later when Al spotted a welly mark. We continued on anyway, not knowing where the passage was going. About 100 meters or so from the entrance the cave bedded out and then 50 meters of crawling in water led to a gurgling sump. No dive line in sight. We turned back, floating on the water and pulling ourselves along through the mud being much faster than crawling hands and knees. We met Eoghan, Roisin and Gerri at the start of the bedding plane, no sign of Gaelan however, he’d been assaulted by midges outside Ballymaglancy and had ran to a safe hideout. We trundled back out of the cave and back to the cars, finding Gealan working on his tan, proudly displaying his swollen midge bites.

Research has discovered that Ballymaglancy Resurgence Sink was dug open as far as the boulder pile in 1988 by the Galway Caving Club. I’ve also found that a 70m long cave called Pollpuisin exists just north of where Ballymaglancy 2 ends. This also has 2 sumps and has been dye traced from Ballymaglancy, opening up the possibility of a diving connection.

Peter J.