Crag Cave, More Shanahan Chamber Extensions - 25 October 2021

Team: Hugh Norton, Tony Seddon, Kerry Collins, Petie Barry

Time: 4.5 hours

Following on from Saturday’s discovery running north from Shanahan’s Chamber, Hugh and Tony were keen to return to the Spectacle Sump to keep exploring, in the hope of finding another overlooked passage.

Joining Hugh and Tony on the trip were myself and Kerry Collins, and while neither of us had much in the way of diving necessities such as a hood and a mask, Hugh and Tony were able to sort us out with spares. I had no wetsuit, and was planning on toughing it out in a furry, but thankfully Hugh was also able to provide me with not one but two wetsuits - a thin wetsuit and a shorty to go over it. And Tony lent me a diving vest and hood to wear. Tottering under the weight of all this neoprene I followed the others across the showcave lawn and down into the showcave entrance.

To get to Spectacle Sump, first the caver has to negotiate 100m of showcave path, then hop over the wall onto a brutal 10m crawl over clean fluffy sand. Exhausted after this trying carry, we flopped onto the cobble beach before the sump and kitted up. Tony dove first with a small pony bottle, to ensure the line was set correctly. We then followed through one by one. My mask flooded on the first attempt, but after swopping it for Hugh’s, I made it through without incident. With everyone on the far side we made our way to the junction area just before Shanahan’s Chamber, where the survey suggested Crag Quarry Passage could be found.

Hugh, leading the way, made for the most obvious location, and found a descending gravel slide at the bottom of which a muddy crawl headed off. This went on for a fair bit, with muddy crawls alternating with squeezes over and under chert blockages and through canals and ducks. It was a fun bit of passage, but the further we went the less likely it seemed that we were it Crag Quarry Passage, a dry, well-decorated, high level passage. And judging from the lack of marks in the mud, it became obvious that we were in virgin cave.

Finally the passage bifurcated, and taking the right fork, we wriggled through a narrow rift and then slid down a mud slope into a much larger passage, ending in a superb sump pool. It was a green pool, about 5m long and 2m wide, dropping away down into the blackness ahead. A healthy-looking eel was lurking in the pool too. The sump looked to be heading straight ahead, but I made a fruitless attempt to free-dive into a parallel rift anyway. It didn’t go. Hugh and Tony speculated that this sump might be the far side of a sump located at the end of Crag Quarry Passage. We headed back, taking a different route out and ending up at the left-hand fork after a short crawl. There was about 60/70m of passage found here. The name later chosen for this passage was The Great Southern Mudway

Arriving back at Shanahan’s Chamber, we spent half an hour poking about here with out finding anything new before heading back south to find Crag Quarry Passage. After a while spent gingerly picking a route between formations and delicate sediments, we found the way into this high up near the roof, a narrow slide down (again close to formations) followed by a rocky crawl, quickly reaching a T-junction. We went right and North and traveled along a well-decorated, rock strewn passage, 2-3m wide and 1-2m high. This went on for a fair while, alternating between rocky scrambles and stooping walking until a T-junction was reached. We turned left, which doubled back around on itself to head south. Reaching a chamber at the end we could slide down between muddy boulders for about 3m to reach a low muddy crawl. A bit concerned as to how easily we’d climb back up through the muddy boulders, only Hugh and myself went on from here. The crawl went a short few metres to meet a now-dry streamway, which was called the Great Northern Streamway. We followed to the left again almost immediately reaching a long sump pool on a spacious rift, with glossy black limestone all about, quite similar to the sump we’d found two hours earlier, and even with another eel, possibly the same one spotted before.

At the far end the sump looked deep and long, but Hugh stuck his arm under the wall and could feel an airspace. He vanished out of sight under the water, and a few seconds later his hand re-appeared, flailing wildly, so it seemed. I grabbed his hand and yanked him out. ‘It goes! There’s a passage heading off on the far side! I was beckoning for you to come through!”

Quickly we were both through the short sump. The way on was a scramble up a short mud slope, reaching a junction. I turned right, and reached a large and fairly impenetrable looking choke after a few metres. I returned to the junction to find Hugh wriggling back trough a muddy crawl. “There’s two boulders blocking the way on, but there’s a big chamber just beyond them”

I grabbed the only tool we had, a bolting hammer and wriggled forward the 3m to the obstruction. There was two smallish boulders here, loose, but locked in on themselves. After a minute or two of rocking and manipulating the top boulder I was able to get it out and trundle it backwards out of the way. We could then slide forward into the chamber. To the left was a large sump pool, while to the right a rising passage over boulders narrowed to a rift, which then dropped vertically to a sump pool 3/4m below. Between these two sump pools was a further sump, clear and green and still like all the rest. All around the rock was black and smooth, like Kilkenny marble, in places rippled and marbled with white calcite. Wherever it wasn’t liberally covered in mud it was very beautiful.

We were running fairly tight on time at this point to get out of the showcave, so after savouring the find for all of 2 minutes we turned tail and exited. Kerry and Tony we found in the top chamber, and the mucky climb up through the boulders turned out to be fairly straightforward. Our exit was fairly uneventful (aside from the loss of Kerry’s headlamp in the sump), and we exited before the showcave shut.

Total amount found at the end of the Great Northern Streamway was about 25m, so the day’s haul was just under 100m of new stuff. Quite a good return given the relative ease of getting there.

Petie