Team: Petie Barry, Peter Ward
Time: 3 hours
A sunday trip to get started on bolting Badger Pot. It had been raining hard on Friday night, and despite Saturday being dry, I was also curious to see how wet or dry the cave would be, as that would determine how accessible the cave might be for further trips this winter.
Reaching the cave, the Fenagh stream was quite audible in the distance. In Badger itself there was small stream flowing into the entrance, and at the bottom of the splashy entrance climb there was a merry little stream bubbling it’s way down the entrance crawl, which we’d never seen before. After getting down on our bellies we reached the bends. Here there was about 3 inches of water sitting in the right-hand bend, as well as fresh foam up the walls. After clearing out a few scoops of gravel the bend was passable again I reversed around to the top of the pitch to see how things looked. This looked dryish, (most of the water seeps into the floor of the crawl and reappears from a crack at the bottom). While bolting the pitch was feasible I was initially a bit unsure of what to do here. We were both already soaked to the skin, and I was concerned about keeping the drill dry in such a wet passage, but the water seemed fairly warm, and the forecast settled, so we got on with the job of hauling the rope and rigging gear to the head of the first pitch. This was rigged as a Y-hang easily enough, with lots of nice limestone available. It’s not a free-hang, but that’s not necessary as you keep your legs against the wall the whole way down and up. At the bottom of the pitch we made our way down the 5m climb, now with a stream of water coming down your neck for added challenge. The twisty crawl leading from here to the big pitch was worse than I remembered, quite awkward trying to keep the drill bag out of the pools of water in the floor.
At the big pitch I started off by tying off the rope on an obvious (but skinny) chert bridge across the passage. I then drilled the only obvious piece of limestone for a rock screw, but after less than two inches of progress I hit chert and the drill stopped going forward. I tried another hole a few inches away with the same effect, and finally a third that went in a fair way before hitting chert. I tried a screw anyway, but only a few twists from the end it bottomed out, so the hole wasn’t deep enough. This screw was better than nothing though, so I clipped a crab into the swiveling hangar and advanced towards the pitch head. There was a handy natural through the chert at the lip, so guessing that three iffy anchors added up to one good one I was comfortable enough standing out over the pitch to look for something more solid to rig the pitch proper. The pitch itself was quite wet looking, with water thrown a fair way out into the pitch. After smashing some chert off the walls I exposed some decent looking limestone. A few blows of the hammer and it sounded good, so I started drilling. Unfortunately the hammer action of the drillbit shattered the rock. Another good spot below this ran into chert after a short distance. There was a few patches of limestone further away but I decided not the drill them, thinking that perhaps it might be better if I try to place spits rather than the much deeper rock screws. There’s an option of a much higher placement in the roof via an exposed traverse, but It’s unclear if there’s enough good limestone for a Y-hang.
We turned here as I had a bus to catch, and reached the surface an hour later. Notes:
The amount of chert around the pitch head is a bit maddening - there's almost no limestone at all!
It was worth seeing what this cave is like during wetter conditions. Today seemed like it was pretty average for the winter season, though obviously it gets much wetter after a downpour.
We were quickly soaked, in the entrance crawl but thankfully it was fairly warm water so we weren’t completely miserable. Doing this cave later in the year in colder water might be a wetsuit job.
The two hangars on the first pitch were left in.
Petie