Post date: Oct 17, 2016 12:39:04 PM

Team:

Al

Petie

Jock

Michal

A return to bottom and survey last week’s lead. The weather as we arrived at the quarry car park was a chill wind mixed with squally showers. Not entirely miserable, but not my idea of a pleasant Sunday either. There were three of us to begin with; Petie, Al, and Jock, with Michal due to follow us up the mountain an hour or so later.

The weather was turning wetter as we arrived at the newly-named BMG Pot, and Al scurried down the entrance rift to begin the rigging. The previous week we’d rigged from a ground-anchor and a tree on the surface, this time around it made more sense to pop a bolt at the start of the 2m crawl leading to the pitch head. The pitch itself zig-zagged down with no straight drop to the floor - first it zigged under itself in a narrow rift, and then zagged back under itself again into a widening rift that Rob had entered last time around. Al put four bolts in place in total, which still resulted in a good bit of rope rub, giving an expeditionary feel to the rigging. A final 5m drop landed us into the final rift chamber.

The Hell’s Letterbox-sized chamber that Rob promised turned out to be a bit of marketing bluster - the chamber was about 12m long and 6 or 7m high and between 4 to 6m wide. A gently sloping floor of peaty soil was scattered with sheep bones, with one fine one of a lamb laid out on its side. This ended in a gravelly hole where drips from a 10m high aven above created a messy flowstone cascade down the walls. The survey was wrapped up and Al headed off up the rope. As he did so, Jock spotted some lovely mud formations in an alcove. Just as I was commenting on similar mud stalagmites in Shannon, Jock pointed out that they were hoofprints - covering every inch of a mud slope the size of a double bed, created by some unfortunate sheep frantically trying to run its way out of its cold black grave. It was pretty horrifying to look at.

Leaving this grim scene of death and futility behind we climbed out. The SUSS report stated that this cave was free-climbable, which it was, but it was a very bold climb to make without a rope. Both of us free climbed most of the way out, attached to the rope, given it was easier and safer than being on the rope the whole way up.

On the surface the miserableness of the weather had gone up a notch or two, so we decided to wrap up the day’s caving. Just as we were about to set off we spotted a yellow giant striding across the moor in the distance - Michal, who’d unfortunately failed to locate the cave. After catching up with him we walked down together. It was remarkable that Michal had agreed to go caving at all - he’d been working since six in the morning, had organised and attended a gig the previous night and had four hours sleep in the previous two days. He said that if he sat down to rest on the moor while searching for the pot, he was worried he might fall asleep.

BMG Pot is 40m long and about 20 deep, though I haven't processed the survey data yet.

Petie