Post date: Oct 1, 2013 12:06:20 AM

(Muh, Aileen, Bus, Claire and Jock)

~8 hours

All good caving trips start with a fry and 3 of us needed to fatten up before China. Meeting the newlyweds, Claire, Muh and Bus at Clancy's, Aileen and Bus jumped in my wagon and we followed Steve and Claire down the road to Gurteen, heading into the cave not long after 12sh. Surprisingly there was much less water at the head of the main waterfall pitch than we had encountered the week before although the weather had been wetter before this trip. So we decide not to bother equipping one of the other 2 dry pitch heads as we had planned.

At the bottom of the main entrance chamber Claire took Aileen and Muh off for a tour of the main stream way while Bus and I headed off up to get acquainted with the dig that we had left form the Sunday before. Before kicking off the dig I tried to squeeze over the top of the bridge but there wasn't much room so we started off with a few hammer sessions. Lying head first down the low slope at arm’s length the hammer bashing started to progress relatively quickly. It wasn't long before we had made enough space to be able to squeeze down and fondle the single bolder on the other side of the rock brings that blocked being able to see anything further ahead. The bolder was taking a fair bit of effort to shift but the draft adjusted significantly as it was moved from side to side so we were eager to get it shifted.

As I was scooping out some broken rock from underneath the boulder something sliced. Reversing back up to Bus with a mangled glove it looked like a couple of fingers could have been missing but thankfully it was mainly just blood and mud. There wasn't an awful lot that we could do where we were so I headed back out to the main stream why to wash the glove out and stop the bleeding. I met the other 3 at the memory stone on the way out. With a small trail of blood to follow Claire and Muh found Bus fairly quickly. Aileen kindly offered to head out with me to the waterfall. After a good clean up Aileen cut up her buff and tied it around the scratch to put an end to the gammy finger bleeding. Sealed off with a rubber glove we headed back to the dig site where the guys were making good progress.

Safe in my new supervisory role even faster progress was made and it wasn't long before Muh had completely removed the last remains of the rock bridge to make enough room to be able to get some proper leverage at the single boulder that was blocking the breeze and any glimpse of a way on. A drag tray would have been useful but not having one to hand the guys just kept filling our rope bag with mud until Bus was able to squeeze his head under the tip of a U-bend. Mummers of delight were muttered and the hole was made just about big enough to allow Aileen to push through and start digging from the other side.

And then it was so, after 5 hours of digging all 5 of us eagerly pushed beneath the U bend to the bottom of a short mud slope and on up to some very nice pretties and passage beyond with even more stunning formations and nasty 'Stals'. From here the passage opened up further and Claire was given the honors as we made careful progress through virgin country. We called it a day after about 60 or 70 meters of very nice exploration caving, stopped at the start of a low crawl at roof level. It looks like there could be several possible ways on, straight ahead form where we stopped, up a high aven just after the main decorative chamber or down in some lower level crawls.

All in all a stunning bit of caving and the to be named (Shannon Series??) on up past the 'Bloody You Tube' squeeze was born. If return visitors wouldn't mind surveying as they go and going easy (taping) past the nice stuff it would be much appreciated.