Post date: Jul 22, 2014 9:51:50 PM

Saturday July 19th - Jock, Eoghan, Aileen, Bus, Rob, Michal

A late start from Belfast meant that I was running a couple of hours behind everyone else who had already gathered at the rescue store for Saturday’s practice. Muh had texted to let me know that I could find everyone somewhere in or around series 1 up on Largy. I arrived at the car park in Glenade by around half 12, navigation across the moor proved to be much easier than usual thanks to a proliferation of marker poles left for any late arrivals. Both of the ICRO land rovers also appeared to have made rather impressive progress along the quad track up the moor.

Around 15 folk were on site and well anchored up to an excellent wee traverse rig across the top off the Pollnaswithin South rift. After a number of bodies had been lowered and raised up and down the Pollnaswithin shaft we cleaned up and took most of the gear back to the land drovers by 5 o’clock. It was a nice warm evening and a few folk had a bit more energy to expend so Aileen and Michal took themselves off to rig Pollnaswithin North further up series one. Having never actually visited the bottom of anything along series one I also headed back up to have a look.

While Bus, Rocky, Rob, Michal, Eoghan and I loitered at the top of Pollnaswithin North waiting for Aileen to rig, Rocky asked if I had ever paid a visit to the adjoining Pollfaffin the next hole up from Pollnaswithin North. Pollfaffin was supposed to be a 7 metre free climb down to a gravel floor that looped back down under the entrance climb. Dropping down the faffin entrance climb I noticed a bit of a fresh breeze but couldn’t quite figure out where this was coming from. After a bit of hoaking at the bottom of the main entrance climb I spotted a tight gravelly slot dropping down for a few meters on the right. The slot was blocked by a smallish gravel rock arch. The gravel arch was within kicking distance and disintegrated fairly quickly after about 15 minutes of persuasion from the end of my wellyboot. Beyond the dispatched gravel arch the rift seemed to open out into a small chamber but there were still a couple of protruding rock nodules that were just a bit too out of my range at feet length for shifting. Knowing that Michal had bigger and longer legs than me I asked if he could do the honours and after a couple of kicks Michal shifted a key piece of rock to open up just about enough space to allow me to contort myself through after a good 10 minutes of cursing. There was enough room on the other side of the squeeze for a sit down and breather but the draft was strong and 2 meters further on round to the right I was greeted by a ~4 meter easy down climb to the head of tightish looking 15 meter rift climb. Getting excited I called back up to Rob and Michal who were still busying themselves trying to enlarge the gravel squeeze a bit further. While the lads dug I dropped the first boulder down the rift and off into the abyss.. boom… double boom.. fuck yeah! The second boom was fairly exciting as it sounded like we were at the head of a 50 – 60 odd meter pitch head.

Excitement levels increased and Rob managed to push through the squeeze to confim that I wasn't making things up, however a lack of tools meant that we were struggling to make the squeeze large enough for Michal’s slightly larger frame. We considered nicking Aileen’s ground anchors from the top of Pollnaswithin North to use as a crow bar but given that she was still on the other end of rope in we decided better of it. Once Aileen returned to the surface Eoghan and I took the drill and 60 meters of rope and quickly headed back into the breakthrough. I placed an initial bolt at the top of the rift and climbed down for 10 meters followed by Bus and Eoghan who had decided to free climb down above and below me to the top of the next void in the rift. From here I placed 2 more bolts in good limestone on either side of the rift. This allowed for a good Y hang placement to enable further progress for another 10 meters down the narrow rift before the pitch opened up into a massive chamber with a stunning shaft of day light entering from high and far off in the distance. I dropped for another 10 meters to a ledge and placed one last bolt for a re-belay to take the rope away for the ledge. Conscious of a growing queue of cavers waiting patiently above me and knowing that Muh and Claire were missing out back at the store we decided to call it a day and headed back up to the surface. Back on top we agreed that we must have dropped into the opposite side of the main Pollrunda chamber further on up series 1, so a plan was hatched to see if we could see about pulling off a through trip for the following day.

Sunday July 20^th - Jock, Eoghan, Muh, Claire, Aileen, Bus, Rob, Michal, Rocky, Barry, James, Emmi

Sunday morning saw cavers aplenty assemble in Clancy’s from 9-12. Bus and Aileen had the earliest start and opted for the 9am fry as they needed some extra time to drive the whole way up to the Largy car park to complain about ‘forgotten’ SRT kits, before driving back to the rescue store and then back to Largy in time for the de-rig. My 11am Clancy’s fry with the Queens lads somehow managed to get me to the limit of the previous days explorations ahead of everyone else. Muh and Claire offered to have a go at the more awkward Runda rigging. Upon reaching my final bolt from the day before I realised that I literally had less than 1 meter of rope to spare, no knot in the end of the rope and another 15 meters to go!! My jitters abated at the sight of head torches off in the distance at the top of the main Runda pitch head.. after much whopping it was clear that the through trip was on. I threw a second rope on my final bolt and linked the two separate ropes with a sling to make sure everything was a bit more joined up. It wasn’t too long before a gaggle of cavers were amassing at the bottom of Runda. Eoghan, myself and Bus decided to free climb to the bottom of the final Runda pitch for no particular reason other than to rip the piss out of each other. A low scalloped bedding plane crawl was pushed to flat out dig at the other side of the final pot. While folk were milling about at the top of the final pitch head I decided that I’d better opt for glory and hopped on Muh’s Runda ropes ‘to save on any queuing’ and not long after the through trip was complete.

All in all a fantastic piece of caving that may well prove to be a Largy ‘Classic’. I’ve decided to call the new connection “Seanathair Rift" as I had blown off my Grandad’s anniversary mass to go caving and seem to be having a good run of luck this weather so I figured that he must approve of our efforts. A return trip is needed to survey and resin bolt in anticipation of the caving masses descending upon the newest, deepest and most well-travelled through trip in the whole of Sligo and Leitrim :)