Post date: Nov 11, 2013 7:39:55 PM

7 November 2013

Cavers: Brian McGavin, Shane McKinley, Stephen Frawley

Trip time: 4 hours

After a few digging trips into Polltullyvaragh over the last few months we had managed to widen the area where Shane had started digging downwards so that there was now standing room, the floor on the left as you go in is solid rock, but we were able to keep digging on the right hand side and on our last trip we had dug nearly 1m down and Frawley had opened a small hole and there was a drop below us. After some woops of joy we decided to beat a hasty retreat until we were able to come back and put in some anchors to stop us falling if it did suddenly go from under us.

A few weeks passed until we were able to organise another trip, but Frawley eventually picked me up around 4 pm and we headed off to meet up with Shane for a few minutes and grab some tools. A few minutes turned into an hour and some tea and chats before Shane decided to join us and off we went.

In the week or two previously there had been a lot of rain and this was evident by pools of water in the overflow gully and a steady stream coming out of the storm drain, that hadn't been there on my last visit. But also in the dig itself there was flood debris in the roof, so contrary to what Al had hoped the mound of mud doesn't stop water getting in, with water even getting past the 2nd mound, to partially fill in our hole from the last day with branches and one of our digging buckets. But back to work, myself and Shane both put in a bolt each above the drop to create a Y-hang and then started getting to work digging out the hole and making it wider, while Frawley put in a spit farther back to create a traverse into where we were working. After a while Frawley got bored of standing around outside and asked could he start digging, so feeling a bit tired we let him at it and he started digging straight down and before long the hole was opening and Frawley lifted out a fair sized rock to reveal the drop properly, it went down nearly a metre til it narrowed into a rift, but there were still some rocks hanging from the mudbank into this drop. So I started working at the mudbank taking away great chunks so that I could get the 2 main rocks out of our way. There was a slight problem though, we were nearing our callout, so Shane went back to the car to extend it by an hour, we had digging fever!

The rocks we were trying to get out were too big and heavy to lift out, especially since they were lodged in the roof of the mud bank and we had no way to safely lift them up, so we ended up having to knock them into the hole, but unfortunately they blocked the rift and I couldn't get them to move as I lacked the space to maneuver proper. But not to worry our expert digging tool Shane came to the rescue heading head first into the hole with a prybar with me holding his legs, (don't worry, he was also attached to rope) and after a few minutes managed to turn the rocks and get them out of our way, but was the rift too tight?? I abseiled down to check it out and it was, there was no way my pelvis could fit through, but then Shane said "thats not the way, the rift goes farther along in the direction of the cave" so I maneuvered my legs so they were going along the rift and sat down. I could see the rift went for about 1.5m before opening into a chamber, was this the Ball Pit? But time was running out and we left the cave knowing we had something to come and look at the next time, which turned out to be 2 days later!

9 November 2013

Cavers: Brian McGavin, Shane McKinley

Trip time: 3.5 hours

After running a few errands and deciding not to buy a 5 foot long crowbar in a local hardware store we got to the parking spot around 2 pm and got changed while a local stared us out of it and headed down to the cave, while the old man followed us a small way. So Shane went back to have a quick chat with him while I decided to have a look at what was happening to the stream that was coming out of the drain pipe. The stream was sinking through gravel and mud at the base of the 2 to 3 m high exposed limestone bluff and may be worth having a look at during the summer when the stream has dried up. Meanwhile Shane had been chatting to the local who thought we may have been checking the pollution level of the water but were a bit too well equipped. Anyway it turns out he had been in some of the other caves in the area when he was younger and said that when its raining, the whole basin fills up and an amazing amount of water gushes down the overspill at a high velocity.

Now back to why we were here to get into that chamber, but first off there was one more rock that Shane was worried about, but I thought was safe. After 5 mins of Shane hammering a crowbar into it to try and lever it out he conceded I was right but the damage was done and it now had to go, which thankfully only took another 5 mins, and then Shane headed into the rift shouting back that theres no need for srt that it's just a climb, with a handine needed to get back out. Before I headed down there, we checked the air since there was a gas bottle down there, so I spent a few mins calling out simple sums while Shane solved them. And down I went, into what is definitely the ball pit. Our new entrance comes in from a high rift at the start of the chamber with the dig with dodgy boulders that Al had told us about on the far side. We took one look at these boulders and went hhmmmm..... lets leave that for a few have a look around first. The floor is completely covered in the same mud we had dug through but it defintitely looked like water would sink halfway along the left hand wall. So we dug away for all of 30 seconds before the horrendous smell coming from the small hole we had just dug made us stop. Not going near that without oxygen tanks anytime soon. So it was back to the dodgy boulders.

So these boulders are at the back of the chamber as it starts narrowing up, with a mud slope leading up into it as if it had been washed in from the farside somewhere. with one big boulder at the base, that is not going anywhere, then another boulder on top of that which moves a bit and then another boulder on top of that which moves a lot and then more debris behind these. The problem is if you were to move the boulders out of the way they would roll onto exactly where you are standing to move them. So we spent the next 2 hours, clearing out debris and mud around the boulders and using the prybar, slings rope and a pulley to try and lever them out, but all we managed to do was straighten one end of the prybar, it was at this point we wished we had bought that long crowbar we mentioned earlier. We have managed to maneuver the top boulder a bit but still have no way to safely get it out. We were starting to get tired and angry at the boulder and were in danger of doing something stupid with it so decided to leave the boulders for another day and go back to the drawing board, try to come up with some way of getting it out.

Back on the surface and over an hour til our callout we decided to walk along the runoff and see where it leads. After a hundred metres or so it comes out in a field and if you were to walk across to the far side you can see the water goes across the whole field til it meets a 1.5 m diameter storm drain that you can follow under the road and out into the field at the far side, a freezing cold pool of water and the fact I had to catch the last bus home to DUblin in less than an hour made us turn around and head back.

Brian McGavin