Post date: Nov 28, 2010 11:50:35 PM

Cavers: Les, Al

Trip time: 4 hours

Continuing the weekend BoltFest, and with the lure of an undived sump and the potential for a good depth extension, Les and i headed over to Carrownadargny cave in the Geevagh area of Sligo. It was a stunning afternoon in the frost and snow, with views from the hill as far as Croagh Patrick. From the parking at the beginning of a forestry track it was a short walk through the trees to the sink. A small, iced-up entrance quickly opened into a nice spacious - and warm! - passage with lots of lovely, solid rock. In a small chamber with a colourful calcite cascade on one wall the main route dropped through the floor, although a small, muddy crawl led off at the same level as the entrance passage - in the mud at the beginning of this crawl were the footprints of cavers long past, now filled with calcite. With a glut of good rock the hardest part was deciding where not to place the bolts. We each set a spit on the right-hand wall to make a Y-hang down to a false floor at the pitch-head. Two routes down the rift were possible here. Les set another nice Y-hang and we dropped the first 10m pitch.

Continuing along the rift and over a large fallen flake a 'letterbox' in the floor marked the start of the second pitch. It looked reasonably spacious but after i'd rigged the Y-hang (one spit and one permanent) and dropped into it, it suddenly got a lot smaller. A tight 5m pitch dropped to another false floor. While Les followed i awkwardly traversed along the rift to where it dropped again in the third pitch. The rock here looked pretty horrible, the left wall consisting of chert. We swapped positions and Les started hunting out good limestone, eventually rigging a traverse to a widening of the rift; as well as a lack of good limestone here the bolting was constrained by the width of the passage, only just wide enough to wield the drill in a few places. As he started on the Y-hang for the third pitch the 40m rope ran out. We had a 10m rope and this was tied on, but it wasn't enough to get to the bottom of this 15m pitch - probably 6 or 7m too short. Les placed the second spit anyway, both on the right-hand wall, and we decided a deviation would be needed from the left wall to remove the rope-rub at the Y-hang. The limestone wasn't great - when drilling the hole for the spit the drill bit went an inch and then plunged into a cavity; the second hole fell to pieces. We left it at that and will try to place a screw-in bolt for the deviation on our return; some chiselling needs to be done in a few places (head of the first and third pitches) to remove some rub points.

Beneath the pitch-head for the third pitch the rift widens and the rock appears to become better; there is a clear sound of the stream, which disappears before the first pitch. We left the 40m rope rigged and the 10m rope in the cave in case it is needed. A 60m rope should allow all the pitches to be rigged. It's a really lovely cave with fun pitches. It seemed too that we were the first visitors in a long time.

Emerging in the darkness we hunted for Les' keys and then got lost in the forest, walking in a large, wobbly circle for 15 minutes before finally homing in precisely on the truck.

(Rigging topo to follow.)

Al