An early 7:00am start resulted in a marginally cooler walk up to the entrance of 107 after dropping off first load we returned immediately down making good progress, we collected another rucksack worth of rope and returned to the entrance entering the cave at 12:00. The first pitch had a precariously hanging 2 tonnes of snow hanging on the side of the wall, (this was ignored!) trip continued the first 5 ropes where rigged. A quick return to the surface to warm up, and then re-entered with more rope making it all the way to Twin Pitches at which point all the rope had been exhausted, returning out the trick was to ignore the fact that the block of snow/ice was disintegrating above you showering pieces on you (this would have to be sorted).
A return with the rope required and drill to sort out the sketchy rigging resulted in the arrival at the top at 12:00 after a more relaxed start. The first task was to destroy the ever melting snow which was achieved in 30 mins. The down trip involved sorting out multiple rigging issues and everything was made much safer. Water flow had increased dramatically since yesterday. Making it to Too Bold For This Spit, we halted, rigged it but had to turn round because of lack of hangers and quantity of water flowing down. Exitting the cave was much more pleasant without the looming iceberg.
Much rerigging was had.
Start 11:00 End 19:30
Lucky Luke had been persuaded to go down 107 again with the promise of large cave to be seen. Rigging 'Too Bold For This Spit' wasn't so wet but still not nice! Some new bolts were put in and then we set off for China. We went into 161 searching for the mysterious missing rope - didn't find it but enjoyed 161 which has a very different character to 107. Thedre are some lovely "stone mushrooms" down there (take a camera next time). We had a look down a 'C' lead on the west wall of China ..... Will have to go down and survey tomorrow (Luke).
Headed up to Tunnocks with enough rope for the entrance pitch and maybe Caramel Catharsis as well, plus drill in case entrance rig fettling was required. I rigged down following the trail of reflectors which made finding the bolts easy, making only minimal changes to the 2014 rig. There was a substantial pile of snow at the first choss slope (completely bare last year as I recall) and also at other points lower down. At the second choss slope, I spent a while swinging around with skyhooks to see if I could find a way to avoid it completely, eventually concluding that it would be very acrobatic for little gain. I put in an extra bolt for the next descent to replace the Y-hang with bolts miles up in the air on the far wall with a Y-hang on the near side of the drop with an immediate deviation off the far wall. Continued down until the trail of reflectors seemed to indicate an airy-fairy route across the wall. I elected to descend directly to the floor which was covered in relatively fresh snow. There is still some very old ice down there which would make the original route very tedious. Ducks on Ice is open, however, albeit with a higher snow level than I recall from last year. Mark descended the snow slope and discovered an enormous ice stal hanging like the Sword of Damocles right above the way on. Something needed to be done about this, so we retreated to plan our next move.
At Ducks on Ice we had discovered an enormous ice stal. While not blocking the way on physically, it was judged to be a serious hazard. The first job of the day was therefore de-icing. Something that two blokes who live in Scandinavia ought to be well qualified for, right ?
[illustration to scan and insert]
[caption for illustration:] 6:1 mechanical advantage system
Specially designed ice-lassoo, brought from Scandinavia and usually used to catch reindeer!
Anyway, the ice stal broke into 1 million pieces, leaving the way on clear of danger. Using the formula for the volume of a cone we calculated the volume of ice and hence the weight of the stal.
V = 1/3 pi r2 h
r ~ 0.3m, h ~ 5m
V ~ 0.5 m3
density of ice is 0.8 kg/l
=> weight ~ 400kg. Not good if that landed on yhour toe!!!
After the de-ice, we carried on. Rigged traverse & handline down to start of Caramel Catharsis, then the long traverse & pitch itself. Rope was too short but we "borrowed" a small rope from a handline. Then on to String Theory. Mark didn't like the traverse round "Usual Suspects" but we made it to the top of String Theory after Anthony's fine words of encouragement. Most of String Theory was rigged by Anthony and we exitted feeling pleased with ourselves. Just madde it back to the Stone Bridge before a big storm broke.
[full page rigging diagram to scan and insert]
[there is an arrow captioned "more info" but no clue as to where it is pointing...]
Returned to C lead in China with Matt, to survey the pitch that we dropped the previous trip. Unfortunately only compass/clino so a depressingly small amount of passage was surveyed despite 4½ hours spent surveying. We didn't get cold and "much fun" was had.
"We found the bag!"
Having looked for the bag of rope for over a year, I was happily surprised to find it ...... ! It is now residing at (in a tackle sack) "Too Bold For This Spit". The technical and intellectual info for this trip will now be supplied by Olly (or perhaps Jenny) [continued]
We went through the connection from China into Blown Away / Out and round to Bundestrasse, finding (as Joe said) the errant tackle sack at the junction into the Runnelstone. A small rift on from the last survey station in Bundestrasse had clearly been explored already (by Anthony, Rob + Rob, it seems) but they hadn't realised the big pitch at the end was Korea. Jenny & Joe were able to lean out enough to recognise the pitch head at the end of Land of Confusion, and Disto an approx connection.
Started rigging the entrance. Put in a traverse to avoid the boulder. Moved the rebelay above the big Y-hang.
Continued entrance rigging and showed Frank around the bottom. At the bottom of the big hang there is a traverse to move the last pitch away from potential rock falls
[big diagram of 2015 rigging needs scanning and inserting]
Rachel rigged the 'Natural High' traverse. This is getting slippy so a rope should be left in place. We then pushed the A lead at the end of Dark Arts. After ~20m of passage we hit a large shaft. It looked like the phreatic passage continued requiring an easy traverse...
We returned to traverse the shaft. It appeared that the shaft intersected some large horizontal passage ~15m down, so we dropped the pitch only to find a deceptive alcove! A small body-sized tube led to another drippy chamber with a deep hole in the floor. After this disappointment I bolted the traverse only to find the phreatic passage became too small with no draft. There is a second, much deeper pitch, which is likely where the howling gale in Dark Arts disappears to. This is worth dropping but is drippy in dry weather and may be deadly in wet weather.
[sketch survey needs scanned and added]
We tied in the surveys from the 2 previous trips in Dark Arts and pulled the gear back to the main passage. Oh, and I retrievedc the hanger I dropped.
By this point Joe had rigged to China so decided to join them for a trip to survey a lead we had poked our head in last year.
A short pitch with 2 Y-hangs drops down the side wall through the boulders onto a sand and rubble slope.
There is a scary looking climb down to the left QMC and a small passage going off to the right QMC.
At the bottom of the slope we entered a narrow phreatic rift with a sandy floor "Smooth Sandy Bottom".
Surveying was slow and 4½ h later we hadn't really got very far. We left an aven lead QMB and the rift continues with a slight draft QMB
[ small rigging diagram to scan]
Decided on a short trip for Joe's final day so that we could head down the hill afterwards. We gave Joe a (slightly too long) head start so that he could retrieve his gear from Restless, and then we all headed through the Sea of Fudge and into Wonderland. Gotot the Wildwest lead (last seen in 2013 when the drill battery died and attempts at lassooing a spike as a belay resulted in rockfall).
Joe placed 2 bolts and clambered up before placing a final bolt at the top. We joined him up there. Almost immediately the passage hit a T junction, right went to a soil/gravel dig. We followed left along a lovely phreatic passage with a few formations which got photoed (badly) by me, and also dead insects and oddly some animal droppings. We followed along to a short climb up and down again to the bottom of an aven. Joe climbed this (being very careful of the loose flakes), and we sent the rope + drill up for him to rig for us.
Followed this to another aven. Main way on appears to be 18m up - would almost certainly need a bolt or two. There was also a small tube only a few metres up, which didn't draft. Joe removed his SRT kit and explored, after a bit I followed. A low crawl led to a rift and then left bent then another badly sized crawl to a widening. Joe climbed down to a lower level which was small but may go. Straight on led to another aven.
We surveyed back to Olly, despite being small passage and horrible to have to wriggle backwards while survey was lovely and straight so didn't require too many legs. We named this Dire Straits. Once we got back to Olly, Joe headed out to start carrying his gear down and we finished the survey.
A wet night at the bivi meant that plans for a long rigging trip were put on hold in favour of a shorter trip that would allow us to bolt down the hill. Ferried Big Bertha Mk II containing 200m of 10mm (intended for Procrastination and Number of the Beast) as far as the top of String Theory. Mark and Dan put in some bolts to protect the chossy traverse round the 80m deep wet hole on the approach to String Theory. I completed the String Theory rig. With that we headed out.
The plan was to go and find Organhöhle (located by Wookey and Olaf in 2012) plus swing by some of the holes Duncan and I found in the same area in the same year. Since expo was quite sparsely populated, we decided to take advantage of drill availability to drop some of the short pitches we had found. We decided to take two oversuits, two helmets and one SRT kit between us and also some surveying gear to give ourselves the option of verifying that we really had found Organhöhle.
Things did not go entirely according to plan.
We first swung by Tunnocks to pick up an SRT kit. It was at this point that I realised that I hadn't seen any rope being packed. It was hot and fairly late so we pressed on to Balconhöhle from where we took a somewhat roundabout route towards Organhöhle via a subsidiary summit of the Hohes Augsteck. Coming off the back of this, Dan spotted a cave. There is a hole in the side of the cliff leading onto a rift pitch, with another couple of surface shafts above that go to the same place - definitely worth a tag. Since we had a drill, this should have been a quick job. However, a lack of drill bits was going to make it a lot harder. Fortunately, we had a hand bolting kit, so I made up a tag (2015-DL-01) and Dan set about placing a hand bolt for it.
Whilst Dan was drilling, I set off in the direction where Mark's GPS said Organhöhle was supposed to be. Found a hole in the right place, and headed back to Dan who had by now stopped drilling - not because the bolt was complete but because the head of the bolt driver had sheared off.
We all trooped over to the Organhöhle candidate entrance, where we could have started surveying.... if we had brought a tape measure. I donned oversuit and helmet and set off to verify that we had the right cave. After a bit of walking / crawling I found a decent sized pitch with two spits for a Y-hang at the top (one of which looks good, and one is shagged) - so I'm pretty sure we've got the right cave. It looks a bit like this:
[sketch plan to scan and insert]
With that we headed back towards Top Camp via a more direct route, placing cairns as we went. Eventually we picked up a cairned path that I suspect goes to Bullet's 2nd Höhle. This route is fairly direct and the terrain reasonable, but it is going to takae a while - likely over an hour from Balconyhöhle.
Our final act was to take a look at Ants in Pants schlucht. The snow level looks pretty low, so this might be worth revisiting later on expo.
Headed into Tunnocks to rig the 200m of rope we had carted in earlier. Mark sorted out the rebelay at the bottom of String Theory, making it less of a twat to pass. I made a start on Procrastination. Unfortunately I didn't find the right bolts for the Y-hang, so there is a rub - needs fixing on the next trip. I rigged down using Chris' 2013 thrubolts for the first hang to (hopefully) avoid the worst of the water. Discovered that the traverse and shitty little pitch at the bottom had been derigged, so Mark rigged these using the 200 of 9mm kindly ferried in by Dan and David. Up Bring on the Clowns, then I rigged Number of the Beast with remainder of the 10mm. Out in 3 hrs - a pretty efficient trip.
Trip to look at Frank's hole eas of itchfork towards 75c, left. Dave to start work while George & me visited other end. (We'd looked at QMs on route, amended maps, posted George into holes that weren't drawn for him to come out 20m back out of another unknown hole). We looked at the boulder choke in a loose passage and spied a slot up. On the way back to Dave I said "How about I give you a leg up?" "Sure", said George. He reported a big chamber up there. I didn'tbelieve him coz there was no echo, but checked it. Yep. Back at Frank's hole, Dave had already knocked a lid over it and couldn't do anything, so took no time to convert to our lead. eorge & I surveyed while he investigated pitch opposite. We borrowed him briefly to rig a traverse in the northern passage. It being latre and with a callout of 8 pm, we had to rush on out and join the queue at the entrance pitch. NB I'd walked up from base camp with George and Rob that morning, so quite a long day. Also recalibrated 8W-poney 3 times underground with no success.
Same place, same time. Took compass and clino this time and surveyed up south end to a pitch. George went back to chamber and furtled through a passage to a place where he came out of the bottom. Also climbed up the rift through high wet bit. Meanwhile Dave had done his pitch and balcony ledge traverse to big passage. We surveyed into it, plumbed down, then across hole. At this point I got suspicious of how fast George was taking notes/ Turned out he had drawn no diagrams at all. I went to sleep while Gorge got coached by David. Down the end under a low bit, David pushed a rock off a sandy slope. Sounded like the whole world as ending. Even George lost his cool. We cowered against the wall for 20 secs. The reverberating echo on the ceiling made it appear from above. Detackled, Luke and Rob joined us, went and trampled the dead bat in the north end, while George & I bodged a survey drawing in this chamber.
Got a lift up the hill in the morning and after a bit of faffing headed down 107 with a view to looking at the old route beyond the entrance pitch. Used the backup bolt I'd placed in 2012, and Olly traversed along to get a Y-hang at the end. This got us nicely to the bottom of the old p23, and I noticed that upon the right was the window through from the rampy bit above Ropeless. (We'd been down from there in 2013, but gone right not left, so seen this pitch but not known for sure that this was the original route).
Olly put in his second Y-hang of the day, then got bored of rigging properly and stuck in a rope protector and headed down. This got us to the bottom of Red [?] - p18 and down the next (~3m) short drop as well. The p18 looks fine in terms of water (our rig is quite a bit across from the wet 1978 hang) but the next little drop was in the water.
Took off our SRT kit and headed off - there are several passages here, it is more complex than the 1978 survey implies, though that survey is corect in what it does show. Headed down a eastward passage, a mixture of crawling + sideways wriggling. After a bit the floor trench heads right then left - west. Followed this, past a pretty stal. On the way back (surveying) noticed that the other way on was the drafty route. Surveyed back to the bottom of the rope, then left the survey hanging for now and derigged out planning to come in using the Ropeless window tomorrow. Consequently surveyed the top pitch now, but failed to find the old station to tie into.
Failed to get an early start, and headed into the cave around noon. First finished derigging and sketching from yesterday. Olly rigged into where we were yesterday via the Window in Ropeless, to testerday's 2nd Y-hang. This time with a rebelay not a rope protector. For reasons I now forget, this semi-free hanging rebelay got rigged with a clown for added entertainment.
Got down into Old Rift via the 1978 route (climb doesn't need a bolt / rope etc.) Started surveying from the big boulder that all the surveys in the area seem to connect to. Then tied into the end of yesterday's tubular survey and then the start of yesterdsay's p18 survey (at the Y-hang bolt) then up to the 2015 station on the Ropeless window. Not sure how that took a whole trip, but it did somehow.
Decided on a morning of surface work + afternoon of gear fettling ready for an early start tomorrow to avoid being on a wet pitch at thunderstorm time.
Walked up past 83 to look above Thunder Road. It is quite chossy and bouldery here. Found a few (not drafting) piles of rocks I could climb into, but nothing that went or was worth tgging sadly.
Headed over to laser05 for Olly to GPS - we suspect the old Austrian version of laser05 in the dataset is closer to reality than Nil's fix. Noticed that 1987-02 has a tag bolt but no tag - will try and fix that later on. Walked back via above 107.direstraits to look for entrances above the avens. Only found one possibility (not far above our tent) - plan to return with rope another day.
Got underground nice and early - 9:10 am! Whizzed down to where the two old routes diverge and headed towards the p67. Turns out you traverse over the p67 to get to the p5. We did this using 1978 spits just to have a look. There is a trickle of water down the back wall, and a rift heading west. We traversed along this, it was the sort of rift with no visible floor and of unknown depth. After a short while the rift got wider, and I became incredibly scared and refused to continue. We surveyed back to the head of the p67. On typing in the data, it seems that my pitch detecting radar knew we were about to traverse over the p100, and hence made me stop. Olly rigged down the p67 directly (ie. not via the p5) and got a Y-hang that made a lovely free hang, despite a complex pitch head. Sadly it got wet and the rope was fast so Olly had it wrapped round his leg. This gave him 2 options, abseil [illegible], or torniquet his leg. He took the first option.
Olly shouts up "I'm down, the pitch is wet". I wonder how wet, is he telling me that he will come back up and add some rigging, or that I should come down but make sure the survey box is closed first. After a few iterations of Olly shouting 'the hang is wet' and me shouting 'can I descend?', Olly eventually shouts that he is coming up.
This would be the perfect time to sit in my lovely new bothy bag, except that I am the wrong side of the pitch wedged in a rift. After a while I see Olly putting in a bolt, and I can follow down. We end up in a side rift via a couple of rebelays and a comedy deviation. We survey up this and down to the bottom of the main hang. Then have a quick wander down to the next short pitch.
We survey back out derigging up to the Y-hang so the rig can be made drier for next time. Uneventful exit, to get out just as the thunderstorm started.
PS. They were pretty hard core in 1978. 67m pitch on ladders !
We went in Balcony to push 94a and 95a. The passage continued under a boulder which could be climbed up from the far side to reach 95a by an easy 4m free climb. 95a is nice straight walking passage which led to a 3m climb into a chamber with numerous leads. A small pitch may lead to horizontal passage - or it could be another alcove. Traversing around the pitch would provide 2 further leads.
To the left of the climb a large rift can be followed until a climb down requiring a rope is encountered. Before this, a crawling passage was found to the right leading to a 4m pitch. It seems likely that severalof these leads are connected.
94a was pushed for about 10m where it turns a corner at a rocky slope. We left this as a walking lead.
After an early start we got underground at 7:45 and continued to make good progress down to Number of the Beast. Mark added some deviations to the pitch below No. of the B. which is now much better. This pitch now called Widow Twanky's Knicker Elastic. A few other sections were also improved by additional bolts. Upon reaaching the tensioned traverse around the large boulder, set up camp and selfishl let me oush the next pitch. Below the traverse there are two pitches. The draft is coming from the left one so I put two Y-hangs in and dropped down ~20m to another chamber.
The passage continues down another pitch in a popcorn heavy rift. I was less happy with my rigging here and another Y-hang rebelay should be added. After this ~10m pitch another chamber is reached. Again another pitch ~20m must be dropped. I started putting some bolts in before running out of drill battery. This is quite the lead - the dust from the drill was being blown upwards !
The prussik out was unrelenting but fast which meant we exitted at 5:15 pm with just enough energy to amble down to the car park, and eat some veggie slop kindly prepared by Julian.
After some unexpeced surface prospecting (read: getting lost) at the left hand valley between Tunnocks and Balcony, we made it into the entrance about 12. Since the Dark Arts had pretty much been killed off, we set our sights on a cluster of A/B leads (85, 86, 87) in the Far Side. Luke rigged the traverse by 60C since he mud here was particularly thick and persistent. It seems like someone blocked all the bolts along here with small stones to prevent them being used again ? (Not mentioned in last year's log book as far as we can see). Unperturbed, Luke set about bolting and soon we reached a second traverse rigged by Mark. There seems to be a minor flaw on the survey where stomping passage leads to a sandy chamber, which is actually a fuck-off 63m pitch. Closer inspection of the survey shows the detail hidden under the sand, and perhaps this could be amended to prevent Luke making any more surprised squeaks & giggles
We turned around and took the long route round to the cluster of leads we were after, following the survey since none of us had been in this direction before. I rigged the P10m and we quickly found the F.O. hole from the other (Far Farside?) side. At 85, 86 it was really loose rock and Luke "scampered" up the climb at 87, finding it was a connection without rigging to 85,86.
Here, Mark's nerves were sruched with all the loose slatey rock that followed with every step Luke made over the pitch 20, so we retreated and tied in the two B leads at 35,36. As the Pre-'15 survey suggests, they do connect, and lead on to a sizeable chamber, which was quite wet and led to two (small) pitches and not a lot else.
Cold, we left
Keen and inspired, we took some slings back to Luke's risky climb and followed it up to a chimney climb. Frank followed him up and suddenly backed off exclaiming "fuck me". Luke's opinion on what is free-climbable apparently needs some tuning. Bolts were placed and a path around the pitch to 86A was surveyed. Tis led to two leads, a right-hand routewhich finally led to a boulder choke.
Deciding the left hand passage was much more inspiring, we returned the next day.
After showing Rob the sights in Balcony, we continued on the left hand side. It continued much further than we expected, leading to a ~25m chamber containing a 15m pitch and two leads on the fafr wall.
The lead on the left connected round to 85A, while the right led on up a loose, steep rift. Here a couple of small pitches were found and what seems to be a moraine left by an ice flow. From here, it would get a bit wet and bolting was required, so we upped and left.
Frank and I returned to continue surveying and kill off a few leads that led off horizontally. There is a huge draught acting [a wide blank - something intended to be added here?], and further exploration is required. Said draught made it too cold to continue after several hours, so we set off to look for the many other groups down Balcony. After dismissing a muddy climb which looked uninviting, we left the search for Julian's group. We followed urtlehead to warm ourselves up, and ultimately left, considering the small hole Frank had begun digging at the bottom of the entrance series.
A human-sized hole was visible, with a steep tube leading downwards for a few metres. We left our SRT kits and descended, myself somewhat unenthusiastic, making comments like "typical Mendip caver" and "Grrr". However, it soon opened up into a T-junction, with 5m high ceilings, and shattered boulders. We followed the route to the left, a rift leading to a 10m pitch (QM A), with a further QMA climb up a small hole on the left hand wall. It was V. cold down here and seemingly solid boulders were actually fragmented, held together with wishful thinking.
Whilst Frank drew up the survey, I had a gander down the right hand passage, sticking to the right and ignoring further leads off. I followed the sound of running water and finally found the connection with "Room With A View". Frank followed and pointed out a somehwat frisky looking boulder on a left-hand lead that I had passed, a few metres across and held a couple of metres up by two points crumbling away. I obediently stood under said boulder for Frank to take a photo.
Rather giddy, we heard George and David descend down the tube and we were happy to see their enthusiasm too. Quite cold, we left, with a bit of heaving to get back out.
The aim was to rig rift 59b with the hope of entering the large sandy "massive hole". The rift initially started out in the right direction and after some handy points from Anthony I started on the process of dropping multiple Y hangs (rigging guide with survey). Well Anthony and Dan set off to retrieve more rope from further in the cave and take many photos. They conveniently returned when the drill battery ran out after "6 holes" so returned to collect the rope and extra battery after explaining to Dan and Anthony I was close to the bottom and would only be 30 mins. I dropped the last pitch which was longer than expected. Upon reaching the bottom, the rift decided to change direction away from the massive hole I was aiming to enter. It unfortunately continued in the other direction so a return trip would be needed to survey and derig. I returned an hour later to find a cold Dan and Anthony and headed out.
A return trip was needed to survey and derig the disastour of the previous day. I managed to persuade (cous-cous) Rob into helping me, believing it would crap out and thus be an easy job and being able to move the rope to other areas of the cave. This was not to be. The rift continued so needed surveying. After a couple of sketchy freeclimbs we made it to another big hole. This was wet and it did not look like a suitable way to rig from (could shorten the wetness of the rigging from the top). Tis was likely to be a thing which was going to be done when all the excellent A leads had been killed off. Rob derigged. By the time we set off, Rachel and Frank were already exitting the area to more warmer leads. We continued so as to give Julian's team the rope. We found them in a massive surveying fuck up but were directed along the passage to where there was a dead bat. By the time Julian caught up the bat was flat and no longer well preserved. Since 5 people were planning to exit the cave, me and Rob head off into the extremeties of the Turtle Head to access the leads. This proved quite interesting and managed to kill off an A lead (92a) by just sticking my head into it (confirmed the following day).
Showed a new team into Balcony, showing them the leads and rope. Left them to survey, returning from the end of Turtle Head to the entrance pitch in 25 mins to meet up with a team which was exitting early for a trip down the hill.
Headed down with very little gear since it had all been taken in previously. Dumped some flapjack. Sorted out the Procrastination rig. Also dumped some flapjack at the top and established an emergency dump at the bottom (in the sandy bit between the poxy pitch below Procrastination and Bring on the Clowns) in case of flooding.
Descended Number of the Beast, which needed some work since the rebelay loops were ridiculously tight. After the Tunnocks entrance pitch I am not used to pitches where you can't see the previous rebelay bolt, so had failed to leave enough slack. Rachel sorted out the rig whilst I carried on down. Such was her diligence that she ended up abseiling the pitch three times to make sure everything was tickety-boo - which served the purose of keeping her warm but entailed lots of extra prussiking.
Meanwhile I continued rigging the scrappy pitches towards the pushing front. The second of these was particularly dire and clearly in need of remedial work - what SRT illiterate put this rig in ? (*) Arriving at the 2015 pushing front, I was pleasantly surprised to find a rigged rope heading down the next two drops and along the (rather airy) traverse to the head of the final pitch - all I had to do was install a couple of deviations. By the time I had done this, Rachel had joined me so I rigged the final pitch and we both descended.
At the bottom, there are two main ways on. There is a phreatic passage wth a floor trench (traverse line required) which doesn't take much of a draught (QM-A). The star lead was a pitch in the other direction with a howling gale blowing up it (QM-A).
At that point we began the long slog out. At Bring on the Clowns, a large chunk of wall that Rachel was hanging onto fell off onto her and the rope, causing a certain degree of disquiet. By the time we emerged, Rachel determined that she didn't want to seeanother rebelay for a while and was even contemplating caving in the Mendips.
(*) It was me.
An attempt to descend the "sandy chamber" as described by Rachel on 16/7. Rigged as follows
[largerigging sketch to scan and insert]
At this point the walls of the rift have a lot of sharp flakes. So difficult to get a good hang without it going into the water. -> try from the "Far Side ???
When detackling, Mark managed to fall down a hole injuring his hand. First aid kit came out and we bandaged it up. Slow strugglew out. Prussiking with one hand is harder than you might think.
1st expo trip for Sarah, 1st trip to BH for Wook.
Carried gear over after sorting survey sstuff so only just underground before midday. Luke showed us the route to the far end + gear dump & the various leads.
Friendly cave, but a fair way to the end. Had a look at the near (wet) side of the pitch to consider rigging. Could be done from this side but prob better from the other.
<>Decided to start beyond 94a lead. Surveyed rift off to left: short passage to dead end with scroffing below. Sarah got to drive DistoX2. <>Next looked at climb at the end. Dubious-looking pile of boulders with hole at top. Wook shinned up & found it was in fact quite solid. Largish rift at top with ice formations ! Big draught through small hole.Surveyed up & others followed then explored. Matt shinned up to R on ledge - looks like a lead. Sarah went round corner to find [illegible] aven-base with more ice. Very impressive. Called 'Ice cock'.
Surveyed it all till it was 5:30 & time to go home.
W+S got a bit lost on way out, & Matt overtook, so confusion for a few mins. Soon back together, then in familar territory, so Matt could get us home. 80m of entrance felt quite long. 500m tomorrow is going to be super-long.
Passage Desc: Passage on L wiggles to 5m traverse reaching sandy dead-end. Sandy dig & small choked inlet slot back joins into bottom of traverse & accesses bottom of scree below climb to Icecock. On main way, c5 reaches small hole above top chockstone. Climbing throughreaches high (25m) hading rift with Icefall on far wall. Ledge ascends NE to climb (QM-B). To L (W) c1 then leads to R with roof lowering. Passage off on R (QM-A). Almost immediately break out into large round space which is bottom of ~40m aven. 8m up on west wall is a space, could be bolted to (QM-B). On R is small pitch in wall QM-C (p7). Ahead, part fallen ice & another ice fall coming from smaller aven on L (QM-X). Beyond is short climb down (QM-B). Draught has been lost here - no doubt it is coming down the pitch.
The objective of this trip was to clear the surveying backlog and continue the pitch from where David left off the day before. Wookey had misplaced his [Parkin - I'm sure this is a misreado], and was thinking this was a particularly bad day to be without this device- so he was delighted to unearth it from the depths of his dangly bag at the watering hole near Caramel Catharsis.
Uneventful trip to the traverse at the last pitch from 2014 (Magic Glue) where we started the survey - Wookey on book, your narrator wielding the distoX and taking some low quality photos with my point-and-press camera. Tried to shoot a leg from the bottom of Magic Glue to the deviation krab which repeatedly failed. Attempts on the exit met a similar lack of success. So a tape measure will be taken on the next trip. The advice from Jenny is that shooting such a leg in the downward direction often meets with more success.
From the bottom we continued surveying the two drops rigged by David. The pitch heads were absolutely howling, and I didn't feel much like hanging around for ages taking multiple disto readings. Pitches are to be called "Inferno".
Arriving at the Y-hang installed by David, Wookey continued the rig by placing a bolt for an immediate deviation, a further bolt for a rebelay and a rebelay from a natural that looks more convincing from below. Pitch is ~30m and lands in a large chamber full of huge boulders covered in black mud - to be christened "Kraken". There is a large ridge of boulders in the middle that we climbed up. A rope will be needed to descend the other side, and a way on can be seen under a large arch in the far corner (QM-A). It is unclear whether there are any further pitches. Even though the passage is 30x15m is cross section, there is a discernible draught.
Completed the survey then headed out at no great pace but without incident.
Olly had an unhappy tummy, so something near the surface seemed wise. Decided to look at the lead in 85 that we'd spotted in 2007 and noted in 1977. Got to the entrance to find Ol only had his prescription sunglasses, so he had to cave blind. Due to not wanting to carry too much stuff, I was only wearing thermals and my oversuit which was cold.
Followed the obvious way in 85 ignoring the passage to 82. Followed down a couple of lovely little climbs, then doubled back to appear 2/3 of the way down an ice slope. I noticed an enticing looking passage opposite us on the other side of the ice slope. Decided that the best way to access that and the drop below was to enter from above, so I waited while Olly headed out to confirm that the slope did come from the 82-85 passage. It did, so we got SRT + bolting gear and I rigged (badly) down to get into the passage. This passage headed off very straight, sometimes crawling, sometimes walking, with various solution pockets/avens on the left. Eventually ended at a muddy/gravelly dig. Surveyed out to the bottom of the rope where Olly went down to the bottom before heading out. Saw an unhappy bat frozen on the ice which I photographed. I hoped it was having a little sleep, but Olly assured me it was dead and frozen in place.
Finished surveying this route and the [illegible] route down.
Tried again for an early start to beat any nighttime thuderstorms later on - didn't do so well this time getting underground at ~10 am. Got to the p67, Olly set off down adding two (bolt) deviations on the way which made the hang dry in dry weather (I expect it would be damp and miserable in wet weather, but not impassable).
Followed the rift down (as Team Youth had in 1978). Used the tail of the rope on the p67 to rig the following p5. Having successfully abseiled down the p67 without incident, about 1m above the floor of the p5 I turned to talk to Olly and stupidly got my hair caught in my rack. Idiot! At least it is easier to free from a rack than a stop. A bit further along the rift and we reached another short pitch (p ). This was followed by a climb - not very steep but in the water (we didn't rig). A little more rift and we got to another short pitch. The rift widened here and was very drippy from inlets. Turns out this is where the 1978 p100 enters, though we didn't realise we were this far along. Another short drop on the same rope and the rift got narrower and nastier. Olly climbed up a few metres to where it got wider and traversed along at this level. Shortly it got wider and deeper and he started to rig down beforerealising we hadn't much rope left. Failing to realise where we were, we began to survey out. It was a very tedious rift to survey and I was shit at picking stations. Nearly gave up surveying, but decided to have a break while Olly carried the drill up the next pitch. I went back and derigged the deeper ones. Finished the survey and headed out without incident. The p67 did a good job at spreading us out for the ascent, so I didn't have to wait at all and was actually quite warm by the time I got out. With my slow prussiking (and carrying the drill) it took 1 hr 20 from the bottom of the p67 out.
A rest day for Olly's knees. Headed to 13-SW-01 and rigged it, placing what must have been my first hand bolt. I can see why drills are so popular ! Followed the old red paint marks, up at first to an old CUCC cave marked "+ CUCC" and "1987" - think this must be 2006-03 and next door 2006-02, except we didn't see any tags. Having looked at the 2006 photos, I am certain that we were at the correct place. So either we failed to see the tag or the website is wrong in thinking that it is tagged.
After a quiet night on my own at the 76 bivi the plan was to meet Wookey at the 107 entrance at 9am. Unfortunately, I didn't get the SMS teling me that he was going to wait until the rain eased off, so I spent nearly 2 hours sitting under the tarp - having the tarp and the rock shelf near thr entrance is an excellent idea.
Headed towards China wondering how far we'd get given the high water levels. The end of the easy traverse looked wet but passable. We suspectd tghe Too Bold would be too wet, so it seemed silly to get soaked now unnecessarily. Decided to look at something else. The first interesting lead we got to was 13-SL-6A in coldest. Borrowed the rope from Coldest Place in Earth and Wookey went down with a natural and one bolt. The rope wasn't long anough to get all the way down but did land on a floor with a rifty passage heading off. After a couple of climbs down we lost the draught to a small floor trench on the left. Passage continued uphill and narrow until we could stand up again. We then reached a T-junction wth a howling gale (from L->R). Followed right in high rifty passage, traversing over a series of drops until a window over a pitch. Surveyed out, until we got too cold - went back to Coldest for food + more clothes for Wookey efore finishing the survey. This is called Double Beep due to the exciting DistoX2 that beeps twice if you get the right answer (or at least a consistently wrong answer).
A more successful attempt to get to 161, got to China in 1hr45 having relocated the Double Beep rope back to coldest on the way in. Slowed down a bit owing to not really knowing the way and Jenny being slow especially on all the tedious little climbs, but got ourselves to the Runnelstone, and Holy Cow 56. Wookey started bolting down while I went round Welly Popper Passaged to (a) keep warm and (b) check that Wookey wasn't about to bolt into known passage. Got to a junction, headed left and got to a climb I was too wussy to descend (it tunrs out that this connects with station 56), then followed right before realising I was in previously unvisited passage, so headed back to 56. Wookey was some way down but had run out of rope, so we rigged with the longer rope. Wookey got to the bottom, said it ended and started to reascend. He thoroughly checked out the rift on the way up and found a window in to a few awkward oxbows which we followed down via a lovely hang, to the floor. A sort way on, the water flows down a short small drop with a bigger (wider) pitch likely beyond.
This looked small + wet, so Wookey climbed up to some ledges to follow the rift at a higher level. Part way up he placed a very fast bolt, hence the passage name Fastest Boltin the West. Followed these rising ledges to a quality natural. We'd hoped to traverse to a widening above the pitch for a nice easy descent. Unfortunately this didn't happen - the traverse continues, drafty[?] bit small, but no easy way down. Surveyed out. Decided to leave it rigged, but to take the drill out.
Surveyed the side passage from wellypopper.7 that I had scooped earlier. Named Falling Spike after a lovely spike handhold that Wookey removed from the wall near Wellypopper. Nice walking passage with draft to an aven with water (and a good place for a wee!) After this the passage split into two - small way on with the water on the right, and small dry way straight on. We think that the draft got lost on a window part way up on the right (needs gear to get in to). Headed out, took a bit over an hour to China (with some faffing), then 2 hours out from there. The pitch out of China is nicely long enough to mean you don't hold people up on the way out. The drill bag was much less bad than I expected on the Restless rifts. Happy to get out and find it not raining - had timeto walk home and have dinner before it rained.
We watched the rain come down until boredom made us crack at about midday. Then we headed up to the "94a, 95b" lead area to the north of the cave. We ocated the loose climb up to the fallen ice cock chamber and then found the limit of exploration at station 13 in the next chamber. Here we climbed down to a short climb back up - where Pete placed two bolts to allow a mantleshelf and squeeze into the next chamber - which was veery preddi. Lots of fallen ice blocks on the floor. Fleur took photo. On the far side of the ice blocks a very high (30m) aven headed steeply upwards, and has a snow and ice tongue. (Ben later made more progress to climb a way up this ... but steep).
[there's a sketch plan on the left of the above paragraph to scan and inseet here]
We then climbed ~2m up to right of chamber to enter a walking/stooping tube with a nice riverof ice on floor. We thought it would soon crap out - but we were rewarded with a nice view into a chamber/rift. Huzzah!
We first survey a tube that looped to NW, ending with a view into the chamber. Pete scrambled round wall, and may be a high lead here.
With a 1h40min [?] book, we wombled back out to camp