expoweb/years/2024/log_entries/2024-07-15d.json

{
 "date": "2024-07-15",
 "title": "1626-359 - Homecoming (1626/359)- 2nd Coming rigging",
 "place": "1626-359",
 "other_people": "",
 "text": "<p>Wassil was excited to finally make some progress on 2nd coming, so\nwe walked over to Homecoming from top camp with a nice new rope to\nhave a serious rigging attempt.</p>\n<p>\nMet Charlotte's group at the entrance and had an awkward\nconversation about rope as they were short, but we wanted to use what\nwe'd carried over to rig down so couldn't really spare any.</p>\n<p>\nIn fact on packing we realised that we could spare about 40m, but\nthe others had gone. Sent quick-change Sieds down to try and catch\nthem up but he was too late, so that didn't help in the end.</p>\n<p>\nWhen I got to 2nd Coming I was _very_ impressed with the draft,\nwhich is massive despite a very tall rift. Wassil and Sieds went off\nto start rerigging down the pitches and I was left to tart up the\ndodgy traverses, using my nice new Miwaukee M12 drill. I'd not\nactually put a through-bolt in since China in 2014 so a quick refresh\nwas done to be sure I didn't screw it up. I now spent about 7 hours on\nmy own except for 2 visits from Sieds looking for more bolts and/or\nnuts. The existing rigging was pretty shoddy with a few bits of cut\nrope on traverse segments, but not much rhyme or reason about which\nbits were rigged and which weren't. It was true that much of it didn't\nexactly _need_ a rope, but as a trade route it really wasn't very safe\nwithout one.</p>\n<p>\nI started where the previous trip had left off after a couple of\nbolts, soon noticing that there was a perfectly good floor about 6m\ndown so went to see why not just go that way. It was a bit narrow in\nplaces and after about 80m you end up pushed back up to the traverse\nlevel by rockfall, so maybe staying at the traverse level made sense,\nalthough it seemed marginal. Initially I replaced the old 2012 rope\nwith some in-date stuff, but rapidly ran out of new rope and had to\nput the old stuff back on the next section. Someone to discuss rigging\nwith would have been nice, as it was very hard to decide which bits\nshould have a rope and which didn't need one, but as it was just me I\ndid my best to make it not-shit. Did some gardening too.</p>\n<p>\nHours with no floor is a pain. I had to unchain a ~60m rope without\nanywhere to put the loops except one wedged rock. Turns out it can be\ndone, by draping the rope carefully over your legs braced across the\nrift and taking a lot of care not to get things tangled, but that was\nanother 40 mins gone.</p>\n<p>\nEventually the others returned, having run out of nuts, even the\nones scavenged from my rigging. I had put 11.5 bolts in (with a 4ah\nbattery) and it still wsn't quite dead, so that was good. Wassil told\nme to put rope on the couple of sections I'd decided were easy enough\nto remain unroped, so apparently I should have just done the whole lot\n  anyway.</p>\n<p>\nI put one more hole in on the way out, near the top of Wallace,\njust above the deviation, in order to get rid of the ridiculous offset\nrebelay and epic return deviation, but that finally did finish off the\nbattery so I had to leave it as a job to be finished another time. 12\nholes final score. Got out about midnight, and we still had that\nbloody walk back to the Stone Bridge as Garlic was full of Charlotte's\nteam. It's 150m of height gain over the 2nd kilometre, plus another\n35m of extra up-and-downing (according to my GPS), which is why it\nfeels like bloody hard work, especially carying all your gear at\n2am. At least our improved reflectoring and cairning (and less cloud)\nmeant we didn't get lost this time.</p>\n<p>\nA good trip, although it was a pity I didn't get to see more of the\nroute in the end, as I was now decamping to Balcony to help get that\nrigged.</p>",
 "slug": "2024-07-15d",
 "time_underground": 11.5,
 "author": {
  "slug": "wookey",
  "nickname": "Wookey",
  "tu": 11.5
 },
 "trippersons": [
  {
   "slug": "wookey",
   "nickname": "Wookey",
   "tu": 11.5
  },
  {
   "slug": "sieds-lykles",
   "nickname": "Sieds",
   "tu": 11.5
  },
  {
   "slug": "wassil-janssen",
   "nickname": "Wassil",
   "tu": 11.5
  }
 ],
 "expedition": {
  "year": "2024",
  "name": "CUCC expo 2024"
 },
 "cave": {
  "areacode": "1626",
  "kataster_number": "359",
  "unofficial_number": "2018-dm-07"
 }
}