This was the first time in ages that I hadn’t been staring at the forecast in the days before the trip, trying to work out if the entrance was going to be sumped. The completion of the sump bypass last week now gives all-weather access to the rest of the cave, although that now means we have no excuse to not get digging.
With just the three core diggers again this week, and with quite a few “setting up” jobs to get on with, we decided to split into two teams. Chris n Jon stayed at the entrance pitch to look at putting some staples in to avoid the need of a ladder or SRT, similar to what we did in Madame Guillotine in Baggers. I left them to it and went ahead towards Westy’s Bit (admittedly with a bit of guidance from Jon as I had no idea which way to turn!).
Shortly after the pitch is a very technical squeeze over a tight rift which is not easy and Chris fell victim to on his return last time. So I spent a bit of time this trip with a length of 3x2 and a 2 foot long wood saw and ended up with a relatively poorly positioned stemple which will hopefully be of some use. After that I continued on to the end where I could begin forging a route ahead. It had been over 2 months since I was here last (https://www.eldonpotholeclub.org.uk/homepage/current-uk-projects/waterfall-swallets/702-500-a-goer-04-12-2026), not due to lack of trying, so I was super excited to finally be laid out with drill in hand ready to start smashing the place up. And the draught today was steady and very encouraging.
Crap stemple better than none?
A few caps just back from the end gave me a bit more room to work and I could finally take a good look at the boulder stood up and blocking the way. At over a metre tall it’s much bigger than the passage (somehow!) and whilst I could just about wobble the rock it was clear it needed to be broken into a lot of pieces to be moved out of the way. This was quite a tricky challenge because with each cap the pieces got smaller but still kind of balanced on each other, until they didn’t and instead rolled down onto my head. At least they were free and I could then shuttle each of them back about 2 body lengths to where the tiny bit of stacking space is. Slow work, but I was loving it.
The end boulder in pieces
After an hour Jon n Chris arrived and whilst I continued digging they spent 30 minutes or so widening a squeeze I had passed which to be fair was pretty tricky. Jon’s capping was yet again off form, however this time it was seemingly due to him using ‘little Rob’s little party poppers’ instead of proper caps, so after lots of swearing he came and stole a load of Chris’s big ones off me.
Jon in the newly widened squeeze
Come 21:45 they had finished widening the squeeze and I’d made a proper mess of the end so we called “pub”. On the way out we all enjoyed using the new stemple, although thankfully it’s still a very technical piece of cave not dissimilar to Coconut Airways in Cussey. At the pitch I was keen to see their staples, until they admitted they’d spent most of the time scratching their heads (and Chris doing an emergency dye testing experiment using some of his own toxic excretions) to then agree that no staples are needed and just a traverse line will be fine.
Nice to finally have a proper trip, we all were pretty knackered and the beer tasted oh so good. Can’t wait to get back digging the end.