Just Joe and I this evening on what turned out to be our last trip to our dig in the Doghouse (for now). We met around 6:30pm, outside the Haddon Grove camp site. With heavy rain and thunderstorms throughout the day we fully anticipated beyond Figure of Eight chamber to be sumped and had zero to little intention of getting wet up to our ears! We checked out the sump, which fortunately was approx. the same level as on the previous trip (looks like a no-go for this year)! Thus we headed to the Doghouse to continue with our capping venture from the previous weeks. Clearly a lot of work had been carried out here previously, using some stronger methods of rock removal than we have to hand. The Doghouse starts an impressive aven with lots of digging debris scattered and shored throughout the base of the chamber. A flat out crawl heads to the right as soon as you climb through the choke, this leads for 20-30m (passing a draughting calcited, muddy tube on the right), the end of the tube breaks out into a banged rift which leads up a steep slope to an Aven which Dan Hibberts and myself blasted our way back into in 2009. The Aven is small with zero ways on at the top. A climb up and over stacked boulders leads to our dig – a continuation of the rift which unfortunately sits at around 10-20cm wide and lays at the base of a steep gravel slope and emits and outward draught.
Joe and I both had a good go at the sharp end, capping slices off the walls ensuring the working space always remained comfortable. We got to a satisfying point where we could see ahead for a metre or so but it remained hopelessly miniscule! Heartbroken (well I was…) we decided to give up aimlessly mining away and put our time and services to better use. We know there’s an Aven beyond the sump and Armoured Mudball Crawl which has a corresponding crawl heading this way but unfortunately it’s not on the survey. So when the sump does eventually next drop our first job is to survey the loop around to this dig and see exactly how close the two passages are from one another. If the gap is less than 10m then maybe it’s worth persisting with, creating a possible bypass to sump enabling the end of LCDC to be open most years? But for now, work has come to a halt on this project.
We left the cave and removed gear, post digging refreshments at the Bull’s Head in Monyash which tasted all the better after the steep hike back up the dale to the campsite.