As I was first out of Oxlow on a novice-training SRT trip the other day, I had plenty of time on my hands, so had a poke around a couple of other bits. I climbed up the fixed rope at the top of the third pitch which goes to a large bridge overlooking East Chamber - I've been up here once before, but the rest of the party wanted to leave then, and dragged me down again. To the right of the bridge there's another rope heading up through a fractured and rather unstable-looking hole. As it looked like it probably needed a deviation to avoid razor-sharp edges, and with no knowledge of what the rope is attached to, I decided against climbing up. Is this another way up to Jim's Crawl, and was it ultimately abandoned?

More interestingly, I had another look at the small passage up the dirt ramp at the west end of the entrance chamber, before the 180? turn to the second pitch. There are two hangers in the wall and two lengths of rope running down the floor, but at least one of these was buried at its upper end with boulders. There was also some bang wire, and more strangely some lengths of rusty rebar stuck into the choke with squirty foam adjacent. Given there's also squirty foam behind the Armco barriers opposite, I wondered if they might be connected. But does anyone know what the dig there was hoping to achieve, and was it abandoned due to instability?

Finally - toward the far end of East Chamber, near the second shaft at the mouth of the blind level -  I stepped on a very large piece of calcite that must have weighed a quarter-ton. It immediately slid out of position and slipped a couple of feet downslope. It's not a danger to the shaft, but it is on gravel, so stabilised it as best I could - just in case anyone heads down there soon, just be careful on that.

Hey Phil

That dig up the dirt slope in Oxlow done by members of MUSC about 7 years ago. I was involved for a bit, but I quickly gave up due to it being a deathtrap and in my opinion having little speleological interest. As far as I can remember the reason why they were digging there was a far flung belief that it would connect into the roof of West Chamber, creating a rather sporting round trip - I was never convinced! The rebar and foam I believe were put there in order to try to stabilize the choke. I think it was abandoned due to the main person involved in it moving away from Manchester and loosing interest in caving.

Hope that helps!

B

Thanks Ben - I must admit it didn't look too stable to me either. The first time I ever went into Oxlow that lot wasn't there, so you're probably bang-on with the timing too. There was a hole at the back end on the left that looked vaguely interesting, but as no-one knew I was up there, it would have been foolhardy to start wriggling under loose boulders. Though this is from the guy who happily free-climbed down the manky shaft in East Chamber 30 mins before, and there's some seriously big stuff down that one!

On reflection, it seems the dig would be just as likely to connect to the shaft hollow on surface, as there's one pretty much bang on top of it. The next hollow along, about 30m west of Oxlow entrance looks more interesting, though still backfilled. But it has a lot of loose scree sliding into the cone, which made me wonder if water maybe sinks in there in very wet weather.