Wed 11th May 2016
Sarah Payne, Duncan Simey, Tim Payne, Paul Hadfield, Estelle Sandford, Mike Moxon
Dig fever resulting in an exciting discovery plus a huge session clearing out The Well
The plan was for Sarah and Duncan to start early afternoon working to stabilise the Dodgy Chamber, then change tasks when the others arrived early evening.
However, plans change...
Duncan wanted to do some smoke testing before they had been in the cave long. The Drafting Feature was drafting and the bottom of the dig was drafting even more strongly.
The inevitable happened; they got fired up and all thoughts of working in the Dodgy Chamber were put aside. Sarah and Duncan started attacking the bottom of the dig trying to find the way on.
They thought the rift was starting to head down vertically down, so the first attack was on the floor of the dig enlarging the sightline to the North so it could be entered. What we found was interesting but slightly disappointing. The West side of the floor is a man-made wall supporting the floor of the ascending passage. The wall continues on down below the point we reached. Duncan forced himself into the enlarged hole and smoke revealed there was no air movement, which was odd because we had already seen air movement in there. The draught was eventually found coming out from under a boulder at the entrance to the hole from the roughly the East and this was strong enough to swirl air in the hole until Duncan's body blocked it. A few boulders were removed and a light connection was made under the floor to a point nearer the end of the dig.
Although the mysterious wall is a puzzle, the way on following the draft is unlikely to be here, so the attack changed direction.
Initially the team couldn't get into the far end of the dig because of the huge boulder reported previously; the one that had been walled in by the miners. But removing rocks around the big boulder left it rocking gently. Duncan was able to roll it into the hole they had just excavated and it eventually settled Tomb Raider style almost perfectly sealing the hole heading North. This meant we couldn't use the hole for stacking rocks and there is no way to get it out of there without chemical persuasion, but at least it is no longer an obstacle to digging. Sarah and Duncan pulled boulders out of the end of the dig hauling them up the rift with the best rock kept to one side for wall building in the Dodgy Chamber.
At this point Sarah noticed the air flow in the Drafting Feature had reversed. The hypothesis is that the feature is connected to the bottom of the dig and a strong chimney effect from the two of us working in the rift was enough to suck air out of the Drafting Feature. This is great news as it probably means we won't have to treat the Drafting Feature as a separate lead and there is no need to sort the boulder Jenga stability problems at it's entrance.
What Sarah and Duncan found in the end of the dig was most encouraging.
Duncan opened up a body sized crawl allowing him to see a tight rift heading off North. This has highly scalloped walls and some interesting mud formations and has a good draft coming from it. The floor of the tight rift is mud and might prove to be capable of being opened up.
Reversing his crawl, Duncan turned onto his back and suddenly felt a draft on his face strong enough it was like being under a fan. Smoke indicated it was coming between boulders in the roof of the crawl which at this point is out of arms reach. The bad news is that we have lost the flat solid roof that covers the rest of the descending rift and it looks like stability could be an issue following this lead. However... It was time to head to the surface to meet the others, but we had two solid leads for the future.
Before heading to the surface, Sarah and Duncan swapped over so Sarah could have a look at the two leads.
Before long, Duncan heard Sarah say she just wanted a quick look at something. Moments later she was whooping loudly which she does when testing for echoes. Duncan was confused! What the heck was happening?
Sarah had removed a boulder at floor level from the East most point of the crawl before it turned towards the tight rift, and something very odd is happening! She had opened up a letterbox sized hole with no obvious sightline, but the acoustics have utterly changed. We have nothing sounding like this elsewhere in the dig. There is a strong vocal resonance that in most circumstances would indicate a decent sized chamber. The draft coming out the hole is impressive and strong enough that Duncan now thinks his earlier smoke testing the draft wasn't coming out the hole in the roof, but was being blasted up the roof from the hole at floor level and getting deflected downwards by hanging rock.
It's very exciting! The rock here doesn't look like miners have been involved and once again we are thinking we could have virgin cave passage on the other side.
There are several large boulders that need to be moved before this hole can be enlarged. Although Sarah and Duncan badly wanted to carry on digging, they needed to make the most of the help that was arriving at the dig and it was time to call a halt.
We can't wait to get back!
This was planned to be the last digging session with the trailer as it needs to be returned to farm duties. Hence we wanted a big push to get as much as possible to the surface.
The goal was to remove all the fill from The Well so we could get rid of the improvised scaffold and ladder stabilisation. Duncan, Sarah, Estelle and Paul filled and passed buckets to the bottom of the shaft, with Mike and Tim bucket hauling and trailer filling at the surface. Nobody had it easy, it was heavy hard work. But the amount of stuff shifted broke all site records and we achieved our goal. Not only has the breakthrough fill been removed, but most of the Miners fill too! The ladder and scaffold tubing is now stored in the lower chamber for future use and The Well looks wonderful.
The only problem was that Duncan misjudged how far one of the scaffold tubes went into a huge wall of stacked deads, and as the large hanging boulders at the bottom of the fill slid down into the breakthrough it levered the scaffold and almost brought the whole wall down. A proper brown trouser moment. The wall was tamped back into place and isn't looking very reassuring but was considered adequate for the moment. The wall hangs over the breakthrough and a priority job will be to do something about it, either cementing to firm it up, or removing it completely.
The session was concluded by Sarah giving Estelle and Mike a guided tour through the lower passages and proudly showing them our exciting new lead.
A few pics...
Duncan was using his backup caving light which is unsuitable for cave photography, so on-camera flash was used for these shots. Fortunately, there is enough air movement in the dig that breath soon clears making this possible.
Sarah in the new crawl at the bottom of the dig. This shot has been taken looking almost vertically downwards. The hole by her knee is all that remains of the initial work to clear out a crawlable tube off to the left (North). Her left arm is around the corner towards the tight rift heading North and the exciting new hole with the interesting acoustics are at arms length in front of her.
This is what the Drafting Feature currently looks like. Sarah and Duncan have been using it to store boulders pulled out the bottom of the dig. Fingers crossed we will never need to follow this lead
This is what The Well now looks like above the breakthrough viewed from the ramp up to Chamber 1. The shot of the improvised stabilisation is for comparison. The slope is not as vertical as this photo makes it look and the boulders in the middle of the new image are reassuringly stable (either bedrock or extremely large boulders).
The view above the previous shot. The ladder and scaffold tubes give scale and are in the crawl through to the Lower Chamber. Below the ladder is a thigh high wall of deads above a stable slope of mud and rock leading to the breakthrough below. The huge wall of stacked deads that almost collapsed is tucked out of sight on the right.
Sarah crawling back through the breakthrough viewed from the ramp up to Chamber 1.
In summary...
An immensely exciting new lead which is drafting strongly and has acoustics that sound like there is a void.
We shifted a prodigious amount of rock and clay from The Well and removed the scaffold tubing stabilisation.
