Water Levels in Stoney Middleton Caves this week

[alastairgott]

I thought i saw you pop your head in this morning.

One of our members went into speedwell on saturday. He knows speedwell like the back of his hand, having been a guide there back in the day.

Having dropped off the platform at speedwell or lowered his body in like a deckside swimming pool, as the water was flowing over and down bottomless pit.
He then proceeded down past the usual old boats and through the gate, glancing left he saw about a foot of water going over the bunghole.
Carrying on, the member then encountered a loss of footholds in the stream, being up to his armpits+ in the torrenting water. The only hope of progress at this point was to grab the scallops on the roof of the streamway and pull along to the whirlpool.

He recounted to us, Gathering a breath on the scaffold pole and glancing towards whirlpool sump he saw a good metre of water was flowing down whirlpool passage. And going upstream towards the boulder piles was a similar effort as that already put in.
Upon reaching the boulder piles he noticed a foot of water flowing over the top.
At this point he relented and turned back towards home, gliding effortlessly down the streamway, he was back at the gate in no time, throughly refreshed.

I meanwhile was with Paul Hardwick on a field walk listening to his work on drips in p8 and his flow analysis machine down by p5(?)
There was a reasonable flow down both of these, and this was backed up later by some similarly refreshed cavers going in p8.

Martinb, did you happen to notice if the handline was down treasury sump or whether it had been flung out by the water?
In high flood conditions the water comes out of treasury and a tell tale sign is when the rope has floated on top of the water and then been dragged into treasury chamber by the water. (When normally it hangs limply down next to the ladder).

 

[RichardB1983]

No obvious evidence of a huge flood in Bagshawe cavern yesterday though: Dungeon bone dry / nice little calcite rafts in Peter's Pool / the little muddy crawl through to the streamway from the Hippodrome at the lowest water level I think I've seen it at.

 

[Mrs Trellis]

Which indicates the speed of flow to this part of Baggie compared with the passage from the Rushup Edge swallets through to the Speedwell streamway.

 

[martinb]

I thought i saw you pop your head in this morning.

snip

Martinb, did you happen to notice if the handline was down treasury sump or whether it had been flung out by the water?
In high flood conditions the water comes out of treasury and a tell tale sign is when the rope has floated on top of the water and then been dragged into treasury chamber by the water. (When normally it hangs limply down next to the ladder).

The handline by the ladder was limp, the line in to the sump seemed to dive into the silt/gravel in the sump. The sump looked more full of silt/gravel than I've seen before.
Oh, and we built 2 sandcastles near the bottom of the ladder! 

 

[richardg]

Mrs Trellis...... just a thought ......do you think  that the fact Speedwell main stream way was flowing strongly.... And Bagshaw was still with water levels low... Rather than being indicative of flow through times, might be the result of isolated localised rainfall affecting the different catch areas?

 

[alastairgott]

Depends on your definition of different catchment areas. (I'm being a twat, sorry)

See stop 5, dirtlow rake page 23.
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/511287/1/KG%40B%202015%20Carboniferous%20field%20guide.pdf

 

[richardg]

Very interesting reading Alastair......
I was unaware of the divergence at this point, that must have been an exciting discovery by the speleohydrologists....

Do you know if there are there any caves that are explorable that are formed along Dirtlow Rake or do they generally cross through it

 

[richardg]

Maybe....Pindale and Black Rabbit caves?

 

[droid]

Except that by Black Rabbit Quarry, the adjacent rake has split into several smaller scrins....

 

[RichardB1983]

Mrs Trellis...... just a thought ......do you think  that the fact Speedwell main stream way was flowing strongly.... And Bagshaw was still with water levels low... Rather than being indicative of flow through times, might be the result of isolated localised rainfall affecting the different catch areas?

We'd expected the water level to be higher - I've seen the muddy crawl through to the streamway completely sumped before - but that was our guess - perhaps localised rainfall.

But in a previous thread - I pointed out that the Bagshawe streamway doesn't nearly have enough water in it compared to how much comes out at the Lumb - the viewpoint was that the swallets towards Duce Hole bypass the Bagshawe streamway, and the Dirtlow water ending up at the Lumb presumably arrives downstream of it too - so would that mean it's mainly percolation water in the visible Bagshawe stream past the Hippodrome?

 

[pwhole]

Very interesting reading Alastair......
I was unaware of the divergence at this point, that must have been an exciting discovery by the speleohydrologists....

Do you know if there are there any caves that are explorable that are formed along Dirtlow Rake or do they generally cross through it

My instinct, based on what we have available to us, is that there is (or should be!) a very large section of the main system running beneath (or at least guided by) Dirtlow Rake, both as pipes and vein cavities. I suspect this is where much of the 'missing' water is. Two soughs, Kronstadt and Nunlowend, still output large amounts of water to Bradwell Brook at Brough Works, but I have no idea if this water is measured in any way, or has been traced from surface in recent years. Both the tails are within the Hope Cement compound, but their downstream components aren't. Kronstadt drains the veins east of Dirtlow Rake, and Nunlowend drains Long Rake.

There is supposedly a branch level inside Kronstadt that heads toward Dirtlow Rake, but apparently had only inches of airspace, and that was in 1972. But some of the Hazard-Hollandtwine water could issue here, and at Pindale Sough just upstream. The trouble is all the shafts on the rake are blocked as far as I know, and the amount of sparring and subsequent 'restoration' that's taken place means looking for any 'natural' or even mining features is futile in most sections. There's a few interesting holes into small chambers, but not pushed any properly yet.

There was a whopping natural shaft/aven found in the cement quarry three years ago, found by a digger nearly falling into it. That was over 40m deep when plumbed, and didn't bottom out as far as I know.

 

[danthecavingman]

Can we split this topic as it's no longer about water levels in Stoney Middleton?

I don't understand why no-one is digging Pindale Cave. It's easily accessible, hands and knees crawling, on a mineral vein heading straight for Dirtlow rake. The fill is easily dug mud and small boulders and there's a railway running out to surface for dumping spoil.... The bits of stal that were coming out in the fill were quite sizeable meaning it's heading for something old and well decorated. The dig is on the same bed / horizon as the White River Series in Peak. Don't know what else positive I can say about it....

I've been up in Cumbria for five years now and was digging there weekly before I left. I don't think there have been half a dozen trips in there since I left it....

D.

 

[martinb]

Interesting regarding Pindale, thought it was someone elses dig.... I've got a few loose ends to tie up on our (now abandoned) dig, and I'm after a new project.

Although the aforementioned 'lost' sough/streamway in SMD is up there along with a recently uncovered shaft near Castleton that is just begging to be explored. I could do with breaking in my new digging buddy with a grotty dig....

 

[martinb]

Thread resurrection time again......

Passing through Stoney today on my way to Castleton, I noticed the stream from Carlswark Resurgence was flowing, although it wasn't going on the road. For once.

Once in Castleton and down in a certain cave, water was veritably gushing forth, making access to the dig face virtually impossible. So I gave up and looked at other nice bits in said cave.

Given that there has been quite a lot of rain/snow/sleet lately, how are other caves fairing?

 

[pwhole]

I can only speak for our certain cave not far away, and that's been effectively a waterfall on several occasions recently, making any excavation work impossible. And prussicking out quite entertaining But there's always maintenance to do, and out of the shaft it's bone-dry. Also we've noticed it stops as quick as it starts, suggesting there's a threshold level somewhere in the system and once it hits that, the water just fizzles out. Not sure how it's been in Peak Cavern as I haven't been down for a while.