On Sunday's JH derig trip me and "J.Smith" took a few detours in the short trip we had in there firstly to the top of Stemple Highway ladders, then Whirlpool Jn and Bathing pool/Secret sumps.


My memory of "the cow arse worms" section seems to have defeated me. The last few times through I swear from the base of Leviathan to the cow arse worms pool you could actually stand up.
This time through however I was flat out crawling not far from the Armco barrier through mud.


The cow arse worms pool seemed to be no different.


But the "Duck" afterwards was dry, in fact it was a sloppy-mud flat out crawl. So "dry" is an overstatement.
From my first memories of this I remember attacking it from the Titan side: After the crawls through the gate and pools at the top of stemple Highway, I distinctly remember being stood up in a pool of water upto my waist looking at the near-non existent slot through at belly button height.
So to be in a similar position this weekend looking at it from the Titan side, the grovel through was at welly height, with me stood on mud.


I don't want to report it to the keyholders if my memory is actually just really bad, but to me it seems to be getting worse.
(The amount of mud in there- not my memory, else i'd see a doctor!  :blink: )




Any thoughts or recollections? Pitlamp?

The long term solution to this issue is to sink a shaft from the start of the crawl down the back of the boulder piles. It needn't be accessible, indeed you (not me) could punch a hole through and then install a section of pipe, then backfill and grate the top.

We started doing this when the project was in full swing but the prospects in FSE were far more appealing than another connection back down to Speedwell. For the record I came as close as I ever came to throwing in the towel in on my caving career on that JH-Speedwell connection. Silly me..

He's fibbing; once he got the train set working in the bottom of Leviathan you couldn't keep him out of the place! 

Mind you the train set was for the JH to Far Sump Extension connection, not the JH to Speedwell link.

Thanks moose and pitlamp. Took a quick look at the Pdmhs article in bulletin 13-3 this morning before leaving for work.

Definitely looks like it would be a good idea to start below the last Armco barrier, as you said. Did a brief measurement, and it seems to be about 7m from the first boulder pile hole (or the width of a stapler! :s)

Then trying to work under the northern wall trending towards the east if possible.

Yes, that's exactly it.

If you're serious about doing this I'd pay heed to not disturbing the BP's too much.

All that's actually needed is effectively a flood overflow (for when the dams get beaten by the input) to drain down into Speedwell as opposed to backing up and overflowing into FSE. Bringing all the issues with the organics with it.

An 8-10" flexi pipe would be ideal or a combination of smaller diameters depending on what's available.

This problem will absolutely not go away and is a great investment of time to preserve the valuable connection between JH and FSE.

Ok, Shouldn't be a problem getting the pipes and stuff there (I think there's a load unused in the garage). I know there's people going to the cliff cavern area regularly  , so I could root through the pipes this weekend and sort something with them.

A good weekend may give a workable solution that doesn't effect the boulder piles too much (perhaps installing a pipe half the distance to 3.5m). I should scope it out soon, then I'll have a reasonable idea of what I'm poking about with.

It's the nature of caves to fill with sediment. The natural situation was how it was before any work started (i.e. full) and it's not surprising it's heading back to filling up, bit by bit. I can't add anything further to Moose's wise words; getting rid of the water is the only real way to get on top of this problem.

Or we could get the train set out again . . . .