In Giants a few nights ago showing a novice around. We went up the upper crab walk to the big sump then traversed back along the top to the pitch down back into the main chamber. Just before you get to this point a blue tube comes down a crawl to your left. We followed pipe this up to a little dig with a sump/duck extending off to the left.
I'm guessing that the blue pipe is used for syphoning the water back down to the upper crab walk, but does anybody know where this crawl goes, if anywhere, and who is working up there these days, if anyone.

Saw that myself a while ago - I guess its just a dig that someone had started. Dont know who though of if they go anywhere with it. :?

i used to know where it went but i'm getting old and now can't remember.
I've been up it though and I've been in some squalid places (i dig down robins for gods sake) and i wouldn't advise inspecting it too closely

If it's where I think it is, and I'm pretty sure it is, then I went there several years ago on an evening trip with a mate who'd been digging there on an off. We siphoned the water out of the sump, which took about half an hour, and then went through so I could be shown the dig.

The dig was in a tube-shaped passage about a metre high; the bottom half was full of mud, and a thick layer of flowstone had formed on top, leaving a desperately tight gap over the top. The diggers had adopted the approach of digging out the mud from under the flowstone, and then bunging in a car jack on top, and cranking it until a chunk of flowstone broke off, then repeating. They'd given up when it got to the point where the jack was breaking instead of the flowstone.

Now, it was just possible to wriggle into the top of the passage for a couple of body lengths to a 90 degree corner to the right, where the gap got smaller, but beyond was an echoey black space (probably the top of one of the avens a little way back downstream

Having been persuaded to go in to look round the corner, on my way back out, I suddenly found myself jammed. Stupidly I'd gone in with an oldham brick on my waist, and the bloody thing had dropped into a shallow gour about a centimetre deep, and now I couldn't go forwards or backwards, I couldn't contort my arms down to sort out the problem, and my mate couldn't reach either cos my legs were in the way.

For the first half hour or so we had a jolly good laugh, all at my expense of course, until we realised it was getting close to last orders, at which point we realised the situation was serious. After another quarter of an hour, I was going to send my mate out to look for a long stick or something to prod the oldham box with, when finally, after lots of wriggling about I felt the battery box pop up out of the gour, and after a further short struggle against the buckle of my battery belt, which managed to get caught up on the lip of the gour, I was out, and racing for the pub (we made it!).

Anyway, that's what's behind that sump. Lots of interesting little bits like that scattered around Giants, perhaps somewhere there's still some that go, waiting to be found, although lots of people have spent a lot of time looking very hard.

Duncan

Just got back from a SUSS fresher's trip down Giants. did the upper round but managed to syphon the sump on the way in. By the time we were heading out (20 mins later) it had just finished so i bombed it through. After the 3-4m pool, probaly a duck in normal conditions it goes to about 3 or 4 squeezes, one of which would stop most i think. After this it gets much bigger as you hit a flow stop ramp heading up to a pretty high chamber with a rope to a hle in the ceiling above a large calcite formation.
Around the formation a hole leads to a fixed rope pitch down about 5m, but quite easily freeclimbable from above. This is now Organ aven and connects to the main streamway system just after the main junction chamber.
All in all a short but sweet round trip for the smaller caver.

I did it on Wednesday. Quite good, but easier from the organ pipes. Had a look up fixed rope at fossil passage didn't have time to explore fully as I was supposed to be leading a trip . I heard it doesn't go far though. Might try and work out where its heading.

Now then! I remember this as I was the person digging there in March / April 1995 with a guy whose house I was living in at the time. Hello Duncan by the way, hope you're alright.
Yes, it was dug exactly as Duncan describes with the mud being removed from below the flowstone and then smashing the flow afterwards. The passage was fully sumped when we first dug it, I believe it now fills to about 2" from the roof. I have been stuck in the first squeeze as well as Duncan. It is desperately tight, I didn't realise anyone had been through and completed the link. I knew from talking to T Pot and Tony Revell (RIP) that it sounded as if we had connected the upper series to the Boss Aven series and it seems that Rob has proved that connection. Good effort, there's no way I'd ever get through. At the time we called the passage "The Trog Link", we never really published anything as the conection was never properly made and the dig abandoned after we ran out of car jacks! Perhaps I will email John Beck and get something put in Descent although it will be well out of date!

Dan.