I’ve been a bit slack with this write-up. It’s from a few weeks back.
Friday night saw me eating dinner with a seriously sore back. The cycle home that evening had done it no favours, and it was painful just sitting still. This didn’t bode well, but I figured Mark would have sorted his kit for the next day anyway, so it wouldn’t really cause any issues to not mention it and see how I felt the next morning. It was only a leisurely survey trip after all.
Next morning came and my back was still sore, but I hoped a bit of varied exercise might do it good. However, what didn’t do it good was the drive down, and I wasn’t exactly feeling at full strength when we parked up…but then it was just a survey trip.
We had our usual trip in, but this time not getting changed straight away at Churry Hall. We surveyed our way back to the Origin breakthrough choke before re-bolting the traverse on our way back through. Then we got changed into neoprene as usual, but without the prospect of lying in the Insomnia dig I had reduced my kit to just the one wetsuit. Thankfully, although the section through Peak Bleak and Insomnia is pretty grim, it’s also pretty straight, so we could get away with relatively few survey legs.
At Insomnia it was dispiriting to find it had partially filled with gravel in our absence, so more flat-out digging in water was needed to get through. Mark made short work of this, and we made steady progress surveying upstream before the passage gets narrower beyond Unobtanium. We decided at that point that I would survey alone, allowing Mark to go ahead to assess the slabs ahead blocking the way on.
Not long after I’d reached him, Mark announced that we’d be able to get past the slabs and into continuing passage. Exciting! But tempered by the fact we were heading upstream in quite a narrow passage. We headed onwards, with Mark engineering his way past the odd obstacle while I surveyed along behind, the passage constantly appearing to close down before revealing a route onwards. Some of the nice features of the diminutive passage unavoidably fell foul of our movements (“Explorers’ Prerogative” in Quaking got a bit of a mention) and we elected to call the passage Badgers’ Remorse.
With some relief I heard Mark announce he’d reached standing room, and we were soon stood in a welcome cross-rift with enough room for both of us. Unfortunately the way on was another low crawl. Mark headed in for a look while I rested my back at the rift. He immediately announced the way on was blocked, but again with continuing passage beyond. Now cooling off, I took Mark’s offer to swap at the front, prioritising my warmth over my back. After a bit of rock wrestling I had generated enough heat to send Mark back in to continue the wrestle with the huge block that we were inching across the passage to make room to pass. I made a comment that it looked like we’d made enough room, but Mark assumed it was blind optimism so elected to continue unnecessarily wrestling the block whilst lying in the pool of water. He seemed quite surprised when he took another look at the space to find loads of room to pass!
Onwards and upstream we went, before the floor started rising and blocks became visible across the passage ahead. With considerable effort squeezing past some blocks embedded in the floor, Mark forced his way to the end of the passage to announce there was definitely no way past, but that there were gaps between the blocks. I went to have a look, feeling like I was in a claustrophobic’s nightmare as I found myself forced on to my back, squeezed between the floor and the roof, unable to turn my head. Despite the discomfort the tantalising glimpses of black space between the blocks ahead suggested not all hope was lost. That and the cool, steady, draught emanating from them.
On our way out we paused at Unobtanium and Jabba’s Place to take some “proper” photos (i.e. using flashes rather than just a waterproof compact). Look out for one or two of these in the next edition of Descent. Pleasingly we were nowhere near as cold as previously back at Churry Hall (we’d resorted to pouring boiling water in our wellies on the last trip to bring some feeling back to our feet) and after a swift change we were soon back on the surface.
We crunched the numbers to find we’d surveyed 209 m of passage since the Origin breakthrough. And maybe that’s not quite the end…time will tell.
The Rowter survey with the Origin extensions circled.