so yesterday (the date of the reportt) the bad air was so O serious that the key holder chose not to metion it to anyone on the trip - up to 7 of the 12 at one time where donning gear chatting and waiting at the supposed site of the foul air while two panted up the shaft none noticed anything.
Hi Larry, Pete,
As key holder for the trip I can explain the facts of this report of bad air.
As a key holder we had arranged for two groups of four to visit beyond the gate. I entered with the first group of four. Neither myself or any of the party of four I was with, experienced any problem. As we set off for the cave beyond the gate, other members of the club were following down the entrance shaft.... the plan was for them to visit the non gated bits of WICC before we swapped four of them with the first group of four.
All went to plan, after the first team of four had had their tour beyond the gate, we returned to the gate and the two teams swapped over. At some point during the visit of the second group, it casually came out in conversation that two of them had experienced shortness of breath, increased heart rate whilst initially descending the entrance shaft.
At that point, they seemed fine and were no longer having any problem. It was already too late to alert the rest of the team. We did discuss not all congregating at the bottom of the shaft as this might cause symptoms to reoccur. At this time other members were already ascending the entrance shaft.
There was no big drama but after the trip I thought it might be worth mentioning it to DCA who were up to recently monitoring WICC and other sites, with known reports of bad air. ( Usually down to CO2 displacing O2).
It seems the area the two experienced symptoms was towards the bottom of the entrance shaft. By the time I was informed there didn't seem much point making a big deal of it as the two seemed ok and no longer experiencing any problem. But I stand by my decision to pass it on as information to the wider caving community. Clearly the WICC bad air problem has not gone away and groups visiting need to be aware this is the case, though most cavers will not experience problems.
I got the impression all who visited the section beyond the gate enjoyed the trip...they posted some great photos on the PCC site.