Cave Conservation Rewards

[Badlad]

I received the following hand written letter from Mick Nunwick.

"Over the last year of various digging projects, where caves are visited on multiple occasions, it has made our team more aware of rubbish left in caves.  We have already removed much from KMC, Gavel Pot and Notts 2 including old bang wires, buckets, rope, plastic, trays, containers, hose pipes and much more.  But none of this compares to the hardware store that is Ireby Fell Cavern beyond sump one.

In the downstairs, or ground floor, department there have been an assortment of shovels and spades, with and without handles.  Three pickaxes, one with round ends resembling a duck billed platypus's beak -  that is no pick for actually picking.  Also rusty steel poles, lump hammers, crowbars, assorted ropes, old clothing, bang wires etc.

Moving up to the first floor department, called Jupiter Cavern, plastic sacks are available by the dozen along with old food tins, more ropes, tools, rusted cowstails, a saucepan and a car jack - just in case you need a brew or get a puncture.

The top floor, Frink Chamber, specialises in floor lifting equipment, but can still supply more shovels, bars, hammers and drill bits and several bang wires.

Most has now been removed to a scrap yard near Ingleton but may still be available on request.  A dig in Frink Chamber is currently being worked and one at the bottom of Escalator Rift and these will be cleared as they conclude. Other old gear is sure to be lurking in there somewhere - any takers?"

Mr Nunwick is probably overdue a reward!

 

[caveMonkey]

Marble steps has now been cleared out!
A number of us (ULSA/LUUCaS) went down marble steps to collect all the rubbish out from the dig. Took about 8-10hours. Items included scaff bars, number of drag trays , a hoe, various galvanized metals/wires, what looks like hi-viz deviation road signs? rope and other digging paraphernalia. Pics of items attached and pic of all of us on the surface (im taking the picture and two other members of our group helping with light).
Many thanks to all involved
S

 

[Bratchley]

Reward Time;

Adam - There are two cool outdoor hats which would suit the youngsters who helped with the clean up in Ibbeth Peril here for you.  Remind me please.

Pete K - That effort is indeed worthy of a reward.  Would you like a Berger Book - or if you already have one perhaps something from our waterproof hat, glove and socks collection.  PM to discuss and arrange delivery.

Bratchley & AR - A thoughtful and fine effort.  Not quite enough on there own but if you post up another clean up you'll certainly be in the running for something.  Thank you

Alex - remember you also have some credit 

Well done to all.

Couple more wellies removed from the same spot the other week! One day I'll have the lot out... one day...

 

[Badlad]

Well done Bratchley - keep up the good work

Cavemonkey and team a brilliant job well done.  We have been in touch.

Lot's more to do of course- you only have to open your eyes  :

 

[Badlad]

In the last few months an incredible amount of old crap has been removed from Ireby 2.  Some has been shown in posts already but much has just gone straight in the bin.  This is the latest stuff to come out.  It should be the last of it.

 

[cap n chris]

Good work! - tidying up after digs have gone off the boil is a labour of love and deserves recognition.

 

[Badlad]

One of the points of this initiative is to try to get cavers to look around the underground environment more closely.  Is there something that shouldn't be there yet has been there for decades.  A good example is this:

In Ireby Fell Cavern just below Pussy Pitch a piece of rubberised pipe has laid sticking out of a gravel bank for as long as I can remember.  Thousands of cavers have probably crawled past it over the years.  Apparently it used to hang down Well Pitch to deflect the stream for ladder climbing.  It might have been there for 40 years - anyone know?

       

​

A few weeks ago I dug it out of the gravel bank on the way down to Ireby 2.  On the way out I tried to get up the Pussy Pitch climb with it but it was too heavy.  I cut it in half and hauled it out with Pegasus yesterday.  What a horrible, stinky, piece of crap it was.  With all the ropes and some other bits picked up along the way we thought we would be leaving them at the entrance for later removal.  However, just as we came out the entrance we saw figures on the skyline and got chatting to them.  See http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=20428.msg262192;topicseen#new  They helped to carry the crap back to the cars.  Thanks both.

The pile to the left of shot is the ever increasing heap of old bang wires and ropes which has been removed too.

 

[Pegasus]

I did wonder why we still have a pile (and I mean pile!) of 'rewards' ready to give out under the cave conservation thread...now I know why - it's blummin hard work bringing rubbish out of our caves!

'Come caving and help me de rig Ireby and bring some rubbish out' he said, 'OK' I said....

I'm quite small and not particularly strong - trying to get that horrid, heavy, sodden, gravity loving bastard tube up Bell pitch was really, really hard work. I handed the hateful thing over to Tim soon as I could and was given a tackle bag instead - lucky me!

After much heaving and effort we had the bags, derigged ropes and two tube halves on the fell - just as I was wondering what plan Tm had to get them to the car, Max and his girlfriend appeared - thank goodness!

So folks, a nudge re the Cave Conservation Rewards - there are still some great pieces of kit to be had - however to get one takes some effort 

 

[A_Northerner]

I've just started up some projects at Ben's Dig in P8 and he ('Ben' Bentham) has left a lot of his digging tat there. I've searched throughout the various nooks and crannies of the passages and pulled out most of the unusable digging kit, plastic bags and tatty rope. Anything still usable I've moved back into my part of the dig to re-purpose it for my own project.

I haven't yet taken the stuff out of the cave, it's all consolidated in one part of the dig. The extraction of all this stuff is quite a sizeable project, I'm thinking a whole day or two of at least 4 people removing stuff to the surface.

There are at least 20 broken dig trays, 5 or 6 of which we have filled up with rope, bags, rusted metal, tubing, wood, blast cable and other such tat. I'm waiting on a decent sized vehicle to use to transport it all to the tip.

I'll post pictures of all the extracted stuff once it's done.

 

[Badlad]

This is great news for P8.  Getting that lot out is bound to trigger the reward threshold.  Keep us posted and well done.

 

[ah147]

A northerner who I suspect may be a SUSS member with a pathetic beard...give me a shout when you're on with it. Suppose I owe you a lift at some point


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Rob]

Upon arriving at the cave, it was clear that people had not had cave conservation in mind during previous visits to the site! Everywhere was material that did not belong in this place. Garden hoses, polypropylene bags, concrete and scaffold poles, the place was a mess.

So our team of three, plus a few hangers on and 3 more "helpers" below 3 years old set about emptying most of this unwanted material from inside the cave.

After 1 and a half hours of hard labour our work was done and the place looks much better, and we were gratefully rewarded with cake afterwards. Although Mark's now got some work to do before his wife gets home tomorrow!!!

Does this qualify for a reward?
"clean up some stuff that doesn?t belong underground" - tick 

"Rewards will be proportional to the effort shown" - well if you include the amount of time it took to fill the sand bags in the first place, i think we've just wiped all remaining prizes plus a backlog for the next year! 


In all seriousness, Mark has dug this cave mostly single-handedly over the last year, stacking bags internally wherever he can, it's been a monumental effort so far. The end looks great, starting to head horizontally with a solid roof, and the draught is very encouraging. Top effort! But i suppose he doesn't really have a choice, it is under his house!!!

 

[pwhole]

Awesome work. Sorry I wasn't around when the time came.

No doubt the strapping youth in the photo did most of it too. I think we'll have him on Saturday - he looks dead keen

 

[Badlad]

Does this qualify for a reward?
"clean up some stuff that doesn?t belong underground" - tick 

A great effort but it appears that you have already been rewarded with cake.... and full marks for tidiness too. 

 

[alastairgott]

and we were gratefully rewarded with cake afterwards.

It was a spelling mistake, he meant to say "we were gratefully rewarded with cave afterwards" :halo:

And what good cave it was too!

 

[PeteHall]

Hardly seems a worthy entry compared to most on here, but at the request of Pegasus and to keep momentum on this thread:

It seemed a pretty incompetent group had attempted the short round trip in Swildon?s sometime before us, leaving a trail of rubbish, cairns and graffiti.

Pockets were filled on the way around. Pockets were emptied into the Wessex bin after the trip 

 

[MarkS]

Certainly not prize-worthy, but we collected several bits of plastic bucket on our way out of Lost John's yesterday. I'd guess that's not the only rubbish that's been washed down caves in the Dales last weekend!

 

[kay]

During the week before Eurospeleo, an assorted group of cavers (including BPC, Northern Boggarts, Red Rose, Black Sheep Diggers, Little Green Men) cleared 2 tons of rubbish from the entrance to Gauber Pot, making this fine shaft accessible for the first time in very many years. A smaller group returned last week, descended the shaft and removed more rubbish. A final session will be necessary to make the shaft stock-proof.

 

[Badlad]

Well done to all involved.  I hear it was hard work and an amazing amount of nasty rubbish removed too. 

 

[MarkS]

Adam, MarkR and I set off for what was supposed to be a hassle free trip down Rowten this morning, but on the way down we found a bundle of barbed wire that we thought would be worth dragging out. After finding an old metal fence-post-type-thing down by the sump, we then added a couple more of them to our collection that we then spotted above the last pitch. Shortly after, Adam found another roll of barbed wire and a load of bits of plastic, and I found a 3 m long section of what looked a bit like railway line. With all this metal weighing us down, the trip out wasn't really as smooth as we were hoping, especially with the added excitement of having sharp pieces of metal swinging around beneath us, but we exited without incident just a bit later than anticipated.

What seems remarkable is how many people (us included) who've been down Rowten and not spotted all this before. It certainly must have been there for a while.