Badlad said:
These two photos really do show how terrible this damage is. I think it is immensely important to get to the bottom of why this was done. Without getting an understanding of the motivation for this damage it is going to be very difficult to prevent this sort of thing happening again, possibly even by the same person/group. Good luck.
I think this is very important, i also think that if you are visiting a cave and you think there has been some damage, report it to someone, preferably your regional body (CSCC in the case of Mendip) or at least someone who you are fairly sure will follow up and check. For all we know we could have someone going around a lot more caves doing this sort of damage and unless people are visiting and reporting back to someone, we haven't a clue... Also if you do ever have an accident and do some damage in a cave, it is better to report it so if it's possible to repair, people can have a go at it, or if it just stal needing cleaning, letting someone know means that perhaps a spray bottle can pay the cave a visit on the next trip in.
From feedback to date, we believe this damage had not happened at 16th Jan, but by a trip on 16th Feb there was at least some damage, but it wasn't reported to anyone who has actually investigated it further until the 12th March... Quite a few people did say they saw damage and forgot to mention it or didn't realise it was so recent, etc. etc.
If you have had any trips into HLIS this year and have any photos or video of anything in Happy Hour Highway, please can you drop me a message. Also if you hear of anything that might give us more clues, probably either myself or Cap'n Chris are the best to contact. One thing we won't know until we start gluing stal back together is whether possibly the motivation is theft and we find stal missing as while there is a fair bit of stal on the floor, we can't be sure if it's all there.
Another thing is has highlighted is that while this is recent and deliberate damage on a different scale, we're generally not great at looking after our caves. A group of us did a massive clearout last year of all the digging detritus that had been left in for about 10 years or so at the bottom of Pewter Pot, but all the taping goes back to when it was first put in after discovery 12-14 years ago and it really needs retaping as the taped pathways have gradually been widened and mud has crept a bit too, so some stal washing would be good too, so while we're doing the repairs, the entire cave will be retaped and thoroughly cleaned and it's probably not the only cave that could do with that done to it!