Lofthouse pot and sink dig

[Goydenman]

In Nidderdale Low Eglin’s is a finely decorated and sporting stream cave that goes east from How Stean Gorge. The stream disappears off into a too low bedding to reappear at the Stean resurgence. Going left from this bedding an older passage, Flood passage heads towards the village of Lofthouse. This ends in a low mud and water filled bedding just short of the village cricket field. The other side of the cricket field is the river Nidd travelling north to south. The river has truncated 2 caves, Lofthouse Foss caves (west and east) and Canal cave (west) and Lower canal cave (east). The latter has a fine trench running across the river bed joining the two caves. The river has almost truncated another cave Lofthouse pot. This is a 4m pot that leads to low water filled bedding heading for the cricket field in lne with and same altitude as Flood passage in Low Eglin’s. There is also a coked passage heading in the opposite direction (east) under the river bed above. The far side of that river is Lofthouse sink.

Black Sheep Diggers hope when the summer weather arrives, hmmm! To dig in Lofthouse pot heading under the river bed above. At present a small waterfall falls into the cave preventing digging but this usually dried up later in the year. Meanwhile work has started on Lofthouse sink to remove the choke from the far side.

The intention is to remove the choke enough to allow water to flow away from the Lofthouse pot bedding and make a connection with Low Eglin’s cave. So far we have scaffolded by the adjacent wall to the put and underpinned with blocks. Then we dug down and found a solid choked shaft which is now 2m deep. We expect to hit the horizontal choked passage at 4-4.5m depth.

Lofthouse pot

Lofthouse sink and Alistair all the way from the Peaks giving a hand with the digging for a day

 

[Goydenman]

With Limley Mine now on the back burner till winter attention has turned back to Lofthouse Pot given this long stretch of fine weather. Lofthouse pot is an old Craven PC covered over and rediscovered by the Black Sheep Diggers. It is a 3m pot to short crawl and then low awkward arch to flooded bedding. In very dry weather like now it is possible to see a thin air gap and feel a draft blowing. The Black Sheep Diggers have previously for a very short time tested a pump in there but long enough to see that it would lower the water. It also revealed that water was entering from the surface river Nidd above.

A plan was hatched to have a big push on Saturday August 30th.

Preparation….

Tom led a team to build a dam by Lower Canal Cave to divert the river Nidd int the cave and water exiting Canal Cave. The idea being to stop the inflow into Lofthouse pot. It worked and lowered the level by about 6cm. On the day of the big push the entrance to Lower Canal cave would then be blocked to create a dam of water for the pump intake.

Ian Lawrence pulled together various resources for pumping mainly from How Stean Gorge (thanks to the team there for this) as well as the BSD kit.

Chris worked on removing the awkward arch in Lofthouse pot to give better access to the bedding.

Big Push….

On the day Tom, Tony, Chris, Ralf, Ian Lawrence and Ian Proudler turned up.

The surface team sorted pumps and hoses etc while Ralf and Chris dragged the kit underground. Ralf was at the sharp end manning the pump. With good coordination between underground and surface periodic stops where made and kit moved to continue pumping. A few problems were encountered including water rising rather than falling. Kinks in the pipes were sorted and progress continued in lowering the water. Further stops were made to dig out holes in the floor to lower the pump and extract more water. By this time Ralf the only wet suited person was getting very cold from the increased cold draft and laying in cold water. Eventually the pump reached its limit and so Ralf tried to squeeze through he initial tight bedding to the higher bedding beyond. Regrettably too tight he tried to dig the floor which was slow hard work and gave in being now too cold. He went up on the surface to warm up, the pump ran out of fuel and water level rose. With a fine view of open bedding, passage going left and straight on we retired to the pub and vowed to return soon…

Flooded bedding at the start...

View of open passage at the end of the dig....

 

[Lankyman]

With Limley Mine now on the back burner till winter attention has turned back to Lofthouse Pot given this long stretch of fine weather. Lofthouse pot is an old Craven PC covered over and rediscovered by the Black Sheep Diggers. It is a 3m pot to short crawl and then low awkward arch to flooded bedding. In very dry weather like now it is possible to see a thin air gap and feel a draft blowing. The Black Sheep Diggers have previously for a very short time tested a pump in there but long enough to see that it would lower the water. It also revealed that water was entering from the surface river Nidd above.

A plan was hatched to have a big push on Saturday August 30th.

Preparation….

Tom led a team to build a dam by Lower Canal Cave to divert the river Nidd int the cave and water exiting Canal Cave. The idea being to stop the inflow into Lofthouse pot. It worked and lowered the level by about 6cm. On the day of the big push the entrance to Lower Canal cave would then be blocked to create a dam of water for the pump intake.

View attachment 23634

Ian Lawrence pulled together various resources for pumping mainly from How Stean Gorge (thanks to the team there for this) as well as the BSD kit.

View attachment 23635

Chris worked on removing the awkward arch in Lofthouse pot to give better access to the bedding.

View attachment 23636

Big Push….

On the day Tom, Tony, Chris, Ralf, Ian Lawrence and Ian Proudler turned up.

The surface team sorted pumps and hoses etc while Ralf and Chris dragged the kit underground. Ralf was at the sharp end manning the pump. With good coordination between underground and surface periodic stops where made and kit moved to continue pumping. A few problems were encountered including water rising rather than falling. Kinks in the pipes were sorted and progress continued in lowering the water. Further stops were made to dig out holes in the floor to lower the pump and extract more water. By this time Ralf the only wet suited person was getting very cold from the increased cold draft and laying in cold water. Eventually the pump reached its limit and so Ralf tried to squeeze through he initial tight bedding to the higher bedding beyond. Regrettably too tight he tried to dig the floor which was slow hard work and gave in being now too cold. He went up on the surface to warm up, the pump ran out of fuel and water level rose. With a fine view of open bedding, passage going left and straight on we retired to the pub and vowed to return soon…

View attachment 23637

View attachment 23638

Flooded bedding at the start...
View attachment 23639

View of open passage at the end of the dig....
View attachment 23640

If ever there was a case for a small rover fitted with a camera to see what's ahead. Or would that spoil the anticipation?

 

[Cavematt]

Some excellent efforts, and a great dig. Looks fairly encouraging ahead that it might become slightly higher.

In my experience, the anticipation of waiting for the next session to 'push forwards into the darkness' is one of the most enjoyable experiences in digging. You find yourself wishing the week away with excitement. Anyway, in the North York Moors the anticipation is often the best bit, when the passage ahead turns out to be somewhat smaller than it looked

Look forward to hearing more, and fingers crossed lots of new cave lies ahead.

 

[Tritim230]

Very exciting. Best of luck next time Chris and team

 

[Goydenman]

Be Part of the Breakthrough
Lofthouse pot was just 5m long to a low arch (ear in water job) small rift (room for one) and flooded bedding. The approach passage has been raised and widened for easier digging access and the bedding pumped out. So the cave is NOW 25M LONG WITH VIEW OF 10M OF OPEN PASSAGE!

To progress the team need to remove some of the gravel floor to make easier access for diggers and trays then dig away the soft mud to explore the 10m of passage and beyond.

Lofthouse pot is on the bank of the river Nidd downstream from Lofthouse Fire Station. It was expected that the cave might go west and join with Low Eglin’s cave. To our surprise it is going north and if continues that direction for just 20m north will pass under Canal cave – very interesting.
We are fascinated to see whether it now turns west of continues north either way it is likely to be a long cave which explains the howling draft in there. West would take it to the How Stean area and the Eglin’s system over 1km away and north to the Goyden system. New Goyden being 1.5km away.

WE NEED SUPPORT– we have just the summer period to dig and explore as far as possible this cave. At present we need 6-7 people and typically have just 3-4 digging at any time. Get in touch if you can help or turn up at How Stean Gorge café any Saturday at 10am

 

[Goydenman]

LOFTHOUSE POT BREAKTHROUGH
Team: David Smith; Ralf Guscott; Tom Tomlinson; Chris Fox; Tony Cook; Ian Proudler; Dan Liddy

Photo: Some of the digging team - Ralf, Tom, David (kneeling), Tony and Bob who joined us from Craven for a day

Black Sheep Diggers since April have widened the 5m passage leading to the flooded bedding and in so doing removed the low awkward arch. Ralf Guscott pushed through the bedding after it was pumped out to explore about 8m of passage. Following this he and David Smith cleared mud from a low bedding to squeeze through to find slightly larger passage where you can briefly sit up. Ahead was a narrow vertical slot and low mud arch. David and Chris Fox pushed through the arch to find larger passage with frequent mud banks requiring a squeeze over the top of each of them to progress. They stopped at the 66m mark where the mud bank was too close to the roof to squeeze through. David on a solo trip up the passage (supported as ever by someone manning the pump) dug through to one again stand uop only to be faced by a low arch and flat out section in water. Once through this again he stood up to see yet another low section of water this time longer. With time agreed used he returned. Note in between all the exciting pushing the whole team dig out many buckets of spoil and even had support from Pete of the Craven team in raising the roof above the flooded bedding allowing people to exit if the pump fails all be it by sucking the roof! Many thanks especially to Tony and Tom who on more than one occasion were eaten by flies while hauling on the surface.

Photo: Typical passage with mud banks in Lofthouse pot

Saturday July 25th only Chris and David were available to dig so expected to do minor maintenance work only. To their surprise Tony joined then in How Stean café before digging . He kindly agreed to man the pump and do some chiselling work nearby while Chris and David went to push things on hopefully. David and Chris worked their way back to the final low watery section and crawled for 3-4m through cold muddy water to further cave with stand up sections and large mud banks to climb over to a place where the low water route was too low and the high mud bank came close to the ceiling. David went all the way back through the low water section to retrieve the spade and they took turns to dig. It was low and awkward but they persevered and eventually David seeing a standing section beyond squeezed through. He dug more out from that side and so Chris had an easy slide through. The passage ahead was the same again brief standing sections separated by high mud banks. This cave was not giving up her secrets easily.


They were then in a standing section with a rabbit hole above the mud bank on the right drafting strongly but clearly long dig. Below and to the right was a low wet bedding. David went in and said was too low to progress. Chris encouraged him to pass back large pebbles. Chris then went in and decided to dig away the mud on the left hand side making good progress. David took over and after a brief dig both agreed might be best to leave rest to another time and return to Tony. But David could not resist having a last dig and then seeing standing space beyond squeezed by a bulge on the left. Chris hears him shout ‘I’m standing up and there is room for you’ to follows on through. Ahead yet more mud banks to squeeze over!


David squeezes over the last mud bank turns a corner and shouts back to Chris ‘ whooo what the neck is this’. Chris turns the corner to see wider standing height clean washed passage and a junction. To the left is a kneeling height phreatic passage at chest height. It has a small stream flowing out of it and strong draft. To the right the main passage carries on. David indicates he will explore the main passage while Chris has a look at the tube. Chris soon find out it not quite kneeling height and hard going so goes back and joins David. They then walk a long section of narrow passage to where the roof lowers and low crawling is required. By now they know about 2 hours has gone and wonder if Tony is wondering where they are so set off back. On the way back they estimate how ling sections are and overall think that they have explored about 100m that day. Tony had not only managed to man the pump all that time but had been busy with the chiselling work - thanks Tony for enabling safe exploration.

Photo: Chris and David celebrating

So in future the team need to push the main passage to its conclusion; push the tube to its conclusion too; survey the finds; remove the initial mud squeeze to allow more of the team to explore; dig away the top of all the mud banks to gain easier access for further digging at the far reaches and finally to remove the issue of the bedding flooding at the start.

 

[aricooperdavis]

Awesome work, and thank you for sharing the vicarious excitement! Looks like tough going!