Mangle Hole

[Thomas Tom-Thomas]

Hello - I went down this cave on Thursday night and it was great fun.  I've never been down there before, and I have a question about the water levels we came across.

When we got to the Mangle block, we rigged a pitch off the bolts to the left, and abbed down a very short way (5m?) before everything petered out. There was a very deep looking greeny coloured lake just behind you and seemingly nowhere else to go but scrambling round straight ahead, where you could easily loop back up some boulders and up to the mangle block and the start of the pitch again (from whence you could have a nice faff in "The Loop") 

My question is this: Having looked at MU at home, it appears that the way on from our final pitch should have been to ab another 7 or so metres into the lake behind me which (if dry) should have been mud bank chamber.

Am I right?  This seems like a serious volume of water, and I was wondering if we missed something.  For reference the water level in "the well" was about 6/7 feet below where the passage from "the loop" pops out into it.

Would be grateful if anyone could let me know whether:

a) it really was very flooded indeed
b) I am a muppet

Cheers

Tom

 

[cap n chris]

Your description fits very accurately with my memory-map layout of that part of the cave and it very very much sounds like the water levels were VERY high indeed! - yes, there should be another 7m pitch which from your description sounds like it was below water level - from the bottom there is a route towards the further reaches.

 

[Thomas Tom-Thomas]

Thanks for the reply.  That's an impressive flood.

Anyone would think it'd been raining recently... :blink:

 

[cap n chris]

The bottom 20-25 metres of Thrupe Lane Swallet floods quite frequently although I have heard that it has been even deeper than that.

 

[graham]

IIRC the (sumped) streamway underneath Mangle takes quite a significant flow but is constricted a short distance downstream. Ideal for backing up in very high water. Has it rained in Somerset recently, by any chance?