Out of sheer boredom I've finally got around to bolting the continuation pitch that heads off from the upper area of the 2nd pitch & rejoins the main route close to the bottom of the 4th. A few words of warning:
This is part of a project that will ultimately form the route for an air hose to enable us to set up an airlift in the sump: it's not intended to be a nice alternative to the normal route, although in the future that may be the case. As such it's rigged for experienced vertical cavers & not for beginners: the unwary will probably struggle in a few places on some of the more acrobatic manoeuvres...
There is a baby aid traverse to reach the small landing. From there a short rift leads to a steep climb down to the pitch head; fatties beware! This area is riddled with loose blocks & if you thrash about then anyone on the pitches below will struggle to understand the rules of sudoku afterwards (but will provide a good training event for the cave rescue team). Anyone going down is invited to take an empty tackle bag to fill up with stones.
At the pitch head there are two options. The rope closest to the approach rift follows the original bolts that Matt St Clair & I climbed; the parallel route is the one that leads down to the bottom of the 4th. The ropes are old work ones of mine & I'm happy for people to use them but please don't abseil fast or you'll just glaze them. Likewise, please minimise the amount of welly-grip action on them as you'll just cover them in poo. There are no rub points unless someone is being daft (as always you need to keep your eyes on what's going on above you to avoid mishap). Please do not adjust the rigging, even if you've got some sort of SRT qualification: it's done that way for a reason! If you want to play around with knots then practice in the bedroom :halo:
There are no shiny P-Anchors involved, just a combination of long & short thru bolts; some are dependable Hilti ones & others are from Argos. You will need to take a spanner as some of the bolts will need tweaking from time to time (but please don't over-tighten them).
It's not a very exciting route but in the desert of vertical caving that is South Wales I guess it's the best we can hope for!
A general request: we've left the normal pitches in the cave rigged for a long time as we were doing a lot of work there a while ago. The ropes are a bit tatty but generally okay & the rigging itself cuts a few corners but is essentially safe. If you feel the need to use your own ropes then please make sure that you re-install ours the same way you found it (or just shadow rig). I spotted a top anchor/end-knot the other day that at first glance appeared to be a bowline but on closer inspection turned out to be something that wouldn't secure an alcoholic pensioner to a bar stool. Someone has basically untied my bowline & tried to retie it later on, leaving nothing more than a potentially lethal booby trap. Someone was charged with attempted murder in Austria a couple of years ago for something vaguely similar!
And a word to the wise (you know who you are): single anchor points, even if they are P-anchors, are not to be trusted. I install anchors as part of my job & there's not a hope in hell that I'd rely on a bit of metal in a hole surrounded by resin in a slab of shitty limestone! That way madness lies