Redhouse trip report: 8/6/25: Two teams: First team: Ian and Dan – Rigging over Wicked Pitch of the North to open passage beyond. Second team: Tiff, Mark and Falky – Mopping up the surveying in Pissimism area.
Team 1: Ian made excellent progress drilling and bolting over the Wicked pitch to the other side, where a large void can be seen. He shouted back ‘It goes – in more than one direction!’ He explored back towards the pitch head and soon his head popped out of a previously missed rift. We discovered a rift bypass to the pitch traverse, down beneath some very loose and dicey looking boulders.
Into the new passage, a left crawl came to a mud floor squeeze – Looking at it, I was sure it was the other side a diggable crawl previously seen near the pitch head. This needs to be dug out to provide a safe route to the new series, avoiding both the pitch traverse and the loose boulders. We then proceeded down a series of mainly rifty passages, some nice walking size, with lots of promising looking passages that unfortunately all shut down. We reckon about 150M, so not bad for a day's work! There were a few dig sites, but I don’t think it will be the ‘next big thing’.
As we made our way out, we had little dig in the Wicked North passages and opened up a connection to the Lhasa rifts. Loads of close passages in this area. I’m sure it wouldn't take much to open up a few more connections.
Both knackered at this point, so we headed out and surfaced around 7ish. Trip time 10 hours.
Team 2) Pissimism survey objectives all completed. Moria upstream went South with 93m surveyed and stopping just below one of the boulder chambers. Secondly, a northward rift passage surveyed for 53m that joins to Low Stoop.
Then around last bend before Marble River, we mopped up all the loose bits and pieces, nothing going very far, some big avens here. 82m added in this area.
So, 93+53+82=228M added in total. Cave total before was from memory 9890m, so now 10,118M! (TBC) Great effort from Tiff and Falkland, especially since we had to replace Distox batteries and recalibrate part way through.
Out 9.30pm. Trip was 11.45 hrs duration.
Video to follow soon!