the bung

[Rob]

They were the guys i was in there with. They had no idea about this chamber.

Yer a few years back they were digging at the botton of the main aven and found the top of an iron ladder. Followed it down a few meters and it kept going so they just went straight on. The whole cave sumps every now and again so it is full of recently deposited mud. Efforts have been made to stop this but none successful so far.

Now they are digging at the top of the aven heading for this draught.

They probably squeezed through a gap at the end of their dig :roll: .

Maybe, but you would have been hard pushed to fit the bucket and shovel through that are on the other side before Eddie and Nick worked their magic on it. :blow:

 

[Cave_Troll]

I managed to squeeze through a gap at the end of their dig and stumbed into a pristine 6m x 4m x 3m chamber with nice mud formations, a draughting easily dug tube on and a shovel in the corner . Would be nice to know how the other guys got there...

They probably squeezed through a gap at the end of their dig :roll:

.

Last night we made the squeeze a lot more friendly so that nick and ed can get through. chamber with aven going up, another connection to the passage you've just crawled through that comes in about halfway along that crawl. underneath that conenction in the crawl i found an upturned skip bucket probably protecting a void from back fill.
at the lowest point of the chamber is a tube dropping down 4 feet and then rougly horizontal for over 6 feet. Saldy my legs don't bend in the correct way. the passage goes on, but will require a little mud removing from the base of the vertical drop to enable you to turn around.
no obvious draft in evidence although some smoke from bang did drift into the chamber from the crawl we've just enlarged.
Given the layer of mud on top of the insitu bucket and spade in the chamber, i'd say its been in there long enough to silt up the crawl and make it feel like "nobody else could ever have got throgh that!"
While diging, went through a layer of mud to hit a layer of leaf mould. - recent deposition.

 

[Pitlamp]

Quick question for "Cavetroll" or Dan - did you get into anything up that rift in P7 above that sump that Rob lost his helmet in? And did anybody pursue the small downstream bedding sump not far from the main sump?

 

[Rob]

The aven above the sump connected to another part of the cave, at the start of the crawl to the top of 100 pound pot. It was enlarged from both ends to a large enough degree to know that now way on remained. As for the vocal connection tot eh airbell that John Cordingley found, who knows...
The bedding plane that you speak of was enlarged for quite a long period of time in order to get a diver in to the sump, but the job was never quite finished (unless there are some pretty small divers out there!). Sticking your feet into the pool it is possible to feel that it does open up a little way underwater, but you get trapped before that point.

 

[danthecavingman]

Anyone been back down P7 recently? It is very dry at the minute and ideal temperature wise for the strong draught to be blowing again. The draught a couple of years ago coming out from the Wormhole was too powerful to be a circular draught - it's the reason we actually had a look up that way in the first place. I know we never figured out where the draught was coming from but by the time we got through the wormhole squeeze the draught had diminished and it had been raining.