The Mud Bank In GG

[braveduck]

As there seems to be time and money to do research these days.
Can somebody please do a study of the Main Chamber mud bank.
Almost half has now gone in the last four years,it will all have gone in five years time! Or less.
So there is now a fresh cross section to study.
The odd thing about it ,is there is no sand or gravel,just loam and plant debris.
Should be easy to get a date  from the plant remains.
There are no layers,so it seams to have formed in one event.
A catastrophic flood event perhaps,so a date would be interesting.
Any takers?

 

[graham]

From your description, it sounds like a fairly recent feature, so radiometric dating techniques may not work.

I'm not familiar with it, being some years since I was there, so what is it about it that makes it seem interesting to you?

 

[braveduck]

Well Graham,The archaeologist's have used plant material to date the dams in Velvet Bottom to Roman.
I suspect the GG mud bank is older than Roman.So a method for dating this material does exist.

The intrest is that there are no layers or bedding ,no sand and no gravel.It is about four to five feet thick.It does have vertical joints and where these are exposed it shows an Orange Iron? mineral has formed along these cracks,due to oxidation I suppose.
If it was formed in a one off catastrophic event  a date would add to our knowlage of GG and may tie in with other events in the Dales.

 

[graham]

Given that the whole floor of the chamber has been flooded to a sufficient depth to flow into South Passage within living memory, why should it not be a recent feature?

 

[gus horsley]

Having done GG over a period of about 30 years or so, I was under the impression that a lot of the floor features in the Main Chamber are ephemeral.  I'd go as far as to say that the chamber floor bears very little resemblance now to the first time I saw it, and having seen the effects of monumental flooding, I can understand why.  I'd be surprised if the mud bank is particularly ancient but if it is I'd like to know more about its history.  Good luck with the research.

 

[Pitlamp]

There is quite a lot of information available in the caving literature already. For example the late Bill Spencer made notes about the sediments on the Main Chamber floor over several decades of visits. (He was doing this on the 1947 winch meet - the year the body was found at the foot of East Slope - for example.) This is published in CPC stuff under a title such as "Changes in the sediment floor of Gaping Gill Main Chamber" (or something like that).

Another useful author to search for material on this of course would be Dick Glover.

Brave Duck - I bet your own excellent club library has CPC indexes (it was 1980s or early 1990s if I remember rightly) so if you do a search within the author list you'll find Bill's article and (I suspect) other relevant ones written by Bill and Dick.

 

[Peter Burgess]

Well Graham,The archaeologist's have used plant material to date the dams in Velvet Bottom to Roman.
I suspect the GG mud bank is older than Roman.So a method for dating this material does exist.

The intrest is that there are no layers or bedding ,no sand and no gravel.It is about four to five feet thick.It does have vertical joints and where these are exposed it shows an Orange Iron? mineral has formed along these cracks,due to oxidation I suppose.
If it was formed in a one off catastrophic event  a date would add to our knowlage of GG and may tie in with other events in the Dales.

Apologies for an aside from the main topic, but as was pointed out at the NAMHO conference this year, the organic material in the silt behind the dam was dated to Roman times, but this does not automatically mean that the dams are Roman.

 

[Andyj23UK]

at the risk of sounding daft - dont the BPC and CPC have any info , colated from thier winch meets ?

i have only been down once [ bpc meet in 2010 ] but it was taped off to stop the public randomly trampling it

so niavely i assume that whover taped it off this year took a little more than a passing interest in its size / shape , and same the year before ...... and before that ???????????

i would seem to me a very easy task for one person to do in < 30 minuites

 

[braveduck]

Andyj,The Mud bank has been taped off for the last two years on winch meets,to prevent the public from falling off it ,there are five foot drops all the way round.Without a good head light it is a danger.
We do not mind the public trampling it, we do not want them to fall off.
You have missed the point,read my first post again.We know it is getting smaller year by year.
What I would like to know is,how old is it?That will take more than thirty minutes.

 

[speleotel]

i have only been down once [ bpc meet in 2010 ] but it was taped off to stop the public randomly trampling it

To add to Braveducks comments (written at the same time);

This years taping off of the mud bank was predominantly to prevent the visitors falling off the vertical edges and crumbling edges of the silt bank whilst they are busy looking up and around and to prevent them turning an ankle in one of the vertical cracks that were breaking up the silt area close to the wall. You were able to access the main body of the beach area.

so niavely i assume that whover taped it off this year took a little more than a passing interest in its size / shape , and same the year before ...... and before that ???????????

I took on the job to do the taping off the area this year. It was the first time of me doing it (I was escaping the hard labour above ground) so apologies I do not have a detailed visual comparison with previous years, the topography of the whole floor does obviously change year upon year and the beach area looks freshly washed/shaped with the banks looking water cut; there was also lots of fresh flood debris in the crack in the back wall near the bank with what looks like syphoning of the water.

The perk to the job was having the chamber all to myself which was just awesome.

i would seem to me a very easy task for one person to do in < 30 minuites

Well volunteered! We wait to hear your findings.