Gerbil007
Member
With much of the South West under Amber weather warnings for rainfall yesterday, the conversations in the MCG lounge were generally along the lines of, "Where are you caving today?" with the reply being something like, "Dunno, we're going to see what everyone else is up to."
Before long, this ubiquitously indecisive attitude caused something of a critical mass of people drinking tea and eating second and third breakfasts, before overcrowding forced a few people into the changing rooms and out into the maelstrom.
Thankfully, Mike Waterworth, Anya Keatley and Ellen Cooper knew exactly where they were going and why; Upper Flood, to deposit some pilfered 250 gallon (well, quite large anyway) drums for use in the de-slopping of South Passage in preparation for more (probably futile, but undoubtedly 'fun') digging, should we ever get more than 7 consecutive minutes without rain this year. Additionally, Ellen had never seen Neverland, so it would have been outrageous not to nip in for a butchers.
To give a little bit of background, Mike, myself and others have been applying pressure to South Passage sump for quite some time now. It represents the lowest point in the cave and is accessed via an impressive, but utterly squalid fossil passage which has, in the form of a distinct canyon and large pots in the floor, clear evidence that it once took a pretty major stream. The static, mud choked sump backs up if there's even a hint of drizzle, but in drought conditions does more or less dry up. In order to be able to dig it more often, we constructed a concrete dam and installed a series of hand operated bilge pumps which proved highly effective in removing the water. Only problem being this still left us with limitless quantities of gloriously glutinous mud, which we'd done our best to manage into sandbags and behind makeshift dams (constructed from the aforementioned sandbags of slop.) On the last pushing trip, way back in September 2014, we succeeded in getting Mike through the sump into a small chamber where more mud blockages were encountered. This was a completely desperate endeavour involving a large number of cavers who quickly filled the bottom of the passage with CO2. After Mike had popped through the sump, I had one last go at wriggling through, but found myself seeing starbursts of light as I frantically gasped at the foul air. We retreated (slowly in my case - thanks Cap'n Chris for nursemaiding me out of there that day!) and I found myself very busy in the intervening period thanks to my son, who'd only arrived a couple of weeks previously. Fast forwarding to late 2015, Mike and I re-visited the site to check all the engineering was still serviceable and ponder the way forward. We arrived at the conclusion that we'd have to try and remove as much of the slop from the bottom as possible, leaving us with a much more manageable, water only sump that we'd hopefully be able to pump dry and pass with fewer cavers and therefore less CO2 buildup.
Although the video below is a bit further back up South Passage, it does give a general feel for the ambience of the place...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MahfXyp6DL0
This one is at one of the two fixed pumps...
http://youtu.be/QXeJ1raP_KY
Anyway, back to yesterday. Mike, Anya and Ellen departed with three drums, leaving me still faffing indecisively at MCG HQ, before finally opting to follow them in. Wanting to make myself useful, I took in a replacement Daren drum full of food for the rescue dump beyond the boulder choke, to replace stuff that was close to expiry, a smaller drum which would go to South Passage and a set of Secateurs to cut the required holes in the drums. Traipsing down the track to Velvet Bottom, I was genuinely concerned at the possibility of a falling tree branch curtailing my trip. The weather was wild even by Mendip standards, with arboreal casualties littering the path. Thankfully I made it to the entrance unscathed and left a couple of dog walkers looking suitably bemused as I vanished into the rakes before their eyes.
The entrance crawl was easily as wet as I've ever seen it, with a significant stream and dozens of small inlets pumping in the roof. Progress was steady owing to the awkward bag and my lack of condition, which I attribute entirely to the restrictions imposed on me as a family man (and just possibly some mild dietary intemperance.) Midnight streamway was impressively swollen and noisy, but this actually aided progress as it carried the buoyant bag downstream ahead of me. Sadly, this provided only temporary assistance as I soon reached the high level bypass passage which is a flat out wriggle through a chiseled out calcite crawl. Luckily the bag behaved and I quickly got the chance to cool off in the lavatory trap. This obstacle had previously proven troublesome to Mike on a trip in similar conditions when, on exiting, he and his party had found it to be sumped, with a decent flow emanating from the normally static pool! In order to avoid a lengthy wait or sketchy free-dive, he'd hand dug the retaining mud bank on the downstream side, creating usable airspace and facilitating their escape. Next up for me was the canal, where again the extra water once more proved useful in floating the bag and indeed me, in what is normally a fairly strenuous flat out wallow. Again, this relief was only temporary as I began my traverse of the boulder choke. The numerous squeezes and 3D body puzzles in the Upper Flood choke have all been eased since the 2006 breakthrough, but still provide a pretty good workout even when unencumbered. Adding even a small tacklesack seems to nearly double the effort required.
It was around this point when I began to wonder if my better half had recently changed our brand of laundry tablets, owing to a strong, but not entirely unpleasant smell of Lavender. The mystery was soon solved as I caught up with Mike, Anya and Ellen, who'd been having an 'entertaining' time maneuvering the large drums through the choke. Many of the constricted bits are triangular; less than ideal with large cuboid drums! It turned out that the drums had in a previous life stored Lavender and Jojoba essential oils (essential why, exactly?) Their new purpose would be considerably less glamorous! Incidentally guys, it IS pronounced Ho-hoba, so I wasn't just being pretentious.
Eventually we passed the choke, reaching the ever impressive Departure Lounge. It is worth explaining the nomenclature of the cave here. On the 2006 breakthrough trip, one of the first explorers was Julie Hesketh who lives in Edinburgh. The temptation to explore the ongoing, stomping sized virgin streamway overcame the fact that she had a flight to catch from Bristol later in the day, leading the party to end their exploration at the point where the stream enters a tight rift; Terminal 1. Julie did manage to just catch her flight, but didn't have time for a shower. God knows what her fellow passengers made of their bedraggled, mud splattered but deliriously happy fellow traveller.
Back to the trip, our party hunkered down for a while in the Departure Lounge while we explored and replaced the contents of the old rescue dump food cache. We wolfed down the well out of date, but still very palatable, Mars Bars, but left the emergency ration biscuits and boil in bag meals in case we were peckish later. Mike also did some 'delicate' surgery on the drums with the secateurs, with frequent helpful reminders from the rest of us not to puncture himself as he wielded the implement. One too many helpful warnings led to the offer of an impromptu vasectomy, so I left him to it.
Relieved of some weight now, we stomped ahead in an effort to warm up again, playing a large scale game of underground pooh sticks with the drums on the way. The streamway after the Departure Lounge retains impressive proportions and provides plenty of interest in the form of beds of fossils, impressive formations and occasional ducks and crawls in the stream. Progress was pretty enjoyable and Terminal 1 was soon reached, where we climbed out of the streamway and headed though the fossil passage to Royal Icing Junction. At this point, your options are, East, South or West Passage, with the original entrance to Neverland being passed en route to West Passage. This route is strictly off limits now, owing to the spectacular profusion of delicate formations that are almost impossible to avoid in the awkward passage. Even the floor is pristine crystal. The original explorers took off their oversuits and proceeded with extreme caution. Following the exploration and discovery of significant amounts of passage, it was decided that it was just too delicate to take traffic, hence the name Neverland, because you could never go there. Thankfully, a bypass has subsequently been dug which allows access to some of Neverland via West Passage, where we headed next after depositing the drums at Royal Icing Junction for onmove to South Passage on a later trip.
West Passage starts with some enjoyable sliding along compacted mud, helpfully lubricated by the odd puddle on the way. Before long, Chuckle Choke (renamed Chuckle's Joke after the thunderous river which could be heard there, turned out to be a mere babbling brook in an immature rift) was reached and shortly after, the dug connection with Neverland.
West Passage does continue for a good way beyond this to a roomy terminal chamber which contains a death defying, but draughty vertical boulder choke. This choke has been 'tickled' in various ways in the past, with dramatic results! One particularly interesting trip saw the author prodding boulders from below with a scaff bar, protected by a shield fashioned out of a steel grille. The resulting collapse fired the bar through the grille, clattering me in the jaw and glancing off Mike Richardson's helmet behind me. The shield proved to be entirely ineffectual, but thanks to a healthy dose of brown adrenaline, I'd leapt clear just in time to avoid the boulder avalanche.
Back at the Neverland connection, we thrutched our way up the dug tube, accompanied by a small waterfall which provided light refreshment. The breakthrough point into Neverland is at the top of a steep calcite ramp onto which the caver is unceremoniously disgorged head first. At the bottom is a pool where oversuits are doffed and any further mud cleaned off with brushes. Left here leads to Pork Pie passage, right to the further reaches of Neverland. This is relatively little explored and probably offers excellent prospects for extension, but owing to the highly decorated approach, yet another bypass is currently being engineered from further down West Passage before exploration can continue.
We headed left, passing what are undoubtedly some of the finest curtains to be found in the UK en route to Pork Pie passage. This begins at a T-junction at the bottom of a high aven. Right looks promising but closes down and is highly decorated with tiny crystals, giving the formations a velvety appearance. A couple of years ago, I did my first unsupervised bolt climb up the aven, finding a small but pretty grotto, but sadly no way on. Early in the climb, I learned a good lesson in bolt placement when I observed that the bolt on which I was hanging while stood in my etriers was just barely perceptibly creeping out of the rock! I was still low enough to mean bolt failure would mean hitting the deck, but high enough to mean that this could have been very serious indeed. Thankfully, I managed to ease the pressure on the bolt by doing a spiderman impression and finding some tiny holds to take my weight, before getting a better placement above.
We headed left up the slope, which is so spectacularly festooned with pretties that superlatives are pointless. You just have to go there and see it for yourself. On the way up, I spent some time pointing my light upwards, looking for a possible way on that I'd spotted during the earlier bolt climb. Given the size of the passage here, it seems at least possible that there may be more to find by bolting upwards.
After everyone had taken their fill of the splendor of this area, we re-suited and booted before re-tracing our steps to Royal Icing Junction where we decided to abandon our tentative idea of trying to force our way back through Muddy Hell as we were all pretty tired and wanted to conserve energy for the outward journey. This aptly named collector's item is at the end of East Passage, down a slimy, body sized tube. At the bottom is a deep pool below a narrow, but high rift and a mud floored chamber. In 2012, Mike Richardson and I had noticed a stream flowing out of a floor level slot in the wall of the chamber. A couple of digging sessions saw the creation of a hilariously muddy pond, but with some creative bailing techiques and makeshift dams (made somehow out of more or less liquid mud!) we squeezed through into a short section of rift passage with a decent sized chamber at the east end. West leads to a short sump, which we proved connected to Rift Series by shoving through drain rods on a subsequent surveying trip. Our intention is to try and clear this area sufficiently to keep the way into Muddy Hell open, so we can attack the east end chamber. The video below gives some insight into the joyous conditions in the area...
http://youtu.be/kPAqAtjaxzl
Shortly after regaining the stream, Mike couldn't resist having a look up a small inlet he'd never explored. Despite my fatigue, I was curious for a look too, so followed him into the small, muddy crawl. Progress wasn't too difficult and we soon reached an awkward, handlined climb that led to a squalid and tight bedding plane, from where we could just hear a distant rumble. The irrepressible Mike inserted himself feet first into the mire, but eventually ran out of enthusiasm when his helmet jammed sideways. Being a tad more stoutly built than Mike, I opted out at this point and we headed back to the main streamway, with me making a meal of the climb on the way. To be fair, both the climb and ourselves were pretty well lubricated with mud, but Mike made it look embarrassingly easy. On examining the survey, it turns out we were in Charnel Passage, which likely connects back to the main streamway, hence the distant rumble.
We caught the girls up just shy of the Departure Lounge, where we paused to sample the boil in the bag meals and survival biscuits from the old food cache. I tried the Chicken Tikka and Mike and Anya opted for Veggie Tomato noodles. Ellen passed on both. Even though we ate them cold, they were surpisingly palatable and raised morale before tackling the choke again. Less of a success were the survival biscuits. To be honest, if I was ever in a situation which required me to rely on them for sustenance, I'd probably just choose to end it all long before they ran out!
The rest of the trip was uneventful, if a bit slow, but we did observe that water levels had markedly increased during the trip, turning parts of the canal into a duck and providing an active flow from the lavatory trap.
We regained the surface to find we just about had some daylight left and trudged up the track back to the MCG, where hot showers, tea and beer eased aching limbs.
Before long, this ubiquitously indecisive attitude caused something of a critical mass of people drinking tea and eating second and third breakfasts, before overcrowding forced a few people into the changing rooms and out into the maelstrom.
Thankfully, Mike Waterworth, Anya Keatley and Ellen Cooper knew exactly where they were going and why; Upper Flood, to deposit some pilfered 250 gallon (well, quite large anyway) drums for use in the de-slopping of South Passage in preparation for more (probably futile, but undoubtedly 'fun') digging, should we ever get more than 7 consecutive minutes without rain this year. Additionally, Ellen had never seen Neverland, so it would have been outrageous not to nip in for a butchers.
To give a little bit of background, Mike, myself and others have been applying pressure to South Passage sump for quite some time now. It represents the lowest point in the cave and is accessed via an impressive, but utterly squalid fossil passage which has, in the form of a distinct canyon and large pots in the floor, clear evidence that it once took a pretty major stream. The static, mud choked sump backs up if there's even a hint of drizzle, but in drought conditions does more or less dry up. In order to be able to dig it more often, we constructed a concrete dam and installed a series of hand operated bilge pumps which proved highly effective in removing the water. Only problem being this still left us with limitless quantities of gloriously glutinous mud, which we'd done our best to manage into sandbags and behind makeshift dams (constructed from the aforementioned sandbags of slop.) On the last pushing trip, way back in September 2014, we succeeded in getting Mike through the sump into a small chamber where more mud blockages were encountered. This was a completely desperate endeavour involving a large number of cavers who quickly filled the bottom of the passage with CO2. After Mike had popped through the sump, I had one last go at wriggling through, but found myself seeing starbursts of light as I frantically gasped at the foul air. We retreated (slowly in my case - thanks Cap'n Chris for nursemaiding me out of there that day!) and I found myself very busy in the intervening period thanks to my son, who'd only arrived a couple of weeks previously. Fast forwarding to late 2015, Mike and I re-visited the site to check all the engineering was still serviceable and ponder the way forward. We arrived at the conclusion that we'd have to try and remove as much of the slop from the bottom as possible, leaving us with a much more manageable, water only sump that we'd hopefully be able to pump dry and pass with fewer cavers and therefore less CO2 buildup.
Although the video below is a bit further back up South Passage, it does give a general feel for the ambience of the place...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MahfXyp6DL0
This one is at one of the two fixed pumps...
http://youtu.be/QXeJ1raP_KY
Anyway, back to yesterday. Mike, Anya and Ellen departed with three drums, leaving me still faffing indecisively at MCG HQ, before finally opting to follow them in. Wanting to make myself useful, I took in a replacement Daren drum full of food for the rescue dump beyond the boulder choke, to replace stuff that was close to expiry, a smaller drum which would go to South Passage and a set of Secateurs to cut the required holes in the drums. Traipsing down the track to Velvet Bottom, I was genuinely concerned at the possibility of a falling tree branch curtailing my trip. The weather was wild even by Mendip standards, with arboreal casualties littering the path. Thankfully I made it to the entrance unscathed and left a couple of dog walkers looking suitably bemused as I vanished into the rakes before their eyes.
The entrance crawl was easily as wet as I've ever seen it, with a significant stream and dozens of small inlets pumping in the roof. Progress was steady owing to the awkward bag and my lack of condition, which I attribute entirely to the restrictions imposed on me as a family man (and just possibly some mild dietary intemperance.) Midnight streamway was impressively swollen and noisy, but this actually aided progress as it carried the buoyant bag downstream ahead of me. Sadly, this provided only temporary assistance as I soon reached the high level bypass passage which is a flat out wriggle through a chiseled out calcite crawl. Luckily the bag behaved and I quickly got the chance to cool off in the lavatory trap. This obstacle had previously proven troublesome to Mike on a trip in similar conditions when, on exiting, he and his party had found it to be sumped, with a decent flow emanating from the normally static pool! In order to avoid a lengthy wait or sketchy free-dive, he'd hand dug the retaining mud bank on the downstream side, creating usable airspace and facilitating their escape. Next up for me was the canal, where again the extra water once more proved useful in floating the bag and indeed me, in what is normally a fairly strenuous flat out wallow. Again, this relief was only temporary as I began my traverse of the boulder choke. The numerous squeezes and 3D body puzzles in the Upper Flood choke have all been eased since the 2006 breakthrough, but still provide a pretty good workout even when unencumbered. Adding even a small tacklesack seems to nearly double the effort required.
It was around this point when I began to wonder if my better half had recently changed our brand of laundry tablets, owing to a strong, but not entirely unpleasant smell of Lavender. The mystery was soon solved as I caught up with Mike, Anya and Ellen, who'd been having an 'entertaining' time maneuvering the large drums through the choke. Many of the constricted bits are triangular; less than ideal with large cuboid drums! It turned out that the drums had in a previous life stored Lavender and Jojoba essential oils (essential why, exactly?) Their new purpose would be considerably less glamorous! Incidentally guys, it IS pronounced Ho-hoba, so I wasn't just being pretentious.
Eventually we passed the choke, reaching the ever impressive Departure Lounge. It is worth explaining the nomenclature of the cave here. On the 2006 breakthrough trip, one of the first explorers was Julie Hesketh who lives in Edinburgh. The temptation to explore the ongoing, stomping sized virgin streamway overcame the fact that she had a flight to catch from Bristol later in the day, leading the party to end their exploration at the point where the stream enters a tight rift; Terminal 1. Julie did manage to just catch her flight, but didn't have time for a shower. God knows what her fellow passengers made of their bedraggled, mud splattered but deliriously happy fellow traveller.
Back to the trip, our party hunkered down for a while in the Departure Lounge while we explored and replaced the contents of the old rescue dump food cache. We wolfed down the well out of date, but still very palatable, Mars Bars, but left the emergency ration biscuits and boil in bag meals in case we were peckish later. Mike also did some 'delicate' surgery on the drums with the secateurs, with frequent helpful reminders from the rest of us not to puncture himself as he wielded the implement. One too many helpful warnings led to the offer of an impromptu vasectomy, so I left him to it.
Relieved of some weight now, we stomped ahead in an effort to warm up again, playing a large scale game of underground pooh sticks with the drums on the way. The streamway after the Departure Lounge retains impressive proportions and provides plenty of interest in the form of beds of fossils, impressive formations and occasional ducks and crawls in the stream. Progress was pretty enjoyable and Terminal 1 was soon reached, where we climbed out of the streamway and headed though the fossil passage to Royal Icing Junction. At this point, your options are, East, South or West Passage, with the original entrance to Neverland being passed en route to West Passage. This route is strictly off limits now, owing to the spectacular profusion of delicate formations that are almost impossible to avoid in the awkward passage. Even the floor is pristine crystal. The original explorers took off their oversuits and proceeded with extreme caution. Following the exploration and discovery of significant amounts of passage, it was decided that it was just too delicate to take traffic, hence the name Neverland, because you could never go there. Thankfully, a bypass has subsequently been dug which allows access to some of Neverland via West Passage, where we headed next after depositing the drums at Royal Icing Junction for onmove to South Passage on a later trip.
West Passage starts with some enjoyable sliding along compacted mud, helpfully lubricated by the odd puddle on the way. Before long, Chuckle Choke (renamed Chuckle's Joke after the thunderous river which could be heard there, turned out to be a mere babbling brook in an immature rift) was reached and shortly after, the dug connection with Neverland.
West Passage does continue for a good way beyond this to a roomy terminal chamber which contains a death defying, but draughty vertical boulder choke. This choke has been 'tickled' in various ways in the past, with dramatic results! One particularly interesting trip saw the author prodding boulders from below with a scaff bar, protected by a shield fashioned out of a steel grille. The resulting collapse fired the bar through the grille, clattering me in the jaw and glancing off Mike Richardson's helmet behind me. The shield proved to be entirely ineffectual, but thanks to a healthy dose of brown adrenaline, I'd leapt clear just in time to avoid the boulder avalanche.
Back at the Neverland connection, we thrutched our way up the dug tube, accompanied by a small waterfall which provided light refreshment. The breakthrough point into Neverland is at the top of a steep calcite ramp onto which the caver is unceremoniously disgorged head first. At the bottom is a pool where oversuits are doffed and any further mud cleaned off with brushes. Left here leads to Pork Pie passage, right to the further reaches of Neverland. This is relatively little explored and probably offers excellent prospects for extension, but owing to the highly decorated approach, yet another bypass is currently being engineered from further down West Passage before exploration can continue.
We headed left, passing what are undoubtedly some of the finest curtains to be found in the UK en route to Pork Pie passage. This begins at a T-junction at the bottom of a high aven. Right looks promising but closes down and is highly decorated with tiny crystals, giving the formations a velvety appearance. A couple of years ago, I did my first unsupervised bolt climb up the aven, finding a small but pretty grotto, but sadly no way on. Early in the climb, I learned a good lesson in bolt placement when I observed that the bolt on which I was hanging while stood in my etriers was just barely perceptibly creeping out of the rock! I was still low enough to mean bolt failure would mean hitting the deck, but high enough to mean that this could have been very serious indeed. Thankfully, I managed to ease the pressure on the bolt by doing a spiderman impression and finding some tiny holds to take my weight, before getting a better placement above.
We headed left up the slope, which is so spectacularly festooned with pretties that superlatives are pointless. You just have to go there and see it for yourself. On the way up, I spent some time pointing my light upwards, looking for a possible way on that I'd spotted during the earlier bolt climb. Given the size of the passage here, it seems at least possible that there may be more to find by bolting upwards.
After everyone had taken their fill of the splendor of this area, we re-suited and booted before re-tracing our steps to Royal Icing Junction where we decided to abandon our tentative idea of trying to force our way back through Muddy Hell as we were all pretty tired and wanted to conserve energy for the outward journey. This aptly named collector's item is at the end of East Passage, down a slimy, body sized tube. At the bottom is a deep pool below a narrow, but high rift and a mud floored chamber. In 2012, Mike Richardson and I had noticed a stream flowing out of a floor level slot in the wall of the chamber. A couple of digging sessions saw the creation of a hilariously muddy pond, but with some creative bailing techiques and makeshift dams (made somehow out of more or less liquid mud!) we squeezed through into a short section of rift passage with a decent sized chamber at the east end. West leads to a short sump, which we proved connected to Rift Series by shoving through drain rods on a subsequent surveying trip. Our intention is to try and clear this area sufficiently to keep the way into Muddy Hell open, so we can attack the east end chamber. The video below gives some insight into the joyous conditions in the area...
http://youtu.be/kPAqAtjaxzl
Shortly after regaining the stream, Mike couldn't resist having a look up a small inlet he'd never explored. Despite my fatigue, I was curious for a look too, so followed him into the small, muddy crawl. Progress wasn't too difficult and we soon reached an awkward, handlined climb that led to a squalid and tight bedding plane, from where we could just hear a distant rumble. The irrepressible Mike inserted himself feet first into the mire, but eventually ran out of enthusiasm when his helmet jammed sideways. Being a tad more stoutly built than Mike, I opted out at this point and we headed back to the main streamway, with me making a meal of the climb on the way. To be fair, both the climb and ourselves were pretty well lubricated with mud, but Mike made it look embarrassingly easy. On examining the survey, it turns out we were in Charnel Passage, which likely connects back to the main streamway, hence the distant rumble.
We caught the girls up just shy of the Departure Lounge, where we paused to sample the boil in the bag meals and survival biscuits from the old food cache. I tried the Chicken Tikka and Mike and Anya opted for Veggie Tomato noodles. Ellen passed on both. Even though we ate them cold, they were surpisingly palatable and raised morale before tackling the choke again. Less of a success were the survival biscuits. To be honest, if I was ever in a situation which required me to rely on them for sustenance, I'd probably just choose to end it all long before they ran out!
The rest of the trip was uneventful, if a bit slow, but we did observe that water levels had markedly increased during the trip, turning parts of the canal into a duck and providing an active flow from the lavatory trap.
We regained the surface to find we just about had some daylight left and trudged up the track back to the MCG, where hot showers, tea and beer eased aching limbs.
