Urgent - Eastwater Cavern : Gladmans and Lolly Pot not currently usable

[CSCC]

Eastwater Cavern, Priddy. On Sunday 10th August an attempt to replace the anchors on Gladmans and Lolly Pot was made. Due to various reasons only two anchors on Gladmans were placed. There are currently no anchors on Lolly Pot. The anchors that were in place snapped while attempting to remove them with a 10cm long spanner. With this in mind, all the old in-situ rigging should be regarded as very probably unsafe.

Different bits are required and these have been ordered. A further trip is planned for Sunday 17th August to finish the work.

Please see the Access Page https://access-guide.cscc.org.uk/ for up to date information on this and other caves.

 

[andrew]

This is now fixed. Mainly the spits were drilled out and an anchor placed in the same hope, with additional anchors added to meet modern standards.
There are four anchors on Gladmans, two backups and two main hang. Three on Lolly, two backup and one main hang. At some point in the future a further anchor may be added to Lolly, however the 10mm spit caused problems, the core bit was not long enough to remove it and then snapped.

Andrew
CSCC Equipment Officer.

 

[andrewmcleod]

Thread necromancy, but are there any plans to update this page:

Equipment [Council of Southern Caving Clubs]

cscc.org.uk

with information about Eastwater?

I _believe_ there are supposed to be new resin anchors on the 35' pitch, but this is only based on second-hand accounts as I can't find any online information about them? (e.g. can you do SRT from them?)
I assume the first pitch of the Twin Verticals is still on a natural + spit and the second pitch still on the mixture of old and new stainless (non-official) anchors?

(incidentally I should probably get the details of your method for drilling out spits at some point; I have somewhere in mind where this might be useful)

 

[andrew]

Thread necromancy, but are there any plans to update this page:

Equipment [Council of Southern Caving Clubs]

cscc.org.uk

with information about Eastwater?

It appears I might have missed the diagram, well the whole cave, out when I changed the pages, sorry, yes it is on my list.

I _believe_ there are supposed to be new resin anchors on the 35' pitch, but this is only based on second-hand accounts as I can't find any online information about them? (e.g. can you do SRT from them?)

There are resin anchors on the 35". They are not rigged for placed for SRT. They might be useable for SRT if you took a rope protector. From memory there is a potential for deviation on the left hand wall, facing down, however it is very small and I have not used it myself.

I assume the first pitch of the Twin Verticals is still on a natural + spit and the second pitch still on the mixture of old and new stainless (non-official) anchors?

Sometime ago, some through bolts or (misnamed) eco anchors were added by people unknown. They are in a reasonable place, and make it difficult to put in resin anchors, so currently nothing else has been done.

(incidentally I should probably get the details of your method for drilling out spits at some point; I have somewhere in mind where this might be useful)

Happy to discuss at some point, but in simple terms very small tile core bits work extremely well. Also removed a through bolt yesterday, one we had placed in a rock to try out the technic. In the next week or two we will be trying it for real