Interesting haul
So a few weeks before lockdown saw me on a solo explore in a north wales spar mine, finding the entrance and setting my callout, off I went to explore the relatively large underground workings
After 20 minutes or so exploring a couple of chambers, my journey took me to an adit at the end of which broke into a window overlooking a deep open stope and lowe and behold I was not the only one there that day, looking down onto a ledge I was greeted with the sight of a sheep who had obviously stumbled over the edge and had fallen the 30or so meters onto this precarious position on the ledge along with his friend who was not quite so lucky.
After a few minutes of looking at him, I was able to conclude he was not in bad health and can't have been down there too long. Me being the animal lover I am, I knew I couldn't just leave him there to suffer alone. it was now just a matter of trying to access him and come up with a plan!
https://flic.kr/p/2iYNcGn by
gareth owen, on Flickr
Carrying on through the mine underground I was able to drop a few levels down various ladders and make my way to a long chamber with daylight at the end. A small crawl leads to the level of the open stope where the sheep was stranded, unfortunately, the end of this crawl was the exact place where the second sheep had met his fate, so involved crawling over the now rotting body to access the ledge.
Now on the ledge, the sheep the was still alive was obviously very timid and nervous and with every step, I took forward the closer he went to the edge of the ledge, so rather than chasing him off the edge I decided to stay put, by the smell of his friend it was clear they had been there a few days and with no available food source there I decided my best option was to leave him behind some of my lunch and hopefully he would appreciate a couple of my smoked bacon and cheddar sausage rolls whilst I would head to the surface and come up with some game plan.
Upon returning to my vehicle I was able to contact a caver/mine explorer I knew lived locally who id only ever met online and was keen to come and rig a system to try and haul the sheep to safety as I knew I could not accomplish anything on my own he was still in work at the time but would come over as soon as he had finished.
A couple of hours passed as I waited for help to arrive and a few inquisitive locals who were walking their dog came up and asked what was going on as I was packing my kit bags with rope, slings and all the SRT bits I thought would be useful I had in the van with me, quite keen to do their bit to help they went about trying to track down the owner of said sheep.
https://flic.kr/p/2iYSvEc by
gareth owen
By now it was getting dark outside and help arrived along with the farmer, Together we decided to come up with a gameplan, One of us would abseil the stope onto the far side of the platform and the other two would go through the mine and to the other side, where the abseiler would chase the sheep into our direction where we could grab him and get him into a child's safety harness and haul him up to the top of the stope using a 1 to 1 system pulled by the farmers quad bike,
https://flic.kr/p/2iYNcGx by
gareth owen,
Not owning a traction device I decided to put my hand jammer after the pulley to create a 1-way system so the quad-bike could reset the rope (As tension was released the jammer would back up against the pulley that was attached to a strop on a tree above the stope) as he couldn't drive back far enough to haul in one go as there was a hedgerow in the way
I'm glad to say this all worked flawlessly but we were not expecting him so have so much life in him whilst trying to get the harness on which took several attempts before getting it on.
and the sheep was returned to his flock alongside a very grateful farmer
https://flic.kr/p/2iYQWAT by
gareth owen, on Flickr
All in all, this was a good deed well done and a good excuse to meet up with a fellow caver for the first time.