An update on the situation at Llanelly Quarry Pot.
Myself and Gareth Farr from BCC took a look at the latest collapse on Sat 15th Mar. We asked around the club for volunteers and returned on the afternoon of the following Sat, the 22nd. Half a dozen people were there over a period of a couple of hours. We arrived to find that the entrance had already been partially reopened, to the point where black space could be seen. We soon found out that this had been done by Adrian Fawcet of CSS, in the morning before we turned up! We carried out more work, removing a fair sized block that was perched on a steep slope, just above the entrance, cleared the trench in front of the entrance more and started to remove some of the huge pile of overburden covering the scaffolding and timber frame that covers the natural entrance rift.
On Wed 21st May, myself, Gareth and Harri Durban returned, for an evening trip into the cave. We still had to dig our way in, finding a fair amount of small loose rock, that we couldn't avoid dislodging down the entrance rift. A pleasant trip in the cave was had. We removed a lot of conservation tape, in the upstream section of the streamway, that had become shredded, presumably by flood waters.
There is interest in both BCC and CSS in finding a possible longer term solution to keeping the entrance open, with a few ideas being suggested. The biggest concern that a few of us have, is the enormous weight of boulders and mud, pressing down on the entrance cage. The timber looks rotten and some of the scaff is pretty rusty. If the cage was to give way, it would be very serious.
