Rob and Jeff
Now that lockdown 2.0 has restricted our Teams to a maximum of two, the others did their own things whilst me n Jeff started afresh in Cussey. Back when we initially broke through we had two teams working, one at the Eastern front and one at the Western front. The Eastern dig went quickly and became “the way on” and the other dig (Shattered Dreams) was put on hold. Now that most of the leads in the lower stuff have dried up we decided to go have another poke at Shattered Dreams. This is the closest point to Doom, sitting 30m above and 16m horizontally to the south of a large rift cavern found back in 2012. Mostly importantly the draught in the far section of Cussey is the strongest in any part of the cave, so a connection must be close, right?
There’s a few different ways on in Shattered Dreams but the decision was made to continue sinking a shaft in the floor in a small cross rift. Here hopefully the location just slightly away from the main rift should keep us clear of the worst of the big scary boulders. The going was pretty slow as the conditions are restricted and the mud and rocks are pretty jammed in, but nevertheless Jeff pulled a good 90 minute shift whilst I worked out where to put all the spoil.
Jeff having too much fun shifting mud
I then took over and instantly caused much of it to collapse, which at least made conditions a bit easier! Soon we unfortunately unearthed a large boulder right in the way which needed capping. This was slightly disheartening. However once removed the clean-washed openness below with a huge draught coming up reinvigorated us both and the scene is now nicely set for the next trip. Breakthrough doesn’t look imminent, but it’s still making the right sounds at least…