19th Nov - Rob & Jeff
Pre-beers made the lightweight Frenchy fumble his way to the dig very ungracefully, but his poor performance was balanced out by me forgetting the hammer like a proper idiot. Capping away at the large boulders in the floor proved very hard work. One really big boulder seems to be holding one whole wall up but there’s not really enough space to work down the side of it.
Nearing the end of the trip we had a bit of rethink and decided that it was make or break time for the dig, so I started to have a go at the northern wall to see how unstable it was. Turns out it was very unstable and not only did it mostly bury my legs but the sound of rocks falling away in the distance below was very very encouraging.
26th Nov - Rob & Jeff
Easy plan this week, no pre-beer for Jeff, especially after giving blood an hour previous!
On the way in we installed two wooden stemples in Coconut Airways which have made that climb at least a little bit easier for my unfit lockdown body. After the collapse last week the first hour or so was very easy work, the only hard bit was for Jeff finding space for all the spoil. Thankfully that shouldn’t be a problem for much longer as a hole has opened up into the top of a rift. Access is still restricted by a few big boulders but rocks rattle away for quite a long way, with quite echoey sounds suggesting it gets at least a little bigger down there. Such a big draught coming out, it’s hard to stay warm. I tried capping the boulders but one was proving very troublesome so we need to return to have another go.
We only heard from the others once we got home, sounds like they also had a successful time down IDM (http://www.eldonpotholeclub.org.uk/homepage/current-uk-projects/intake-dale-mine/425-freedom-26-11-2020). Me thinks there’s gunna be fight what we do next week….