Rob, Luke.
With the lockdown still in full swing we are still caving with the team spilt. It was mine and Rob's turn to cave together this week and we had a solid plan down Cussey.
After a quick catch up and pre-beer we headed off down. The plan was to bolt climb up the far west end of Inglorious Bastards, unfortunately with all this new stuff found it now means you have to drag all your SRT kit with you. This very quickly becomes very annoying as you navigate the squeeze at the bottom of the Shattered Dreams dig. I had no issues with this last time I went though, with no kit though I will add, Jeff had had a little moan about it the previous week. It is easy, as long as you pick the sweet spot to glide through if you don’t get the right spot gravity ensures that you really fuck it up. I messed it up. Finally getting myself unstuck and catching up with Rob we came to the pitch head to Inglorious.
Down at the bottom we wasted no time in getting started, I had a quick look around whilst Rob kitted up. After 5 bolts he was up the 9m pitch and across a short traverse. I followed him up and we found ourselves in a rift passage heading off west and it was Mine! It has been a strange project this, hoping to find mine over all the new cave we have been exploring.
Luke following Rob up the bolt climb into the mined passages beyond
After a small climb up, we found ourselves at the base of a climbing shaft, at least 15m up. The passage continues along into a worked vein. We came to a 7m pitch down, very muddy and lots of big boulders. No way on though. At top of the pitch, you can hear a noisy draught, possibly heading up through boulders in the roof. Would be a very hard digging project.
We had another good look at the climbing shaft and we very quickly realised that we would not have enough rope for another bolt climb, so we surveyed our way out. Another 35m added to this never-ending project!