Rob & Luke
After a hard week Luke was totally out of enthusiasm so I was grateful and surprised that he even turned up. Pre-beers didn’t even seem to help much, and we bumbled off to the end of Cussey. There was no way Luke wanted to get caked up in Loperamide Lust, so we planned to bolt climb the mined shaft we could see up after the trip two weeks ago.
I kitted up and with Luke sat totally in the line of fire I freed up the 15m shaft, putting in the occasional bolt for protection. This shaft has been drilled from above, through solid rock, so it was a pretty easy climb and I didn’t even drop too much stuff on Lukey Babes below.
At the top I rerigged and he came up to join me, then I set of up a muddy slope which was the only way on. A little duck into a roof at the top showed a terminal mud collapse, bugger. Not even a hole for a draught, so we must have been wrong last trip as we thought there was a good draught going up.
This disappoint was made slightly better by the discovery of an old pipe and a very strange stal. The latter was about 2m long and a constant ~10mm in diameter, and ran very close to a wall but didn’t touch it at all. Maybe a calcited root (although ~30m deep here) or wire rope, but certainly not obvious! I gave it a delicate flick and it vibrated very much like a long straw (not that I normally enjoy wobbling long straws, honest). Weird.
Luke descended then I rigged a pull through (twice as very time was a good 5m too short, oops) and we met in the always impressive Inglorious Bastards. From here it was 45 mins out, although neither of us were in a rush.
So there’s no way on in the mine to the west, so it’s now all down to the two muddy crawls now. It’s amazing how hard it’s proving to connecting this cave!