After no trip last week we were gagging to get down Cussey and have a poke at the end of Luper Lust, which was left at a too small hole down into a chamber below with a huge draught coming up. During pre-beers me n Jeff put the world to right then headed on down.
The cave was drier than I had expected after last week’s rain and in no time we were dawdling in Inglorious Bastards delaying getting filthy. I headed in first with drilling gear, followed by Jeff. Whilst he rolled around in the filthy crawl I started capping the hole bigger. Conditions were cramped but not too muddy compared to the bit Jeff was in! The third cap went off earlier than I was ready for and the edge of the rock dropped down the hole taking the capping rod with it! Thankfully the rock removed was huge and we were able to comfortably get through, otherwise it would have been a wasted trip!
A meter drop down landed us in a low room with dry mud on the floor, with enough crazy paving formations to get a southerner excited. The only way on was a small letter box on the far wall underneath a calcite false ceiling, which was the source of the draught. A little digging got me through to a flatout phreatic passage maybe 1m wide and sloping down at 30 degrees. It looked a bit like a death trap but I reckoned I could probably turn around at the bottom, and worse case Jeff could save me somehow. I slid down this as far as I could, phone out in front taking some final selfies before my long and slow death. Unfortunately the mud got too close to the roof after only about 5m. Here the passage can be seen to flatten out, weird (draught driven?) calcite formations littering the roof pendants. It looks very much like beyond the end of a dig we did in Doom back in 2018:
http://www.eldonpotholeclub.org.uk/homepage/current-uk-projects/doom-articles
Jeff digging through the letter box
Rob head first at the dig face
The bitter end, for now....
It’s going to be a tricky place to dig, head down in this little tube, but there’s plenty of stacking space in the room behind and its bound to be easier than digging from the other side.
Thankfully it was just large enough to turn around, and we spent a little time digging the letter box larger, again whilst bitching and moaning about everything wrong in the world. We then headed back out to Inglorious, each carrying 500kg of mud on our suits, helmets and faces. The trip up and out was steady, due to a mixture of a good session digging and the additional weight we were now slowly depositing around the place. Next plan is to get a team each side and see if we can do a voice connection…