Just Rob and I tonight (TAP) and you know what that means? – Cool shit normally happens.
Well tonight was cursed!
We met early (6pm) expecting the sump to be open and a good stomp around the Master Cave. The first problem was warm beers, closely followed by problem 2 – unable to get wetsuits on! This was really problematic and I managed to nearly de-glove my fingers trying to stretch the neoprene over my sweaty carcass. Temperatures eased once we made our descent, almost a little too cold. We dumped SRT gear at Inglorious and headed for Vulgarious. The pool enroute in The Wet West felt ice cold and it made me wonder how cool the duck would be. We progressed along Vulgarious and popped out in RAT. When I hit the T-junction I felt no extreme draught which seemed a worrying sign and Rob soon hollered up that it was definitely still sumped – Joy! For whatever reason the tube heading over the sump which creates a vocal connection to the airbell upstream was pissing out water! This has never really flown before so quite why it has decided to start in the middle of an extremely dry period is baffling. The only other thing that seems to flow at the moment is For Buck’s Sake and this never seems to change. (Note The Master Cave was barely flowing!)
So with that dampening our horizons we started off drilling the large 16m x 500mm hole for Rob’s tablet. Rob was excited (literally) and with only 30mm to go he had a quick breather to note how hot the drill had got. He continued with his hole and in seconds pulled the drill back out with half the drill bit missing – bugger! He hastily slammed the drill down in front of me and threatened to drown himself in Sump 2. After talking him down off the ledge we didn’t have many more options left for this evening’s trips and it was only 8:15pm. Rob, now angry with the world decided he was going to free dive through sump 2a and rig a hard line for the free dive. He made it look easy, tied to a rope with the drill halfway along said rope – I worried for what seemed like a few minutes but in hindsight was probably 10 seconds. We made vocal contact through the pissing inlet tube but could audibly hear nowt! Next I heard drilling and all seemed ok. Rob soon arrived back with me in RAT declaring it was the best free-dive in Derbyshire. I asked how sump 2b was and he declared that he’d forgotten to look so off he went back through the sump. He ran all the way along Winking Passage to the Junction with the Master Cave just to check it was still there (hence noting the flow in there).
Once Rob was safely on my side of the sump we headed back along Vulgarious and Rob managed to twist my arm and drag me up the Wet West Caverns for a look at the sump at the end and the Ireby Sump Buster. The sump was pretty low but not open. After inspecting the equipment and declaring it doomed I had a quick look at the cross rift which spent a few trips on way back when and noted it looked a lot more enticing than from our previous trip at the back end of last year. Rob noted a draught going up it which he said changes everything (read that as you may).
The return trip was rancid and definitely warranted miner’s knee pads. We retreated for a well deserved pint in The Moon – early night for us, wasn’t the planned trip but could’ve been worse!