Team bolt: Rob and Dylan
Team photo & poke: Jon, Joe and Chris
Days of discussing potential objectives were finally condensed over pre-beers, based on who turned up. Nice to see Chris turn up again after us nearly breaking him last week. Seemingly yet another sucker for punishment getting engrained into the team.
Steady progress to Race Against Time; Loper Lust and Vulgarious really are getting bigger and easier with each trip through (although I wouldn’t say pleasant yet!). Our five filthy bodies were then cleansed by the freedive and in seemingly no time we were all at the second chamber just before the SMMC Upstream Sump. I wouldn’t say this place is getting boring, I still walk along it in wonder each time, but the repetition of coming here every week is certainly making it feel more homely. The few boulder ruckles that you need to pass are now memorable manoeuvres rather than tricky obstacles.
Chris Hibberts in the Upstream SMMC, by JonP
Whilst the others carried on to photograph the passage between Upstream Sumps 1 and 2, me and Dylan made a base camp to begin our evenings objective, to bolt climb up into an alluring rift passage up in the roof. A quick lesson to Dylan about which way to hold a Stop and I set off, already apologising to him in advanced that my bolt climb is full of frustrating faff and that I might be a while. Thankfully the rock was kind and the perched boulders mostly stayed perched, and I got to the lip of the passage in only 3 bolts. Ahead looked pretty good so I stuck in a Y-hang (safety first of course) and let Dylan come up and join me, stripping the gear on the way.
His excitement was higher than mine as we walked along a ~4m high rift passage, probably because it’s one of his first tastes of original exploration, but also because to me it just felt like yet another trip in Intake Dale Mine. The rift about 1m wide, the walls very clean, the floor and roof in places pretty loose and scary. The main difference, which I checked hard after this realisation, was this was not man-made at all. After 20m or so the rift got narrower and more full of loose slabs, so I stripped off my SRT kit and navigated a tight route through. It ended in a small muddy tube which I though had quite a good draught coming out, but in hindsight I think this was a circular draught from my body heat (which was quite surprising as we were both pretty cold by this point). The way on is blocked by a small flake which will be easily removed with a hammer and the echo ahead suggests it gets bigger, so we’ll have to return.
We turned around and abseiled down our evening’s accomplishment, perfectly timed as the others just arrived back. They had had a poke in the choke just before the Upstream Sump 2 and found a few new voids but unfortunately no significant way on. Still hard evidence of miners alludes us but there’s soft evidence all over this choke.
We all then started the long trip out, feeling much longer now as our bodies get cold and tired, although Joe still had plenty enough energy to be climbing up in the roof in places to look for new ways on. We made the starlit surface in dribs and drabs, welcomed warmly by post-beer avec pork scratching and bacon razzles! If we’re going to have to get used to not making last orders, this is on point.