Team: Jon / Jim
With most of Team Awesome otherwise engaged recently, with various excuses ranging from ‘working away’ to 'assisting in the research of 300 degree active lava tubes in Iceland’, it was Jon and I only tonight on a task-focused job. The job in question, to swap/install a number of dye detectors in various locations within the Stoney catchment as part of a dye tracing project being undertaken by researchers at the University of Birmingham under the guidance of Professor John Gunn.
Our first port of call was a quick dash into Streaks lower entrance. It seems de rigeur in every trip report ever to describe the pre-activity – so obviously, we met at the correct parking area, got changed into appropriate gear and went from there to the cave, went into said cave and did some caving. None of this is really what we were up to though, merely a means to an end to do the job in hand, thus:
I’d received some dye detectors earlier in the week from John, consisting of a bit of hosiery tied into a ball containing activated charcoal, intended for the capture of Fluorescein and/or Rhodamine dye depending on the path of water at the location vs. the surface dye injection site. An additional detector consisted of a cotton wool pad inside a perforated ziplock bag intended for the capture of optical brightener. The purpose of this is to enable simultaneous injection of dye at different sites, and hence identification of the different sources at the detection site. I’d ensured all the detectors were prepped with a good length of electric fence string and bagged such that the retrieved detectors could be swapped out and isolated to prevent any cross-contamination. Subsequent identification of dyes would be carried out in the lab by fluorometry.
In addition, we had a conductivity meter; intended to give an indication of the level of carbonate etc in solution, as well as a temperature reading that would assist in indicating any thermal origin of the water.
At each location we would remove the in-situ detector, securely bag it and tie the fresh detector(s) to a suitable weighty anchor (rock) to keep it submerged, note the conductivity and temperature reading, and dash onto the next, given that we had to do this in Streaks before heading to Cussey, this time though driving clad in wetsuit socks and pants, repeating the parking and changing procedure (swapping under/oversuits for wetsuits) and descending Cussey to access Doom / SMMC / Glebe to do the same at another 5 sites… it felt like a long night was ahead…
Probably time for some human interest to progress the story. It had been quite a while since I’d last visited Cussey so I was excited to get back into the swing of it for the summer. Rapid and uneventful progress was made to the shattered dreams squeeze, and feeling blasé about it I squeezed myself in.. I’d rather think it was the fact I’d brought my ‘best’ SRT kit involving an MTDE arse strap harness rather than the slimmed down Derbyshire version far more suited to this sort of thing, than the fact that my post-winter physique was bigger in girth than last summer, but either way I didn’t just slip through as anticipated. I tried unsuccessfully to release the hung up arse strap so rather than mess about I managed to wriggle out of the kit and throw it down to Jon, slid though and rekitted whilst he descended the next pitch. Soon we were making the fun head first dive out of the big chamber into Loper Lust. I wasn’t sure what to expect as the only time I’d been through here before it was in the reverse direction and bone dry. By comparison a wet and muddy LL is delightful. Reaching the wet bit, which by now was not a full on freedive, having significant but somewhat unasable airspace, I waited for Jon to let me know the way out was clear and progressed into the water until my sideways-turned face wouldn’t stay breathing air anymore. Quick pause, deep breath and forward under water, I felt my way through and popped up on the other side. Shortly afterwards we popped out in Doom.
Another new-to-me adventure to come, due to timings and other poor excuses last summer was the delight of Vulgarious. I knew it was muddy, and that it led the way into RAT, so that was good enough to pique my excitement. It’s not big, not really little, but I suspect it’s likely to be a love or hate option, rather than a goldilocks one. Fortunately I fell straight into the Love Gang, big grin forming as I slid easily through the slop. At one point I was delighted, having tired of the not-quite-proper flat out crawling, not-quite-tall-enough for hands and knees, to find that flipping onto my back and pushing with my heels made for far more efficient and fun backwards progress.
The roar of running water amplified the excitement levels as it signalled the arrival at RAT, and even if Vulgarious had been a horror show, it would have been worth it. SMMC would have to wait for another day as the sump was still too full for a dive through, but it was no small consolation to have a wander up the massive loveliness of RAT.
Back through Vulgarious and into Doom again, this time using monocular vision due to an unfortunate raising of the hand during my back-pedalling manoeuvre that ended with a big blob of gritty mud falling into my eye, and we pressed on towards Static Passage with our now-available spare detector. Static had a mere trickle of water but enough to get the ball wet so we placed it and took readings, then repeated the process at the gushing Elastic Passage, before pressing on towards and up the Wet West crosscut, a long and undeviating trudge up a train track. I must have been tired by this point because I don’t even remember swapping a detector here, even though I remember having a bag for one before and afterwards. What I do remember though is a: being absolutely starving and hallucinating pork scratchings in the Anchor (probably dehydrated too in that case), feeling suddenly and inexplicably utterly knackered, and my lamp deciding to go into limp mode out of sympathy. I had also stopped talking. A definite contra-indicator.
Heading up the Glebe crosscut for the final detector placement of the night, Jon did comment that the air wasn’t very nice in spite of the wind blowing through the place. Whatever it was I momentarily felt like I had nothing left in the tank and wanted to be, well not at the furthest distance away from our point of egress from underground.
Detector placed in the flowing water, we turned round and headed for home. I was obliged to stay close to Jon for light as I wanted to minimise the use of my backup light. I’d regained some energy and started talking again so maybe the air was rank… the tank was at least slightly topped up.
After not too long I was glad to haul myself with plenty of groaning, back into Inglorious whereupon Jon produced a Pain au Chocolat from the tub. Taking a bite, it was like eating a dry bathroom sponge but at that moment the most delicious bathroom sponge anyone has ever eaten. It gave me the energy I needed to get on the rope, have a really quick power nap half way up the pitch, and possibly most importantly, climb up Coconut Airways with no difficulty at all.
Finally, right at the foot of the entrance pitch, I realised everything would be much easier were I able to see, so turned on my backup light. Climbing out of the lid into the night air I was struck with the sensation of ‘feeling OK’, which given my state in Glebe, is an acceptable result for a busy night.
