Bagshawe Cavern
The Eldon always have a number of active digs undergo in Bagshawe.
One that is currently receiving quite a lot of attention is the "Dead Ahead Dig" in the Full Moon Series.
[For more information regarding Bagshaw Cavern go to the dedicated page]
Blog:
- Details
- Written by: Jim Thompson
- Hits: 1317
Diver: Rob M
Support: Dave C, Jim T
Too idle to carry 7l cylinders so carrying out essential stabilisation works: Bog
Episode Recap: The outcome was that after a slightly muddy rift opening at the entry to the sump, a roughly 1m high x 1m wide phreatic tube (wider at the bottom as it’s formed on a bed) clean passage with good vis was followed for the aforementioned c. 49m of a 50m line reel, accounting for belays (all of which made to conveniently sited breakdown) trending 240 degrees at a depth of 3m via a series of s-bends, with the current limit at such a bend but appearing to continue unimpeded beyond.
Eager to continue the push to reveal the further secrets of Glorious Hole, but slightly later than desirable as Bog and Jim had both been suffering the hardship of taking holidays in the sun, the team reassembled at Bagshawe tonight with additional equipment. In Rob’s case this meant a freshly loaded line reel and a pair of 7s; Bog and Jim with the equipment required when quantities of heavy and awkward dive kit needs to be shifted quickly underground – Dave…
In a cunning predetermined plan, Bog turned up late with a hacksaw – allegedly for cutting scaffold tubes to length in order to stabilise the increasingly dodgy looking and now slightly mobile squeeze – but we all knew that he just didn’t like the sound of carrying 7 litre cylinders. He would later deliberately forget his Croll, and, it turned out, had deliberately hidden his chest harness in the cave 3 weeks prior.
Rob, Jim and Dave therefore set off to the sump to prepare for exploration. Kitting up tonight was a far easier affair by virtue of taking place in the large chamber immediately before the Glorious pitch head. Regs attached to cylinders, rebagged and ready to go with no air leaks, and the diver in position perched on a boulder in the pool, I climbed the ladder to roughly the depth at which I’d previously concluded an abseil at water level. Rob was a good 10 feet below me at this point, and I acted as a davit arm, guiding the heavy cylinders out of a constriction and over to Rob as Dave lowered them from above. We took note of the relative height of the line belay to water level for survey alignment purposes, time-checked, and agreed a 1 hour dive / 2 hour SHTF time. With that, Rob submerged and was soon out of sight. I watched his exhaust break surface a few times and returned to Dave for the wait…
Having plenty to catch up on, and with a bit of photography thrown in, the time passed quickly but the onset of having all the heat sucked out of us by limestone prompted a time check. Over an hour elapsed with no sign of Rob, however with the prior line to survey a longer dive was anticipated so we resumed our position.
Around 20 mins later a shout announced the diver’s return, so I headed back down the ladder and we soon had the cylinders back with Dave who, by the time I reached the top, had taken both of them back to the kit/dekit chamber.
Rob returned with a brief tale of dry passage, which meant a public house based debrief was essential. Spurred into action by the spectre of last orders, Dave grabbed all the bags and went like a machine towards the main passage. We all reached the pitch to find Bog waiting for us, no doubt disappointed to find that he’d now be obliged to lug a 7l cylinder up the steps. My cylinder definitely felt heavy on the awkward prusik out so I was glad when I was relieved of it at the pitch head!
Passing through the squeeze on the way out, it was noticeably cleaner and free of perched boulders, and a lovely shiny bit of scaff was solidly in place holding the big rock (and probably the rest of the cave) in place. Providence in the choice of tubes had even rendered the hacksaw surplus to requirements.
Back at the Bowling Green we had a guided tour of the sump and dry crawl beyond by way of Gopro video. The stage is set for Rob plus another diver to make a return at the next opportunity to survey the new passage, which yet again trends at 240 degrees for a further 40m underwater, before surfacing into a low, dry crawl that drills ahead for a long way to the present limit of exploration denoted by a rift crossing the low crawl, which then continues onward in tantalising fashion.
Work continues….
- Details
- Written by: Jim Thompson
- Hits: 1550
Diver: Rob M
Support: Bog, Jim T
The discovery of Glorious Hole back in 2020 marked an exciting point in the exploration of Bagshawe and it was remarked in April 2021 (EPC Newsletter) that ‘both agreed we need a diver in to push the sump, although it would be great to see it during lower water conditions’
Recent visits have certainly revealed lower water conditions and generated further excitement at the clear blue sump pool where a suggestion of open passage was glimpsed by Jim T and Dave C on separate occasions, but tonight was the night to answer the question, as the stars finally aligned for Rob Middleton to perform the necessary heroics and go underwater.
As the surface temperature was 33C as we assembled at the Coe, we wasted no time in getting underground and were soon at the increasingly dodgy looking squeeze into the extensions, and I headed down the rope with cylinders dangling beneath me and excitement at an all time high. Teamwork was in full flow moving bags through various constrictions and we were soon at the Glorious pitch head ready for Rob to take over proceedings.
Bog rigged a pair of ladders on the Y hang that Dave had helpfully rebolted the previous week in anticipation and the now cleaned up pitch head is an easy handline climb to the rebelay, saving a lot of faff in general but invaluable for tonight’s activities.
With Rob at the Y hang, I positioned myself behind him whilst Bog passed the tackle bags through a hole into my hands. As appointed ‘fluffer’, my job was to remove items of diving kit from the bags, stop it all from tumbling down the pitch and make sure Rob had no faff whilst kitting up in a pretty awkward spot. At one point this required me to ‘zip him up’ and the whole thing was a good insight into the rigours of cave diving as a tool for exploration.
As regulators were screwed onto cylinder 1, the valve was opened and the circuit pressurised with a satisfying sound…. Cylinder 2 just started hissing gas out and didn’t sound good. Several cycles of threading and rethreading the reg didn’t cure the problem and I started to feel nervous that the dive would be turned before it’d begun. Fortunately Rob had at the last minute decided to pack his ‘baked bean tin’ aka a hi-tech waterproof diver’s spares-and-tool kit so he fettled the reg and it subsequently made the same satisfying pressurising sound. All good and he headed of down the ladder.
I soon heard sloshing to indicate he’d reached the water and stood by for the sound of exhaust bubbles breaking on surface… but no. More hissing! I really thought we’d be beating a hasty and disappointed retreat at this point but Rob quickly had it sorted and shouted that he’d likely be 30 mins, and to not worry unless he failed to surface after an hour. Time check made, I settled back in my perch and sure enough, the next sounds I heard were the regular chuffing of his exhaust gas.
Bog and I just got stuck into some long overdue catching up and philosophising, and I barely contained my delight on realising that the cavity in the rock just above me looked just like a giant calcite vulva.
In what appeared to be no time at all, that tell tale chuffing sounded up the shaft and I had a time check – 14 minutes – which I took to signify a poor outcome and closure of any potential leads in the sump.
However, an excited ‘woop!’ from below followed by a ‘that’s awesome!’ perked me up. A quick exchange revealed that it certainly did not close down underwater, was clean and sizeable and Rob had run out his entire 50m line reel. Delightful!
I set to and lowered bags down and hauled them back up containing cylinders, passed them up to Bog and a delighted Rob appeared at the top of the ladder looking a bit shivery but very smiley.
We got him dekitted, everything packed away and made haste for the surface in order to make the Bowling Green for a celebratory pint and debrief.
The outcome was that after a slightly muddy rift opening at the entry to the sump, a roughly 1m high x 1m wide phreatic tube (wider at the bottom as it’s formed on a bed) clean passage with good vis was followed for the aforementioned c. 49m of a 50m line reel, accounting for belays (all of which made to conveniently sited breakdown) trending 240 degrees at a depth of 3m via a series of s-bends, with the current limit at such a bend but appearing to continue unimpeded beyond.
We were all delighted with the result and plan to return at the next available opportunity with Rob who will survey the now-lined passage and continue with a fresh line reel to push further..
As always, but particularly in this case, work most definitely continues….
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- Written by: Jim Thompson
- Hits: 1250
Team: Bog, Jim T, Kristian
A bit of sump lowering was in order for the team tonight. It was good to catch up with Kristian again as he regaled me with tales of caving in South Dakota. For a guy who proclaims a hatred for caving he gets about a bit. We got underway with the arrival of Bog and it was nice to easily open the door to the cavern using the shiny smooth-operating lock I’d fitted the previous Friday.
Kristian was off ahead so I didn’t bother doing the usual entrance passage interpretive stuff, and I was soon observing the somewhat shattered slab of rock hanging over the restricted opening into the newest extensions. Once again dropping down the awesome pitch into a lovely bit of natural cave, I smiled at the thought that it was literally under our noses until Bog and Dave felt the fatigue of their advancing years and shifted a few rocks whilst sacking off the rigours of the ‘business end’ of the cave.
First I had a look at the limit of Dave’s exploration in an aven, narrow enough at the highest bolts to have put him off climbing any higher. In the absence of any kit, I pondered the option of freeclimbing higher, but managed to convince myself in short order that the top was blind. It’d be good to continue the bolts to the top to really confirm that but the real objective of the sump was still in need of attention so I abbed back down and let Kristian have a look. His conclusions were similar to mine.
We headed into the crawl towards the sump, handily channeled out by now-absent, yet clearly effective water flow. Bog pointed me towards the Glorious Hole pitch head and I thrutched over the first opening to enjoy poisitoning myself in the big sloping waterslide before the pitch proper. The calcite surface here looked just like sprayed fibreglass and yet again I marvelled at the presence of such a feature so close to the entrance. It’s a stunning pitch. Big enough to be significant in Bagshawe terms and as I descended deeper, I began to see the reflections of my light in the surface of a dark pool. The prior limit of descent was marked by the rope, coiled and stored in a crack, but now a good 15 feet above water level. I uncoiled the rope and continued until I was just above a big, stunningly clear and blue sump pool. Little blobs of mud fell into the water creating small clouds that scattered my lamp beam, so I had a good look around on full power and was pretty sure that I could see a floor maybe ten feet subsurface. Short of dropping off the rope and going for a swim there was nothing left to do but get into ascent mode and rejoin the others. As I swapped onto my jammers, I swung my arse slightly to ease my position and suddenly everything exploded around me with a boom. I got a lovely refreshing face full and my wellies were sloshing. I looked down and the sump was now impenetrable brown. Clearly the boulders sitting on the diagonal surface were just stuck on with mud and I’d dislodged one of them. I spent a few moments inspecting the others, peeling them off with my fingers and letting them crash into the water below. Probably a good thing I’d avoided a swim…
Once I was back off the rope up top, Bog led the way towards the other sump. He talked about running water and tonight everything was bone dry. We reached the rift and the sump presented itself as a foul looking flat out crawl in water. We considered channeling back the way we’d come to let the water drain in but it was fairly obvious that doing so would create a big pool mid-crawl and it wasn’t clear if that’d be a great idea given the lack of height. With time spent looking at the other stuff we abandoned the plan.
Instead I had a thrutch high into the rift which turned slightly and probably needs an inspection but it’s mega greasy. We need to return with Rob’s other table legs and a saw. Back to the Coe and into a torrential downpour, and down to the Bowling Green for pints and scratchings.
As ever…. Work continues.
- Details
- Written by: carl bergmann
- Hits: 1675
Continuing on we now needed to find the continuation of Harry Potters bedroom.
The first place to look was the chamber immediately to the right at the bottom of the stairs .This is full of rubbish including quite a bit of glass, but behind that is a silt bank in front of a natural bend in the passage .One corner certainly could be connected to the small dug out channel at the top end of Harry's and was probably open before the steps were cast on top of it .
We had hoped the silt bank was hiding a continuation ,but this was not the case . Somewhere lies the key to all this as the bottom of the steps has large natural passage obscured in many places by all the stacking .
Lockdown has stalled our efforts ,but there is a continuation around there just waiting to be found .
As soon as Boris says go we will resume the quest for Mulespinner series .
Dave Cowley , Bog (Team Average)
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- Written by: carl bergmann
- Hits: 1957
Harry Potters Bedroom (the dig under the stairs )
11.03.2020
