LukeC, RobE
A long term project in Doom requires access to be a bit easier. Going from the sough tail is over 1 hour of sough wading in each direction, which is far from ideal for a evening trip!
Victory Level is an inlet just passed half way up. On the last trip it was draughting strongly, suggesting an alternative entrance might exist in Stoney Dale. Others had mentioned this as a possibility before, so I dug out an old survey of Victory Level.
When overlaid with the main Stoney survey one of the shafts lined up with the area around Ivy Green Cave, and another on the other side of the road.
Armed with this we went for a look around. Unfortunately it was the wettest day of the year, not ideal conditions for a surface bash!
Indeed the mine entrance below Ivy Green (Mine Level 10) ends in a tantalising boulder choke with a strong outwards draft. I wanted to check Ivy Green cave above as this also breaks into the vein here, to see if the draft might just be a small through draft. However due to the very heavy rain it was impossible for us to safely get across to the entrance.
We then headed down along the vein and across the road to the other feature on the old map. Indeed there is a level there exactly as expected, however it was a horizontal level, full of rubbish and with no drafts at all, so not really an interesting lead. We finished the day with the Windy Ledge through trip and went straight to the Anchor :-)