Just Luke and I on this fine warm evening. It was Luke’s first time down Waterfall Hole and it’s certainly one to get acquainted with… The entrance crawl was as pleasant as always and luckily it’s still rigged so easy progress down to Hockenhull’s rift.
The mission for this evening was to explore the South/East extensions to Westy’s bit as Jim and I messed it up last time around. Once through the awkward entrance (where Luke remarked on how ‘ard Jim was for getting through it) we headed up and left over a rather unstable boulder ruckle. A weave up and down between blocks got us into the right place and we were now in solid rock for a change. A bit of crawling leads to a sizeable hading cross rift but all leads seem to crap out in boulder chokes. A crawl here at floor level leads to a tight squeeze and a further crawl split into two directions. Left continued along a cross rift to a too tight continuation (draughting outwards) whereas right dropped down a pot to a choke in the floor.
Mission completed we headed down to Waterfall Chamber after a few navigational errors. Barely any water in sight today. We now progressed up the entrance crawl to Great Gunn’s rift. Another interesting lead in this crazy place. It seems from talking to JSB back in the day nobody had been back since it’s original exploration in the 70’s and the diggers left it in haste! The climb at the end involves some delicacy to avoid entombing oneself! Another climb follows this and reaches a large cross rift where a light connection is made back to Waterfall Chamber. A further hading climb in a rift reaches the fluted shaft which I climbed for 6m to a bold step across to an enticing black void in boulders. Here I retraced my steps as Luke was back at the start.
After a quick photo stop we made our way to daylight (yay!) and vowed to return with a bit of rope to access the void proper.
