Just Joe and I again this evening for breakthrough 3.0! We met at the substantially earlier time of 6pm, armed with camera and capping gear we swiftly changed and made our way down the shake-hole to escape the weather.
Nonchalantly we made our way down to Westy's bit, plagued by the usual rigmarole of bag snagging around the corner. We passed breakthrough 1, where I expressed my consideration for the looseness of breakthrough 2 and the possibility of catastrophic failure. Joe reassured me that he thought it was fine and we proceeded Into The Void. Our first call for action was to make a photo in the breakthrough chamber. Joe had limited me to one good photo, I agreed to the one but didn't make any promises on it being good. After some flashing antics I cleaned my camera of excess water (super drippy in there) and we started to mingle with the chaos. Joe laughed at the crowbar we had decided to bring Into The Void (Rob's 'butter knife'), at 1m long it's exceptionally difficult to manoeuvre in tight spaces, which we often find ourselves in.
"What is it with us and choosing to use immensely shit crowbars?"
I pointed Joe into a hole I found last week but couldn't pass a squeeze. With little consideration he passed under the washing machine sized boulder I was questioning and managed to insert himself into the rift beyond. Unfortunately it was too tight to progress but felt fresh and with a bit of shuffling he managed to retreat safely.
I went to check out my only other lead which was the downward slanting rift that Rob had almost entombed me in two weeks prior. I inserted my head and I could feel the fresh cool air blowing out the hole, this was promising! After last week the team was a bit deflated with no obvious lead to shake a stick at, but when cave digging is concerned, you always follow the draught. Joe joined me and commitingly dropped headfirst down the rift to inspect the end. After some awkward shuffling I got a "f**k yeah!" back through the hole...
Excited I hastily asked him to describe what he was looking at. He shouted back that about 2m ahead was black open space, stal, and looking like it dropped down beyond. By this time Joe was restricting the hole with his body and the draught was howling back towards me. I asked him what we needed to do? He replied by saying, "just cap this rift, we'll be through tonight!" I passed down the tools and he made a start on enlarging the entrance and then progressed to enlarging the squeeze. After 30 minutes he was ready to attempt it. I slithered down to join him and watched him dither for a second, questioning the foundation of the right wall before diving through head first.
It all went quiet for 30 seconds whilst he walked off out of sight... Excited I asked him to describe what he'd found, "6-8m long rift passage, 2m high, end is tight, needs capping." Not quite as optimistic as before but eager to proceed he told me to come through. I decided before passing the tools through to enlarge the squeeze a bit more, making it Jon size. I decided to opt for the left wall this time, hoping to remove a small scab. I hammered down the capping rod and it didn't take long before going with a whopping BANG! on inspection the capping bar was now locked in place. The wall above had dropped down and pinched it in place. After some awkward back hammering I managed to remove the bar but we now questioned the stability of the squeeze, both the left and right walls. Joe came back through to prevent eternal blockage and checked it out. He started by tapping the wedge shaped rock that was holding up a microwave sized boulder above. Once it started to move he walloped it back in place, after a few little love taps he declared it safe enough to pass and we shrugged it off deciding to remove a small scab from the right wall instead. Within no time we were both through into breakthrough 3.0 armed with capping gear for beyond.
Joe let me scurry along to the end as he'd already taken a look. The passage was about 6m in length post squeeze, lined with a sandy/bouldery floor and roofed with tiny stal curtains. The awesome thing was that we were now in solid passage away from the choke and the draught was howling from the end. Approximately a body length from the end the calcite vanished and gave way to clean washed, scalloped limestone. The passage terminated at a letter box slot about 10cm wide and 1m in length from which you could just about peer down to see a bouldery floor 2m below with who knows what heading off out of sight. Above the slot looked remarkably like the top of Hockenhull's Rift, clean washed, scalloped, teetering, boulders, with a sizeable void above that looked super intriguing.
I took the lead in capping the slot, which we concentrated on for the rest of the trip. I let Joe take over after flattening my hand with the lump hammer in an attempt to avoid projectiles which I thought would certainly sever my jugular! Joe also caught a stray during his shift, receiving a nut shot from a fist sized boulder which I declared as a 'love tap...'
Before we left, we glanced the rift one last time, just to make sure we'd not missed anything obvious. Joe expressed his glee about being a GGW as on his last three trips he'd broken-through consistently. I don't mind him being a GGW providing this happens every time.
We exited in a huff, lugging the bags back to the entrance felt tougher than usual and we broke surface at 10:30pm which meant I lost the bet and had to buy the first round. Comme ci, comme ça.
Joe dropping Into The Void