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Written by: Rob Eavis

Published: 28 March 2014

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Simon Gant, Rob Eavis

With 7mm of rain expected this evening, and with the accounts of our fateful trip in January still being told, we decided to avoid Gautries and go explore someone else’s projects (not to pirate, just to learn, honest!). Water Icicle seemed as unlikely to flood as anywhere, and Simon had never been, so it was an easy decision.

On the way I realised not only did I only have a 25m rope, but also no spanner to open the entrance, so visions of returning quickly to a nearby pub were strong. However luckily as we pulled up the lane one of the Orpheus crews were also getting changed. Woohoo…

Pretty awful changing conditions made the warmth and silence of the cave very pleasing and whilst the diggers went off to do their business me n Simon went for a nose around. A good inspection of all possible ways on, plus a little time with Simon with his camera out, ended with us heading through the 2012 dig and their subsequent breakthrough. Obviously they had challenges in this dig, with M24 (?) bolts holding bits of the roof up, but I was surprised at how short the dug length was before you stand up and continue walking. What a find, this has to be the largest dimensioned passage to be found in Derbyshire, well, since the previous breakthrough in Water Icicle in 2008!

Heading straight to the end we met a plethora of diggers busy scaffolding out the roof. It seems their easy dig through solid sediment has all gotten a bit more challenging since the winter rains! Leaving them to continue swimming about in their own CO2 me n Simon headed off to find the last member of their crew, who was off digging down the “Dung Beetle”. This is a bit more like it; ~40m of flat out crawling to a nearly sediment tube currently with a lonely looking Rich jammed into the end. At least here the air is clean and there is open space below the slightly arched roof.

Rather than help, we decided we’d leave them to it so we made a hasty way out breaking surface after about 2.5 hours underground. An enjoyable trip, and good encourager to get digging……

Photo by Simon Gant

Details

Written by: Rob Eavis

Published: 28 March 2014

Hits: 5060

Jim Lister approached me with a very reasonable proposition. A few years ago some Eldon members found some cave in Spain which lead to a sump. Jim has planned to dive this sump, but the Eldon didn’t survey the section which ended in the sump. Therefore before Jim can dive he first has to get the sump added to the survey. His proposition is he’ll survey it, as long as he can use the Eldon DistoX and PDA (and get a lesson in using it). This trip is the lesson….

Whilst bouncing a few potential survey trip ideas around, the Buttered Badgers broke through in their dig at the bottom of Rowter. Mark Richardson needed this surveying and adding to the Peak-Speedwell Master file, so it seemed a perfect match. Also it meant me n Jim can go have a nose around their new stuff

Mark, Tim Allen and Mark Wright headed on down to start digging, whilst me n Jim headed to the Abyss to do the worst job of any DistoX user, calibration! Jim smashed out a delta 0.43 (a “very good” for all you non-geeks) allowing us to start putting a line down their dig. 13m of vertical shaft down (!) lead through into their new rift and streamway. This is awesome stuff, a beautiful natural streamway meandering down to the ESE, slowly arcing away from the Abyss boulder ruckle. It has elements similar to the Titan Streamway, albeit about 5 times smaller! We passed the diggers, who’d given up moving rocks about and now needed a pint to scratch their heads over. Me n Jim carried on down to the end, had a quick poke around the final boulder choke, then headed out.

On the way out we swapped instruments and put a line back from the dig to the entrance shaft, allowing us to tie it all in with the original data. So now Rowter is 100.36m deep, and I’m sure it won’t be long before its even deeper!

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Written by: Rob Eavis

Published: 04 June 2013

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Myself and Henry Rockliff headed down Titan for a short saturday trip, after his Western Highway trip was cancelled as it was just the two of us.

On the way we went up Horne's Gully for a look around. One the way back down one of the dubiously gooey karabinas snapped whilst i was abseiling and i freefell for 4-5m before the traverse line kicked in and slowed my impact with the floor. No harm done and a good leason to be learnt regarding old gear. This had presumably been in there since the original discovery, so 13 years old, and was a steel krab on an alu hanger.

We then headed up to survey in right hand inlet of the Titan Streamway which leads up to Rachel's Belly, as this had never been surveyed before. Totalled 98m of survey to add to the Peak Speedwell system. Whilst up there we pushed a lead at the top, hilticapping through into a small, draughting inlet chamber, but no way on.

By the time we had derigged it was a 7 hour trip, would have been easier to go to Western Highway!