136 - Steinschlagschact
Becka Lawson
We went down ~same time as Julian + Anthony, we'd split a 200m rope between us to rig each of our 2 routes. J & A bombed off with the drill through the Eyehole route whilst Tony put another bolt on the opposite wall to the end of the traverse. We went down the damper route, though the Y-hang was well away from the water. Down to ledge in the rift, walked along it ~10m, found an 83/84 bolt. Tony down that, put a rebelay bolt over the lip, moaned quite a bit about dead legs and down another short pitch. Along a ledge R ~10m again, still stringing along our 100m rope and ..... der-der-der-duurh, we think we found the "Phreatic Phantasy" level. A few widgy 1 metre (max) diameter tubes going off at quite steep (?60° or so) angles which intersected with the main shaft. I furtled around for quite a time rigged off various so-so naturals, to see if anything promising went off. Nothing really seemed to be drafting they were quite mud-filled. I rigged the next little pitch off 3 naturals and swung around and around some more to various odd holes. Snapped off a v. fine white stal. squeezing into an unpromising rifty-hole, sadly.
[detailed sketch of cave entitled: Fantasy Frigging Freatic Level]
Oh dear. Out to the traverse line, met the other 2 who'd bombed down and bombed out, surveying. Tony went out. Julian, Anthony and I went back down our route to survey it as far as a knobble (CM) above and on the wall by the 2nd natural (see plan over). Oh, except Anthony ballsed up and didn't get a compass for that leg. Everyone turned their noses up at my phreatics then we prussiked out with loads of drill gear which was bloody heavy. I ended up with 2 tacklesacks on the entrance pitch with the usual CUCC 2m donkey dicks on which meant they swung nicely into all the ungardened choss on the traverse line at the top. Crash, rumble, crash. "You still there Anthony?" Dour grumbles from the farthest corner of the cave. Out to thunder, lightning and downpour. Walked down in caving gear. Yum,yum.