136 - 136
Wookey
1st trip for Wook - and what a success! Relatively prompt start saw all @ 136 by 9.30 ish & underground by 11.
All gathered at head of Footlights pitch (start of Oatso). Wook, Julian H & Becka descended Footlights to collect climbing stuff from Julian's climb. Brian carried on to put some bolts in the 1st traverse in Oatso. Soon became clear that Julian's climb connected to holes above so it was derigged (1 hanger & some thin string left on it just in case).
Wook & Becka connected survey from bottom of Theatre pitch to bolt at head of Footlights. Noted that small porthole near foot of climb on L let you throw rocks into pitch descending farther. Small hole under rocks in floor had similar effect. Julian throwing rocks down wet hole at top of Footlights showed this was the same thing but it didn't end up in the bottom of the rift like most of the other holes. Derigged Footlights. Wet pitch is a good QM.
All trogged on to catch up with Brian & Julian just about finished fettling traverses. Whilst Julian put last bolt in, Wook abbed a bit down big hole on L. Saw huge space beyond but Julian couldn't - weird. Then other three got down & ran around whooping. Wook prussiked back up furiously to catch them, but by the time I got down they had all gone, and following footprints in chamber led to dead-ends! Where were they ?
Ran around for five minutes before going back up pitch to try again. Way on was down LH side of rib & under massive undercut. Beyond was 200m of _massive_ fault-controlled passage going dead along 220°! Wook caught others up towards end when passage went up large rock-pile to meet roof at small draughting hole through which water could be heard & huge chamber seen. Exciting stuff !
Split into 2 teams to survey 'The Overrun' (actually overshoot) from either end. (We were now probably going straight past Eishöhle). After meeting we rigged first hole through which water could be heard, hoping to go under big boulder pile, but in fact it ended in a big flat-floored chamber with a small waterfall coming in one side. Bum. Time to go home, although Julian went to end to have a look and found that supposed pitch could actually be walked down.