Cave 2004-11 - In Your Face
Stuart
"Come and look at our great new cave" they said. "Could be a new 204 entrance" they said. "DON'T YOU DARE FIND THE END OF IT" they
(Becka) said.
Having been versed in how to drive a survey notebook by Martin, we set off into the strongly draughting entrance tube, which was
extremely good at removing any heat one's body could produce. After much laborious surveying around the small chamber at the end of the
entrance tube, Martin returned from the front, where he was supposed to be bolting a pitch, announcing himself to be a fuckwit, and then
scampered off to get the forgotten drill bit.
Very, very dodgy rigging ("It only rubs a little bit, so be gentle. Oh, and you'll have to ascend the arm of the Y-hang to get back.")
leads to a huge black ice plug at the pitch's base, and a dead-sounding and dangerous boulder choke.
Desperate not to incur the wrath of Becka, the two passages leading on from the far side of the pitch became interesting. The lower one
was very tight phreatic dropping at about 45° to a wide low (~1m high) chamber. The phreatic had a breeze but this seemed to disappear
into a critical angle boulder slope. In desperation, a small chimney was pushed to no avail, and the other way on from the chamber
stopped.
Some effort was put into starting a traverse line to the higher passage leading on from the pitch head, but thoughts of food, warmth
etc. caused the general consensus to be "jack". Also, the probability of our only remaining lead dying was causing some perturbation.