258 - Stone Monkey
Martin Jahnke
Back to Comedy of Errors, early in the morning after walking up to the plateau to find out more about the avens and pitches at its end. Two passages, one crawl and a small phreatic tube are drafting in but are too small to enter. A small climb down on the left side appears to end blind but in fact a short crawl would lead to a small chamber and a further crawl can be seen ahead - this chamber has not been entered yet - C lead. Near the highest point of the passage, a small hole can be entered. I rigged the pitch head from a natural and descended through jammed boulders to the bottom of a roomy meander (P8). At the right hand end a small meander was entered (climb down) which lead to a small tube in the floor with a stream in it. I took off my SRT kit and entered to find a medium sized pitch below, 1.5m of crawling away. The pitchhead was difficult to enter and to be bolted so it was deemed "too technical to rig" - we're coming back to this!
In the meantime Gareth had rigged a large pitch behind a climb on the left hand side from the naturals in the roof. He descended and found two leads at the bottom. This pitch is called Racoon festival.
We finally inspected the hole in the floor of Sombrero Passage that we normally traverse around (C3). Becka found a climb down and entered a chamber 5m below the passage which she surveyed with Gareth. The chamber has a drafting horizontal B lead in the far end.
T/U 8 hrs