107 - Ropeless
Jenny
Still too wet to derig 148 so back to 107 to look at yesterday's lead and to derig. Olly rigged the 12m rope down the drop. Part way down was a window across into a pitch, presumably the main way on (you could hear water). Scrambled down a bit further until things got a bit steep. Olly rigged the 11 down and across, then the 5m rope. This got us to no gear left, but on a ledge. I traversed across (~ north) until the ledge ran out, fortunately the floor was now close (only 4m away) and I could traverse back underneath and down to the floor. I checked out whether the passage went (it did) and helped Olly down too. Continued along in the same direction we had been traversing, got to a short drop, climbed that then another short one. Ended up in a ~25m high aven with drips coming in. Aven quite big, but pitch on was quite small - couldn't realy get to it without gear, so left it for now and surveyed back to near the end of the traverse. Looked down the lead on the right (heading out) and it led to loads of rifty passage. A few little climbs down got us to a junction, we went left first, got to an aven where up looked to the start of the traverse (from the survey data). Rift continued until it hit a cross rift which we think is higher in the rift of the route used in 1978 to get to the big pitch.
Back at the previous junction, right led under a low muddy/wet crawl into more passage, which led to another cross rift. Right was an inlet that didn't go, left continued, but would probably need something to be rigged first. Surveyed out, derigging as we went.
