Sleepless
Jenny
Back into Sleepless, re-rigging some ropes along the way to free up
what we needed for later. Got to the The Coldest place in Earth, Olly is
going first, and he discovers what happens if you use a rack, it
isn’t locked off and you don’t keep hold of the down rope.
Fortunately the pitch is only ~5m high, he was already down 1m and he
landed in soft squelchy mud. Still it was a very scary few moments for
both of us…
Got to yesterdays pushing front and Olly proceeded to bolt down the
pitch into passage beyond. To keep warm I drew the elevation that got
missed yesterday. After traversing over the pitch we followed the
walking size rift on (with the draft), over a short climb and a hole and
to a widening. This time the way on is down a short pitch to some more
squelchy mud pools and sadly another pitch that we don’t have rope
for.
Olly comes up with the mad idea that I reascend the
previous pitch, throw him the rope so he can see what happens on the
next pitch. I took both slings up with me to aid with me getting the
rope back. Amazingly the mad plan worked. Olly ascertained that the
passage and draft continued below and we both got safely back up.
As ever we surveyed out getting colder and colder.