Balcony - Sloppy Seconds, Second Hand
Fleur Loveridge
Having escaped the deep Tunnocks derig, I sneaked in another trip to our Second Wind lead in Sloppy Seconds with Pete. With an absence of functioning drill batteries we decided to go old school and hand bolt.
Relatively good progress to the limit where we spent three hours placing five bolts to get down the shaft that followed the ramp. Rob and Becka had left us a starting bolt, Pete added a Y before two more rebelays to the end of the 28m rope. We then swapped so Pete got a chance to shiver whilst I tied in the next rope and added another belay to reach the floor 20 - 25m below. Here I landed on a boulder pile. A small hole led into a rift. Not looking promising. A final spit allowed me to abseil into the hole, but there was no way on. The draft we were chasing was coming out of the boulders and there was no option but to derig and go home.
Took out as much rope and gear as we could manage, making it out at 11pm. Had some final excitement as thunderstorm broke while I was on the entrance shaft and got a soaking. But out to amazing lightning show and lots of thunder. 