161 - "Fogies Folly"
Dave Horsley
Walked up from base and over to the cave, plan was to push some pitches somewhere in Puerile Humour that Chris reckoned hadn't been done. At the guilotine Tony went up the slope to the left and dropped the boulder slope to the right but there was no way on. Me and Jeremy had a look at a passage to the left of the main passage before the guilotine. This ended in a clean washed aven below which was a climb down for about 5m to a further climb reducing in size and infilling with small rocks.
On the way to where Chris wanted to push, just before Puerile Humour we found an interesting looking climb. On later discussion this turns out to be Moth Chamber. From here we dropped a short pitch/handline climb of 6m. From here a draughting crawl led of the top of a pitch. This we rigged using the 58m rope we'd planned to use on Chris's pitch. Jeremy rigged this from a single large pillar, with a deviation to an eyehole. The take off was horribly tight and not helped by the fact that Jeremy had forgotten about gardening the rubble off the top of the pitch.
The pitch bell'd out to a reasonable size just below the pitch head and in total was about 7m deep. The route off from the bottom was a tight hading rift ending in a small blind 4m pitch. Whilst Chris and Jeremy started surveying out of the blind pitch I pointed out to Tony that we'd lost the draught. So whilst I fetched Chris the tape he'd left behind Tony had a look up the unfeasably small tube heading off directly above the pitch. Surprisingly this didn't end in 3 closing down tubes as expected, but was strongly draughting with a roof tube going off. This popped out into a large passage ending in a 45° descending ramp "Wheelchair Access". The chamber at the bottom ended in a 5m pitch, which was bypassed by a climb down and crawl to the left. To the right a crawl emerged at the bottom of the pitch. To the left the crawl emerged into a larger rift. Straight ahead an aven entered from above. The rift continued too small straight ahead, but could be passable after brief use of a lump hammer. A hole in the floor gives access to an _undescended_ pitch of ~20m. Prior to this a crawl under the wall to the left gives access to a parallel rift. The floor (which is false and looks rather unstable) quickly falls away to reveal a clean washed pitch of about 15m (_undescended_). At this point me and Tony returned for Chris + Jeremy who had finished the first bit of surveying. Chris had a look at top of the clean washed pitch off to the left, decided it was not free climbable. He traversed over the pitch and a second pitch beyond this. The rift ended in a small strongly draughting squeeze requiring the use of a hammer to reach enlarging passage beyond.
Survey from the bottom of the bypassed pitch to the main passage at Moth Chamber. Couldn't find a survey station, so left our own last survey station obviously labelled.