204 - Razordance attempted derig
Dave Loeffler
T/U: Dave 15 1/2 hrs (1.20pm - 4.50 am); Mark 14hrs (1.20 - 3.15
approx)
Surveyed from the bottom of Copper Pitch to pushing front,
ending at a plumb of the local widening discovered by Dour on the
previous push. This task was enlivened by Mark suddenly discovering
an urgent need to have a crap, which led to him relieving
himself wile squatting half-naked over the top of a 10m pitch.
[Margin note:Bloody spicy food! - M.]
Then the derig began, shepherding Big Bertha (Marc Hesse's
enormous yellow tackle sack, engorged with the remains of our 200m
pushing rope) out of Razordance. Much cursing + swearing got us
from Yeast to Copper. Copper was an easy haul, as was Mash Tun. We
stopped at God Loves a Drunk to sample a self-heating meal.
Unfortunately after waiting 12min it was still stone cold - waste
of a fiver. (One incident worth noting occured as I derigged Yeast.
It's rigged with a rebelay just below the pitch head; after
removing this I swung sideways into the line of fire, and a
mysterious brown stain appeared on the stain of my oversuit.)
As we slogged from GLAD to Steady Now we were both flagging
noticeably, and the effort required to get the sacks through the
tube in the roof below Mystery Wind took a lot out of us. By the
time I had hauled two heavy tackle sacks up to the Crow's Nest in
the Armstrong fashion I was thoroughly broken, as was Mark, and we
decided to dump the bags and head out. Not surprisingly I ran out
of steam on Kiwi Suit and crawled slowly up the remaining pitches
to emerge at nearly 5am. I was greeted by an enthusiastic Mark
reporting that 204 had overtaken Eislufthöhle as the deepest cave
not connected to the main system, at over 500m deep.
Mark: Worth noting for the future that you really
need more people than this to derig Razordance, even for the lower
parts of it if anything else has to be done on the same trip. We
probably pushed ourselves too far on this trip.