76 - Rigging down 70's Route
Dave
We wandered down to the Taproom, with interludes while Olly bypassed a dodgy bit of rope in Plugged Shaft and Jenny rerigged the Boulder Chamber stuff with a shorter, thicker rope. In the Taproom, the promised lead at the far left corner didn't seem to exist; rigging down at the far right corner revealed a long, narrow, straight rift with a pleasant traverse level to follow. [Annotation in Jenny's handwriting: In fact the route dropped down on the right, but continued on the left, so the two leads kind of merge.] Around 30m later a short pitch led to a small chamber with a deep hole in the floor.
Olly attempted to right down this, while Jenny and I followed behind surveying. Having put ina rebelay 5m down Olly declared himself too cold and too psyched out to continue. On the way out we went into BNW - the Test Tubes are nowhere near as bad as I had feared - and all of us had a try at the climb in All Ways chamber; soon all of us decided it needed rope and bolts, and finally we came out.