Loser Plateau - Surface shaft
Jenny
Walked up the hill in the morning in the rain + clag. I told Olly that seeing as we had walked up, we ought to do something, either go caving or do surface stuff. I kind of imagined Olly would pick caving cos it kept raining, but he didn't; I couldn't back down. We walked across to 175ish, turned left and saw 174, which was where it should be. Saw a cairned path with red painted spots (interestingly only painted on the side of rocks as if you were walking back to old Top Camp or the Bergrestaurant or somesuch); followed this to 1996-05 which we figured wasn't the purpose of the path as it continued north from here with cairns + more paint splodges. The cave really didn't seem to have been descended before - no evidence of bolts, paint, random bits of gear tape, sardine tins, and as the path doesn't stop here there is no reason to think it's been explored. It looks an interesting area to prospect, as there were lots of big holes, it's in a blank space on the map + it is easily reached by a good path from near old top camp (near 174 at least).
We headed back to 175, walked up to 176 and continued in the hope of re-finding 98. We looked quite thoroughly but didn't have any luck. I wonder if we were in the wrong place, or the paint was no longer visible?