76 - Brave New World (BNW) - Loopy
Wed 10 Aug 2005
Jenny
[Diagram]
Olly successfully reached the passage without falling off. And we decided that the best way to retrieve the hangers was for me to second the climb climbing-style, which was quite exciting as Olly had placed a bolt to protect him stepping across the exciting bit, but I had to remove it first. Anyway, we walked along a short way to the top of 04-29V as expected, and scrambled down (still attached to the rope) onto the fairly stable boulder slope and walked up it. The main way on choked, but a walking passage led off on the left. This shortly split with the right-hand passage choking (though quite possibly diggable on the left, but that seemed to reconnect). The two left-hand passages soon connected, with the second being the easier route, another passage led off on the right which we looked at later. We headed down the main passage, initially crawling then walking in the roof tube of a rift passage. I predicted it would reconnect near where we started the climb and Ol predicted it would join the Oxbows. We reached a junction, where left continued in similar fashion to arrive near where we started (04-31C) and I hated being right... Straight on got small, right went for 25m to a choke. We headed out, surveying it as we went. When we got near the start of the rift, Olly looked at the last lead, which very soon connected with the Oxbows (ticking off 04-43B in the process, so for the first time for me at least, our first and last stations were the same and we connected to two stations from last year, and ticked off 4 QM's!).
We left the climb rigged, leaving the end of the 2000 39m rope there. Then went to look at 04-40A. Olly put a couple of bolts in what looks like a lovely pitch - NO CHOSS, not anywhere. Very echoey, but sadly the rope didn't reach the bottom. We went out carting the rope + drill + SRT kit through the Test Tubes. BNW is weird - all the QM's seem to either choke or reconnect to known cave. Whilst we have surveyed more cave, the maximum extent of BNW is virtually unchanged. There are still good leads there, but they are either small or pitches.
Jenny
Went into BNW with the drill battery to climb the final good up-lead (04-30) then look at some of the down pitches. Olly climbed up to a ledge and put in a bolt, and traversed across placing 2 bolts on the way. The climb/traverse wasn't too epic, except the only rock good enough for bolts was at foot level.
[Diagram]
Olly successfully reached the passage without falling off. And we decided that the best way to retrieve the hangers was for me to second the climb climbing-style, which was quite exciting as Olly had placed a bolt to protect him stepping across the exciting bit, but I had to remove it first. Anyway, we walked along a short way to the top of 04-29V as expected, and scrambled down (still attached to the rope) onto the fairly stable boulder slope and walked up it. The main way on choked, but a walking passage led off on the left. This shortly split with the right-hand passage choking (though quite possibly diggable on the left, but that seemed to reconnect). The two left-hand passages soon connected, with the second being the easier route, another passage led off on the right which we looked at later. We headed down the main passage, initially crawling then walking in the roof tube of a rift passage. I predicted it would reconnect near where we started the climb and Ol predicted it would join the Oxbows. We reached a junction, where left continued in similar fashion to arrive near where we started (04-31C) and I hated being right... Straight on got small, right went for 25m to a choke. We headed out, surveying it as we went. When we got near the start of the rift, Olly looked at the last lead, which very soon connected with the Oxbows (ticking off 04-43B in the process, so for the first time for me at least, our first and last stations were the same and we connected to two stations from last year, and ticked off 4 QM's!).
We left the climb rigged, leaving the end of the 2000 39m rope there. Then went to look at 04-40A. Olly put a couple of bolts in what looks like a lovely pitch - NO CHOSS, not anywhere. Very echoey, but sadly the rope didn't reach the bottom. We went out carting the rope + drill + SRT kit through the Test Tubes. BNW is weird - all the QM's seem to either choke or reconnect to known cave. Whilst we have surveyed more cave, the maximum extent of BNW is virtually unchanged. There are still good leads there, but they are either small or pitches.