204 - Stuff in Near End
Dave
Much staring at the survey over the last year had left me convinced that the right place to look for the connection from the Near End to the Colonnade was Kidney Bean.
So me and Deep got up ridiculously early (for expo) + got the 9:25 bus up the hill, rig
[Mao break]
going down 204a + wandering thru the Near End. Snow plug was lower than I've ever seen it before which is odd as all the surface snow plugs are actually higher than usual.
Kidney Bean turns out to be shite. The route to it involves an upward crawl over loose boulders, a contortion through a body-sized tube, and finally a turn downwards head-first into a muddy puddle.
So Deep + I decided we'd tick off the QM's in ascending order of promisingness. Deep climbed down into a scrofulous hole in the floor - 00-71C - and announced it didn't go. I crawled up 00-70B until I was sure it connected to 00-69A. Finally we checked out 00-69A, which went - crawling for a while, squeeze under an arch, then a shitty boulderous chimney. I shifter boulders until I could poke my head in, at which point one about the size of two breeze blocks decided to toll over my shoulder. ouch.
Meanwhile Deep was looking around a bit and found a chimney which landed just the other side of the boulder pile, in a chamber with a waterfall. I was a bit confused, but Deep pointed out that there was a tube leading up with a really strong draught. This emerged in big trunk passage, and not far beyond I located a boot print. A large column established that this was indeed the colonnade.
Returned to Kidney Bean to fetch survey gear, transpired that neither of us could really read them, so we fucked off out instead.