204 - 204e Crowning Glory exploration
Edvin Deadman
On the 13th the three of us went pushing the end of Crowning Glory,
an A grade lead. As a starry eyed novice, I was expecting a kilometre
of passage leading either to Tunnockschacht, a new entrance or
Kaninchenhoehle. Instead, the passage just fizzled out! It rapidly
became too tight, although we did find an impressive aven on the left,
which didn't lead anywhere. On the way back, we bolted and descended a
new pitch. A 20 metre descent led to a squeeze down into a chamber that
looked like it needed a handline.
On the 15th Kathryn and I, went back and went back into this chamber:
turned out to be a 6m pitch with a very dodgy squeeze onto the pitch
head. The chamber led nowhere but had a hole in the ground. Standing in
the hole, the floor started to vanish beneath us, revealing a deep
looking rift which unfortunately looks too tight to descend.