107 - Smooth Sandy Bottom
Wookey
Down 107 so Matt could fulfill his promise to Joe to find out where SSB (Smooth Sandy Bottom)
actually goes. Matt came down from stone bridge but we still got underground before 10. Whizzed
down to China then down the implausible hole in the floor of China, which for some reason goes
down 25m without being full of rocks. SSB is rather small passage so very tedious surveying. Found
last few survey dots but no numbers, so surveyed 3 legs to make sure it would join up. Surveyed
for ages down the passage, occaisionally getting a leg nearly 3m long! Eventually got to some
unscooped passage (after about 6 hours surveying on 2 trips - Joe owes us all beer!). and shortly
after that it opened up at a T-junction. Exciting! Except that all the air was going up into some
dodgy-looking boulders. Climbing up determined that we were looking at the bottom of a
boulder-choke, with a very tempting small hole (maybe possible to get a person through, maybe not)
looking through into blank space. Very frustrating. A disto tells us that the roof the other side
is 5m away but trying to climb through would need a proper nutter. The rocks are medium sized, and
the hole small so very likely to move if you tried to get through, but big enough to squash
you. So we reluctantly ran away.
The survey shows that this space is nowhere near anything else so it's very interesting, but it
really needs poking with a 5m stick or blowing up, or someone who is a proper nutter.