Where
Have All Our Diggers Gone?
The last
major find by the Red Rose as far as I recollect was the
Maybe one of Jim Newton’s digs will go one day but even if it doesn’t it was
Jim who pointed the intrepid diggers at the Woodhouse Way in the first place as
I remember.
Anyway, the point is how about some of our newer/younger members having a go.
The thrill of finding new passage or even maybe a new cave or pot, to tread
where no man has trodden before is really the ultimate event in a caver life. What
we get is worn out fingers.
There is new
cave to be found but it won’t be unless someone gets out there and turns over
boulders. If you think there’s no chance then read on . . . . . . .
Craftsman’s Pot —
Some of the
regular digging team (N.C.C. & D.C.C.) had been prodding a draughting grass sod near Apprentice Pot for some time, it had
been called a “No hoper” by one or ‘two of our “experts” but then all of a
sudden one weekend it wasn’t a no hoper any more, and even the doubting
Thomas’s got infected with enthusiasm.
Down a dug
out and shored ten ft. muddy and hole through a revolting muddy ditch and into
a fairly tight meandering passage descending fairly quickly to the head of a
tight, free climbable pitch of around 20ft. At the base of the climb all of a
sudden it turned into fun, the constriction gone we were two thirds the way up
a 40ft. hole with a 25ft. pitch below us.
At the bottom
of this pitch there is a hole into a small boulder floored chamber out of which
is a hole in the floor, another 25ft ladder pitch into a large but none too
safe chamber with a boulder slope rising up to above the top of the first 25ft.
ladder.
The following day another passage was dug through rocks near the base of the
first ladder to reveal ‘a descending crawl on boulder floor for about 30ft. At
the end of this passage Lugger started digging in the
floor only to find it disappear beneath him leaving him jammed and sweating 90ft.
above an already well littered aven (littered with an assortment of digging
tools and lots of big rocks, and thank goodness, no bits of Lugger).
At this point everybody came out to eat and drink, and calm Luggers
nerves. Of course cafe owners have all got big flapping ears so I was “invited’
to go along on a pushing trip.
It was Sunday evening and up till then I thought I’d had a hard day, but it’s
amazing what adrenalin can do. We found the head of our newly formed 90ft.
pitch exceedingly loose, being lined on two sides with mud and boulders for.
20ft. to 30ft., so it was decided to rig one ladder and descend to a loose
ledge 15ft. down (judging that any falling rocks wouldn’t gather enough
momentum to do us too much damage.) An exposed 1Sf t. traverse on this ledge
took us to a calcited blockage which caught hammer
rash, thus allowing us through to the head of a superb 60ft. pitch, it even
came complete with it’s own ladder hanging stal boss
at the top. A fine aven this if just a tiny bit littered with evidence of bits
of loose roof! We .were all far to eager to find a way
on to be too worried about getting squashed. (No one had bothered to look for a
way on below the original dig in the floor for quite a few trips to tome
though).
We thought
that we were about 250ft. - 300ft. deep now so we didn’t anticipate another
pitch but there were upstream and downstream passages to follow.
Upstream is a mud floored tube getting too tight (still needs digging.)
Downstream took us three or four trips to get through a tight wet bedding but
then yet more adrenalin pumping stuff, stomping along the first significant
horizontal development Craftsman’s had yielded. Some crawling, some walking, some
avens to climb (none of them gave us anything) and some more crawling to it’s
present end, a too tight duck, floored with very fine silt like sand which when
dug out is immediately replaced from every side. The roof will have to be
raised sometime to allow us to go further towards the “
Steve Round.
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