Mike Kushy, Andy Thompson and Tim Rose. Took in sand, cement and 2 drills. Andy and Tim went to dig at the Boulder Rift dig, Mike went to the cemented dig. I opened up the dig face a little more and managed to pull the obstructive Boulder out of the floor. There's a big calcite blockage further down which I've started to remove some of but a lot more will come out. Tim and Andy joined me about 13.30 and clatch was removed from the very bottom, some interesting holes appearing in the floor. We finished off with a cementing session. Dry and bright day outside and a very good druaght at the dig. Note: I could smell Andy smoking in the other dig and the smell was coming from the floor in the dig I was in. There's half a Daren drum of cement and 2 x 1/2 bags of sand. 4 hours. Mike.
We met at Upper Pitts on Sunday morning for an hour of faffing around, drinking tea and discussing how tortoises go around knobbing each other. Monica & Courtenay tried their best to convince me to go to a proper cave with them but for some reason I honoured my promise to assist Mike in his Rabbit Hole. We headed over to the cave about 11am after we'd cleared up the important business of deciding what length a fossilised sperm whale phallus would be. The last time I saw Mike's hole it was just a hole. Now it's a certified, fully fenced off ring piece. Between the three of us we carted a load of sand and drill into the cave. I thought the general idea of a dig was to remove spoil from the cave, not take it in. Once through the initial passage and maze of gaps in boulders an impressive 45° bedding plane is entered. Quite a bit of stal. and plenty of interesting formations. Mike sent Andy and I off through some more gaps in boulders to continue one of the two current dig sites, this one is found at the lowest point in the boulder rift. Andy did all the hard work removing a few rocks and plenty of clatch which I lost into various gaps in the boulders. The way on appeared to be horizontal. Meanwhile I took the drill to a few boulders on the approach to make life easier. One boulder in particular was proper fucking me off! Definitely a draft emanating from somewhere in that area and the whole time we could hear Mike drilling in the other dig. I'm certainly not qualified to comment but my gut feeling is that this dig will just follow the bedding and appear in the wall of the main chamber. I think I'd head down rather than horizontal if anything, but that looks a lot of effort. After sufficient punishment Andy and I headed to Mike's hole in the floor. This looked like a much more promising site to me. We helped Mike haul and lose a load of spoil from the bottom of the dig. Andy then whipped up a tray of sloppy and Mike smeared Andy's sloppy all over the walls before cleaning himself off on the curtains. All spent, we made a hasty exit and got back to the car at 15:30. Great to see the place and I look forward to stomping down a mile of clean washed streamway once it's found. Meanwhile I'll stick to Portland Boulder bashing. Tim.
On Sunday Tim and I left Mike at the cement dig to go and take a further look at the Boulder Rift dig. I removed a large boulder from the floor and with Tim's help managed to remove this from the dig. After creating a little more space I was able to get headfirst into the continuation. A strong draught could be felt and despite Tim's hesitance I believe it to be worth pushing. The next task will be removing the floor in the chamber we have created, to give us the space we need to dig going forwards. 3 hours. AT
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