Hollie London, Trevor Hughes, Mike Wise, Ed Ford, Chris Holt and John Cooper on a mission to level the bottom of Cement Dig. HL, EF and CH each spent approximately 30 minutes digging and filling buckets. The top rope attachment loop was found to have a very long tail; when this was adjusted the rope reached all the way from JC at the dumping spot to TH at the top of the shaft making hauling easy peasy especially with MW, EF and CH assisting the buckets to negotiate the corners. A new 8m rope was attached to the top rope krab and left to follow the bucket, making it easy to retrieve the bucket from JC after emptying.
EF had a 1 on 1 battle with a tooth shaped rock in the floor which was rocking to and fro but did not want to be extracted. The full time score was EF 0 - Rock 1. In extra time CH and MW took a look at it but the final score was Diggers 0 - Rock 3, with a grand total of 42 buckets removed, all of which were dumped by JC with the rest of the team rotating to different extents.
At the end MW went down to review the status at the bottom and was really pleased to find a flat floor with no downhill wriggling needed to see the 'corner' and a clearance of maybe 15" below the undercut. The floor has some rocks embedded in the mud but a bit of minor furtling indicated these could be dug out.
No-one got cold as the draught wasn't as strong as it was on the last visit, but TH and MW got persistently dripped on while positioned just above the top of the shaft.
JC took CH out via the old cave, HL carried my bag of tools in and out - thanks HL!
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| Before digging photo |
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| After digging photo - the rock mentioned above can be seen in the floor just above the krab |
2 hrs and 15 minutes
Before and after photos by HL
Mike Wise
