Tuesday 26th August 2025

Mike Kushy, Ed Ford and Glen Thomas. Got into the cave around 11.30am armed with 2 drills (one very kindly leant by Lee Venning last minute) and HE materials. The aim was to get through the light connection using pfs only and have the HE on reserve if all else failed. With MK at the sharp end the new connection to the chamber was opened up using just the Bosch drill. Meanwhile EF and GT continued bringing the bang cable down to the dig face and joining the wires together (one end is near the shaft and the other end is just above the light connection with about 2m slack). After they had done this the pair continued to make some cement mixes and build up the retaining wall just under the scaffolding area. Meanwhile MK had managed to drop through into the chamber kicking stuff through on his way, super hard coming back out but lots of loose to push through still. EF joined MK to help lift out some more rock from the new connection then EF had a go at getting through to the chamber and managed succesfully. It is possible to free climb the last little bit but there's good scope to build a natural boulder stairway up from the chamber floor. It will pay to take in some caps or use the snappers to remove a couple of loose slabs from the edge around the top of the light conncetion. This and kicking more loose through (perhaps even taking a long rake or hoe in to pull the loose back from the chamber side). So there's that to do and more cementing as usual. 1 Daren Drum of sand in the cave, 1/4 BDH of cement and hardly any water so a fresh load of all materials will need taking in. We were tempted to set up a charge around the head of the new connection but time was short. Drizzly colder day today and a very cold draught. 5 hours. Mike.

GT building up walls. Photo MK.

Part way through opening up the light connection. Photo MK.

GT above the vertcal squeeze that's not much of a squeeze anymore thanks to SH. Photo MK.

Wednesday 20th August 2025

Afternoon. John Cooper. Took in four Daren Drums of sand. Left the bags in so the Drums could be brought out when empty. Met Sam (SH) in the car park as I was leaving. He was heading in with drill. 1½ hours. John.

Evening.  Ed Ford and Mike Wise descended around 6.15pm with EF carrying 5L of water and met SH at the squeeze boulder around 6.30pm. SH had passed the squeeze before we arrived and had needed to remove his oversuit to get out. Afterwards he had taken material off the right hand part of the squeeze boulder with P&F and it was now easily passable as ably demonstrated by EF. Having had a discussion about next moves, MW left EF lying flat out jiggling rocks in the light connection with SH as backup and went out the old way following the bang wire, going as far as the bottom of the entrance to collect all the coiled up slack. The coils had transformed themselves into a cleverly knotted mess and after a fight this was laid out down to the connection point in Golden Key Chamber. Here it got worse and the connection had to be unmade and time spent unravelling both parts before moving on downwards. The connection was left unmade as I had no glasses with me. Dropping through Calcite Squeeze I met SH and EF who had given up on P&F having made no further progress. The slack was dropped down the bedding and left there. There may be a bit more remaining in Golden Key Chamber., the firing point has not changed.

We then exited. Our consensus is capping is needed to make the squeeze passable for all and HE is needed for the slab and the floor in the light connection to provide much needed working space to get at the other rocks blocking the way down.

The 'Pit' also looked interesting.

Some amazing stabilisation work has been achieved over the last 3 weeks. First time MW has seen any of the recent find

 2 hours (EF and MW)

3 hours (SH)

Photo by SH

 

The light connection - red lines indicate material to be eliminated

Mike Wise