Wednesday 28th February 2024

John Cooper and David Morrison (Tuska). John started at 15.00 and moved rocks up from the bedding plane to the base of the entrance shaft. Only about half a dozen left to move when Tuska arrived at 16.00. By then the heap of rocks had very nearly reached the bottom of the fixed ladder, which would have pleased Nigel. Tuska then hauled rocks for 2½ hours, John loading and moving the last few up from the bedding plane.Towards the end Tuska was working in the dark as he had not brought a light along and it was thick mist. All spoil cleared when we left. However, a look at the bottom showed lots more cementing, clearing and boulder breaking still to do. 3½ hours. John.

Sunday 25th February 2024

Sam Hill, Mike Kushy and Alex Hannam.

MK and SH to start with. Took both drills in and broke up rocks at the dig face, SH breaking down rocks big enough to move back then MK making them even small further back. AH joined us after about an hour. With SH at the sharp end, AH behind and MK receiving rocks and stashing them up cave. Lots of buckets of clatch moved behind the retaining wall.  AH went to the front for a while and worked on some blocks. MK went to the front and filled up buckets of clatch from the floor, revealing some enticing holes. The retaining wall is now full and there's rock filling the bottom of the shaft, the space between the bedding and loose rock down the bottom. A few big boulders to break up at the sharp end still. Also the very bottom needs more wall building in the floor. Good view straight on as well. We need to keep straight on as a future option, but the floor is the better prospect. Good draught. 4 1/2 hours. Mike.

MK's YouTube video from today

Sam Hill and Alex Hannam at the dig face. Photo MK.

The dig face at the end of session. Photo MK.

View of ahead. Photo MK.

Saturday 24th February 2024

John Cooper, Pete Hann, David Morrison (Tuska) and Jude Vanderplank. Carried across two new bags of sand. One full mix of cement done and used by Pete (60%) at the bottom building supporting walls whilst John used up the rest higher up. Meanwhile Tuska was building walls on the surface. A second full mix was then done before Tuska left. Pete used all of it at the bottom. His wall now reaches and supports the roof boulder. One large boulder cemented into the floor as it was too big to fit on a wall. As we were finishing Jude appeared to inspect the work. 3 hours. John.

Bottom, inwards and downwards. Photo JV.

Wednesday 21st February 2024

John Cooper. Early evening trip to carry on with p&f on the large rock. Now in smaller chunks. Whether they are now small enough for Pete to build with will find out another day. Nice trickle of water flowing along and down into the floor. 1½ hours. John.

Pete Hillier and Trevor Hughes arrived on site at 19.00. Once at the dig face it was obvious that someone (John) had kindly destroyed the rock that I was going for tonight.
To give us room to work we hauled about 8 skip loads of ugly rocks to the surface enabling us to move the wall building rocks, so recently produced, away from the dig face. I attacked the next boulder forward and reduced it to a single residual piece. Quite a few smaller rocks were pulled out of the end leaving an enticing open space ahead from which emitted the usual draught.
We stopped work at 21.30 as the clarion call of the Hunters was beckoning.
The next trip (Sunday?) may, given some careful rock breaking, allow access to the c2m open passage ahead.
Good luck to the Sunday team. Trevor.