Whitepit - 29th December 2010

Stu Gardiner, Estelle Sandford, Mark Denning & Jo Hardy

The huge slab of calcite floor was the main obstruction preventing any further progress and there was no easy way of breaking this up due to the shear 'softness'.  The best technique we found was to drill multible deep 14mm holes through the slab and then using plug and feathers slowly peel sections away, most attempts yeilded a few inches at a time, but every now and again we would get lucky and a significant 'chunck ' would come away.  After around 2 hours of attacking the slab Mark finally managed to split it into two sections allowing us to haul the 2 halves out from the dig face.

Now that the obsticle had been removed it was digging as normal, with soft sand and small calcite chunks, however towards the end of the session I managed to unearth a boulder of around 60kg from the floor that ideally needed to be removed as this would provide more leg room at the face, plug and feather were used to reduce the boulder and this proved sucssesful by breaking a good third away, now the boulder could be moved (slightly) and after around 40 minutes of smashing it with a lump hammer in an attempt to reduce the wieght we managed to man handle it to a postion where a sling could could be secured around it and it was haulded from the face to Talus 4.

Note: Upon entering the dig a strong smell of mould was present, on further invesigation these was a thin layer on the wall of the dig face - This is the first time this has appeared.

Time underground: 6 hours