Mark Denning & Stu Gardiner
Phase 1 was to remove the extremely large boulder that was concealing what seemed like a water worn rift below, on the previous visit Mike was unable to even move it. Stu set about chiselling away any stal using the 110v drill from around the edges. The plan was to try and break it into 2 manageable sections so 6x 10mm 500mm deep shot holes were drill through the boulder, the were enlarged with a 14mm short drill bit to allow the chisels to be set in, after a few minutes of whacking the chisels the boulder cracked in 2 allowing the 2 sections to be removed from the dig face.
The way on seemed to again be straight down in the floor, however a small void under what seemed to be a solid wall gave the impression that it may well go horizontally.
Mark went in to investigate the wall, he then came to the conclusion that the wall was in fact another very large boulder/s that was agian staled in place, he set about removing the stal with the drill until it was exposed enough to attack.
Stu then adopted the shot hole approach in an attempt to remove the top of the boulder that was wedged fast against the roof, this would hopefully free up the boulder enough to crack it in half with another set of shot holes - this was all carried out seamlessly. Stu went up top to recover from mild C02 poisoning whilst Mark removed the 2 sections of boulder.
The removal of the boulder revealed around 3ft of open passage beyond, this was dug down in awkward conditions and again another void was located at the base of a scollped wall with white stal present.
The floor is very loose and the way on is straight down.
The dig is totally stacked out with filled bags and many large boulders that will need to be removed ASAP.
We were finally beaten and forced to retreat due to high levels of C02 - a pint in the Queen Vic soon aided recovery.
Thoughts on the high C02 is that we spent nearly 4 hours on Wednesday working hard on the boulders and then 48 hours later another 4 hours working equally as hard, this coupled with the decreased space due to the filled bags and boulders would have reduced the flow 02.
Total time underground: 4 hours.
Stu,
ReplyDeleteperhaps its time to borrow the C.H.A.P.S. darlek to suck out the bad air??
As an aside thought I think we need to look at stabilising the tallus cone entrance, sometime soon the whole lot is going to rumble down blocking the entrance!
wormster