With Jake.
It was okay with just the two of us as it allowed a couple of missions to be completed without to much disruption to digging.
1. Took my drill underground and Jake drilled a hole into the large boulder, balanced precariously at the top of the pot, then inserted a bolt into the rock. This enabled us to drag the boulder along using some short scaffold boards that had been brought up to the cave for another purpose.
“We could teach those Stonehenge builders a thing or two about shifting stones” was the gist of Jake’s comment, except of course they wouldn’t have access to a 36v battery drill and…I digress.
Suffice to say the boulder removal worked rather well and it is now at the bottom of the entrance awaiting removal to the surface when we have more of the team here.
2. The construction of a bridge over the pot. We retrieved the two short ladders from below along with anything else that might be reusable – bags, etc. The shortest ladder was then positioned over the pot and hammered down into place, two boards were then put on top. The longer ladder was placed alongside on its edge to act as a barrier. A bit of passage shape modification and packing of mud around the boards and ladders then it was time for a test run. After a quick sort out of the hauling ropes Jake went up to the end to fill some bags, I went back to ‘Stal bend’ for the hauling back of the skip. First one bag – success, then tried a bigger load – all went pretty well, a couple of mishaps but that was put down to overloading of the skip. There is some scope for a little passage modification but all in all the two missions were completed.
Ten bags and an assortment of rocks were filled, removed and emptied and then it was pub time!