With Jake, Jonathon, Tav, Nick, Brockers and
Alex.
A good team turn-out today. Jake went ahead
to start digging, with Tav assisting. They were followed by Jonathon, Nick and
Brockers, Alex and I remained on the surface. While Alex hauled the spoil from
the cave, I went dry-stone walling, continuing the reconstruction of the
spoil-heap wall.
The bags started to come from the cave at a
good rate, the reason being, Nick had started digging somewhere along the
approach passage. Alex didn’t have much time to empty the bags, so I stopped
wall building and went to help-out.
About 70 bags and a dozen or so skip-loads of
rock were hauled-out of the cave, about 40 of the bags were from the ‘official’
dig-site.
The focus of attention has switched to a
route that leads over the top of Another Emotional Journey (AEJ), an area we paid
some attention to in 2014 (I checked the log-book), before getting side-tracked
by a hole in the floor and followed that downwards, eventually emptying out quite
a large chamber, that is now connected to AEJ. It is, however, much easier to get
to now, and spoil removal will be far more efficient.
At the end of the session, Jake was suitably impressed,
and enthusiastic, by progress and the prospects ahead. The dig, a partially choked
phreatic arch with some fine scalloping in the roof, the sediment fill is a mixture
of sandy silt and thin calcite ‘false’ floor, there is a gap over the top, c.100-150mm
height, the direction is trending east. Sounds very interesting.
