24th November 2018

With Alex, Jonathon, Duncan, Brockers and Nick

We continued the quest to the south-west. My turn to be up-front
digging, Alex was next in line and did some extra widening of the passage, Jonathon,
also moonlighting, in between skips, Duncan and Brockers sorted out the distribution
of filled bags to the surface where Nick was on the end of the hauling rope –
85 loads up the entrance and emptied.

By the end of the session, the pinch point was just about big
enough to wriggle through and get to where we had been digging in the early
90s. I could see the obstruction ahead that had frustrated us back in the day, I
also retrieved some digging tools that had not seen any action for nearly 28
years, the chisel will be ok but the wooden handle of the lump-hammer was
rotten.

Saturday evening was the Digging Thingy at the Hunter’s. I put up the
Frost and Ice poster produced for the recent BCRA Cave Science Symposium in
Bristol and gave a presentation on Hallowe’en Rift (pdf below). The cave came second, I didn’t
enter HR, someone else must have.