With Jon, Brockers and Nick.
Nick turned-up with a large, heavy bar to try and deal with an
obstruction underground. At Hallowe’en Rift, Nick went ahead to attempt to
remove the obstructing slab of rock, although he required some assistance to
get the bar down the entrance. Jon, Brockers and me had decided to clear-out
the accumulation of rocks at the bottom of the entrance. The smaller ones were
loaded into the skip, the large ones placed into a strop we had devised,
specifically for rock removal, the rock-net had long ago been purloined by
persons unknown. The strop was effective, and thirty-six loads of rock were
hauled-out to the surface. Brockers argued that some of the larger boulders
were worth four skips but this was discounted. When the rocks were cleared we
made our way underground to assist Nick. The large bar didn’t have the desired
effect and the obstruction remains, so we worked around it. Spoil removal proceeded
at a rather sedate pace today, the digging is a bit constricted and awkward.
Discussions took place, in my opinion we should put digging along
the south-west passage on the back-burner and switch the effort to follow the passage
trending north-west (Trevor Hughes’ old dig), at least that is going in the
desired direction.
At the end of the session twenty-five filled bags were hauled-out
and emptied and a further eight skip-loads of rock. There are plenty of stones
on the surface for wall building now.