8th June 2019

With Jon, Brockers and Nick

We made a return to the Cold Gnarly North to finish off the job we
had started last weekend. Jon was the first to cross the “sea of slurry” and go
up to the nice dry bit to fill bags. Somehow, Brockers had talked himself into
the cold mucky job in the slurry, I was positioned at the bend in the north
passage just beyond the first “pinch-point”, Nick was at the junction where he
stashed the filled bags and rocks, although some went to the bottom of the
entrance too.

Although my position had started off dry it was soon rather wet
and squalid with a good deal of splashback coming from the haul-rope, at least
the skip route was well lubricated.

Jon cleared the loose debris left-over from the IRS and quite a
bit more stuff too, Brockers busied himself improving the access to the passage
north from the “lake”, Nick, meanwhile was quietly digging something, anything,
it’s like a ‘nervous-twitch’. The stash of spoil was accumulating.

Eventually, it was decided that we shift back and clear-out the accumulated
spoil from the cave. Some quite large boulders had appeared, and they hadn’t
come from the north. They were to stay below ground ready to be hauled-out
another day. There were 64 loads hauled to the surface today, 48 filled bags
and 16 skip-loads of rocks.

The warmth of the June sunshine was very welcome after spending a
couple of hours or so in the Cold Gnarly North.

Author: mendipgeoarch

Archaeologist, Geologist, Speleologist