Vince, Tav, Jake, Mike, and Nick
It was a wet walk across the fields, up to the cave.
Underground, there were stones on the ledge awaiting size reductions with plugs & feathers so got on with that until the team arrived. Due to wet conditions and team numbers, it seemed an obvious choice to continue the digging in Can of Worms. In the increasingly larger chamber me and Tav got to work, mostly concentrating on the southern side but also lowering the floor to give more space going forward. Room to swing the mattock or sledge! Currently the way ahead is not exactly clear so it is hoped the removal of an obstruction caused by a mixture of calcited boulders and degraded will reveal something. A consequence of removing boulders and large lumps of fragmented flowstone is that even more space is quickly created. It is also noteworthy that the sediment is no longer dry, and removal is somewhat easier with the addition of moisture.
Jake was hauling the spoil away from CoW, across the ledge to Mike at the bottom of the entrance. Nick had gone out to haul the spoil (filled bags and rocks) up to the surface. The weather had not improved and there was still persistent rain which was a complete change to the past few days of dry, sometimes sunny, and frosty days. Nick didn’t complain…much.
No-one actually counted the bags, but all agreed (later in the Hunters’) that it was more than 40 with a lot of rocks added to the stockpile waiting to be added to the wall some time in the future – too wet today to mess around with that!
To the Hunters’ for refreshments and an open fire, very comforting!
Later this evening at the Hunters’ were the ‘J’Rat Digging Awards.’ Well done to Ali Moody and team at Longwood Valley Sink on a tremendous effort and discovery.
Below is the slide presentation that I gave on the evening regarding faunal and human remains found and recovered in 2024/2025.
