With Jonathon, Matt, Jake and Tav.
I did the excavation and filling of bags, Jonathon cleared the bags and rocks away.
The spoil was loaded into the skip to Matt, at the top of the slope. Jake was on haul and shuttle duty, while Tav had opted to be on the surface. The extracted spoil was added to the wall, the sediment packed behind the stonework to add strength.
The wall, with drying bags flapping in the wind like Buddhist prayer flags.
At the end, I concentrated on clearing the ‘trample’ from the floor, the digging forward toward a back wall. Here, a very narrow, ‘clean-washed’ gap was revealed. I pulled out some small stones and could peer down about 300 to 500mm, there was a feint draught of cool air emanating from the hole. It would appear that there is a lower level of development. Although, the passage does pinch in, it widens lower down, there is plenty of compact sediment to be removed before a better evaluation can be determined. At higher level in the passage, there still remains a considerable amount of sediment that needs to be removed.
Digging is not exactly rapid at the moment, the spoil is very claggy and sticks to the tools. I found it easier to loosen the spoil with the mattock, then fill the bags by hand. A steady 40 or so bags were filled with a few rocks, along with the rocks left over from Thursday evening, 55 loads were hauled out to the surface.
