13/12/22

Estelle Sandford, James Begley, Mike Moxon, Mike Wise, Jonathan Riley, David Walker, Chris George

2hrs

Arrived to find that there was no sign of water in the bottom of our new hole, that had all drained away since last week. We all came down at the start to take a look before letting Dave loose on digging around it. A few small boulders removed and plenty of mud of varying consistency. Everyone else spread up the passage to haul and work and Jon/Mike M at the top by the railway added to the buckets by adding some shelf so there is more stacking space there. It was quite cold outside, so did all the clearing as a batch from the other end of the railway. James took over and dug for a while and then Estelle & Jon came down for a look and Jon took over digging to the right of the dig. The ceiling centre arches to the right of the hole and everything there is mud/rocks, so we need to clear that to get an idea what is going on there as there may be wider ways into the void nearer the centre of the passage possibly, but also need to expose all the rock to the right to decide if it needs chemical persuasion or not. The hole itself is bigger, but more of a rift shape and there is lumps of churt on the walls just inside, which may break off, but currently only about 6" wide, but a couple of foot long. You can get your legs in a bit and not reach the bottom, but going in head first, you can't really see anything yet. The water in the pool above had nearly all drained away, but there had been no rain, just ice/cold weather since last week. 

Photos below are start and end of digging session (Chris's knee in it for scale!)