With the continued dry weather another trip down Grey Wife Hole was too good an opportunity to miss. The aims of the trip were to: gather some survey data while the conditions allowed, place belays on the line laid last time, see where the the passage goes and annoy Pete by posting without pictures…
After the work of getting the gear into the cave the fun bit happened on the Sunday. In Paradox Pond the water clarity was as good as it had been the previous weekend and surveying started. Data was collected most of the way to the point were the line reel had been picked up on the previous dive. Two distance measurements were missed as the silt cloud moved faster than I did, these will have to be collected on another dive. In all about 40 m of line was surveyed. Once the line laid last week was reached the survey notebook was put away and pipe belays used to route the line around a couple of gentle corners until the line reel was reached where a lead block was placed to belay the line. With the line now properly secured the sharp turn to the right that had forced me to abandon the last dive was taken into an easy silt floored passage. This carried on straight (I think) to a rising silt bank which marked another chamber. Again a lead block belay was used. There was no noise of air bubbles reaching surface so after a very quick look at the roof (through the peat stained water that seems to collect in these chambers possibly indicating an inlet) a tunnel, low down on the right side of the chamber was investigated. Starting as easy going over silt the roof soon lowered and the walls spread to create a bedding plane. By this point I was again out of belays and the reel was nearly empty. With roof protrusions causing interesting route finding and the silt reducing visibility the reel was clipped off and buried in the silt at a convenient turning point. Beyond the reel the floor looked to be coming up to the roof but the roof itself was out of view so that may also be trending upwards. The journey out was complete in low vis, the total dive to was 35 minutes and the maximum depth was 5.8 m.
Future work now includes collecting the missing data, surveying the continuing line, belaying at the current limit, finishing off that reel, securing a new reel and following the ongoing passage. As to the final aim, I will have to wait and see…
Series - Grey Wife Exploration
- Grey Wife Hole
- Grey Wife and warm water
- Grey Wife revisited
- Grey in Black on White
- Grey after the rain
:angry:
Good report despite the lack of pix! 😉 Perhaps you should add all the Grey Wife reports to a “series”, then over time there will be a complete history of the development leading up to your discovery of several kilometres of stomping sized passage…
You seem to have forgotten what happened last time I tried to use the “series” function. It is clearly one of those features that is beyond members of the information underclass 😳
I think stomping sized passage is unlikely as there is already a lot of that in the cave, you should come along one time to see it 😆
Yes, but I’m counting on you to find it (and the dry way in) …
And a dry way in for the rest of us to enjoy!
Hang on, I haven’t even found any dry passage yet 🙄
How much new passage in total then? It sounds like you’ve more than made up for a summer of bad weather-enforced inactivity. Congratulations!
Thanks. Total line laid was about 45 m when both dives are added together. Not much really but significant in Grey Wife as it doubles the known length of the flooded passage.