Present: Jon P, Jim T, Chris H, Rob E and Joe B
We started the evening in the Anchor to receive congratulations and prizes for the Peak District Cave Exploration Prize to which the DCA and Derbyshire Geotechnical kindly donated. It was decided we ought to have a photo of the occasion which took around half an hour of snapping away before anyone was convinced we’d got a decent picture of us misfits (we hadn't).
The plan was to head to IDM where Jon, Jim and Chris would make their way to the Tap Room to take some photos, while Rob and I would keep heading further to check outs some potential leads in the roof beyond Don’t Flatten Me. Katie had taken a trip into this part of the mine earlier on in the week and there were apparently reports of the ginging around the pitch down out of the Tap Room disintegrating with a loud rumble. We wouldn’t be getting far if that had decided to fail catastrophically, so we were going to make an assessment of that first.
Rob and I trotted down the dale ahead of the others naively assuming we’d have great success, (we needed all the time we could grab) and flipped the lid on the engine shaft. Rob did some dodgy knots and we dropped down to the rebelay. I had been into this part of the mine before, but had somehow forgotten all of it and couldn’t remember what was supposed to be a pitch and what was easy to use as a handline. This led to me down climbing the last pitch and flopping out in the Tap Room where I joined Rob. He was staring down the aforementioned suspect pitch, with the general assessment being it was definitely missing a few key blocks and was terrifyingly overhanging - one nudge and the whole lot could come down… Undeterred, we blindly carried on towards our objective.
We crawled through into Don’t Flatten Me, which contains the most incredible physics-defying cantilever block seemingly held up by nothing. The first aven was a few metres beyond this, above a section of natural off to one side where it looked as though a passage may be heading off in a bedding above. Rob shimmied up the rift to investigate, but unfortunately it did not amount to anything and appeared to just be a cavity only intersected by the miners.
We continued along to the current extent of the rift where exploration ended. Rob had previously been along the cartgate under where we stood and had found it fallen it at the end. We considered the possibility of climbing over the blockage and continuing along the rift at a higher level. I went first this time and awkwardly shuffled my way upwards to get a better view of the way on. Ahead, in the direction we wanted to go, the rift widened and the floor dropped away to around a 4m drop. It looked featureless and terrifying. Rob became impatient with my floundering and started to climb up behind me. He climbed in to a narrower section above, deciding it would be easier up there and, whilst showering me with loose rocks, bridged over the drop. In a fairly hair raising move where I envisaged him falling on my head and taking me with him, he made it into the gap at the far side, but this unfortunately did not continue above the blockage.
Our disappointment was tempered only by the realisation we’d actually make it back to the pub in time for last orders. So, with that in mind, Rob pulled the disto out, we surveyed our way back to the last survey station near Don’t Flatten Me and quickly made our way out. We joined the others in the engine shaft, where we found Jon and getting cosy by both dangling on separate ropes and climbing together. This proved to be a great decision as we were out in double quick time to make the Anchor.