From the other side of the world in New Zealand, I had been closely monitoring the stellar work of the rest of the gang back home in Waterfall Hole. The huge clean-washed passages and glow worms of NZ can’t compare to the squalid misery of a good Stoney dig. I was jealous.
The dig face was described as being right up my street: flat-out capping laying on one side, with very little room to work, and virtually no stacking space. After we’d made our way through the lovely new sump bypass, we negotiated the way to Westy’s bit, all the while Jon moaned incessantly about the size of my tackle bag. Rob was going to head off and tick off another lead Chris has spotted the week before, while Jon and I headed towards the main dig. The boys were gracious enough to let me have a go first as I had yet to see it.
At the dig face, I was initially confronted with a jumble of rocks where Rob had previously broken up the large boulder blocking the way on. A quick tickle with a crowbar and I managed to bring the lower blocks further towards me and get the others to collapse on my arms and head… I could now begin one-handed capping them into smaller chunks so they could slot neatly into our limited stacking space.
After a few hours of repeatedly shuffling around in the tight rift and launching and kicking rocks back at Jon, I managed to clear enough space above the boulder to squeeze into a narrow perpendicular rift. This made capping a lot more pleasant as I was now able to swing a hammer properly and not have my face right next to the capping bar.
The way on appeared to be down a narrow slot on the far side of the boulder/bedding with a reasonable cold draft hitting me in the face. I could just about see some space beyond through a small hole, but there was a lot more rock in the way and the capping now required me to go headfirst down the small hole and round a slight bend. This therefore involved disassembling the capping rod so I could get in, drill a hole, and then put the rod back in the hole in pieces and reassemble every time. At least I could just lob rocks further down now though.
JP in the squeezy bit into the chamber
After about an hour of sweating and swearing, I was tantalisingly close to be able to squeeze through into the space beyond, but the others began to complain of cold, with their faith in my positivity waning. I just couldn’t get this one jammed rock shifted. Growing increasingly frustrated, I threw a small handful of caps in the rock for one final effort, and with a satisfying crack and rumble of rocks into the space below I could finally wriggle through!
I dropped into a small chamber and immediately called Rob and Jon in. Jon, who was in front of Rob in the crawl, was sceptical to come through as he didn’t think we’d all fit and figured my threshold for impressive chambers was pretty low. Rob however, like a dog with two capping rods, was scrabbling to get in and have a look. There’s an obvious clean-washed channel down to the right as you enter, which is the obvious way on as it’s still heading in the right direction, and black space can be seen further ahead. This still requires capping and is currently underneath a huge and terrifying cantilevered boulder. Some climbs at the back of the chamber led up to more Waterfall Hole-esque jumbled boulders but with no obvious way on.
Happy boys
Plenty of piss-taking ensued as I was crowned chief GGW for leaving for three months only to return after all the hard work was complete and bag this find. It was getting late so we made a run for the pub. I am looking forward to heading back here - good prospects, sociable, and plenty of stacking space. Winner.