Red
Rose Cave and Pothole Club - Newsletter Vol. 6 No. 5 - October 1969
11th. October 1969.
Skittle Alley - Aquamud Sump and Red Rose Extension.
This was to be a big assault on the newly discovered passage. The party grew to 20 explorers
namely: Jim Newton, Pete Llewellyn, Ian Carruthers
(Eccles) Andrew Walsh, D. Hodgson, Bill Holden, John Frankland, Frank Croll, Bev Stevens, Herbert Headech, Chris
Hadwin, Frank Hardy, Dick Glover, Tom Sykes, Dave Creedy, Ian Wilkinson, Steve Hesketh,
Steve Potter, Ron Bliss, and Dave Copestay
(guest).
Herbert and. Chris,,
preferring a little solitude, left for a private excavation
in another part of Lancaster Hole and found a promising new pitch of which more later we trust. The
rest navigated the awkward passage from the Graveyard and
finally arrived at that sump The baling time was not too prolonged on
this occasion (it varies between one and three hours of hard graft) and soon we
savored its thrills.
One slides down
a mud slop head first to
find an eight to ten inch air
space over a lake of glistening Aquamud which
brought to mind the
hungry quick sands of screen
melodramas. The arms and upper body enter this and become semi immobilized. It then becomes obvious that part of the head my
have to enter this offensive material
to slide below the rock ceiling. A quick breath and hard swear and one advances and
feels the cold aquamud trickling into the lower ear. Passing below the rock ledge it becomes apparent
that this situation continues for about 12 feet, with only another
couple of inches of air space, as a bonus, Here the fun really begins. With
most of the body submerged in aquamud progression is difficult as one
pushes forward on arms to find the whole body sliding backwards an equivalent
amount in response to to some schoolboy law of physics.
Eventually most people seemed to settle for a serpentine leg and hip movement and a sort of
dog paddle with the hands.
It is always fun to sit back
and watch others emerging from sumps and ducks but
here this enjoyment
is perhaps more
acute. The mud is so tenacious that one emerges as an amorphous shape just discernable below a few inches of white spattered
face. The passage revealed led to
a short squeeze veering
right where it opened up into a large dry
passage. This continued
for about three hundred feet dry throughout. The maypole climb then blocks the way now
laddered for our enjoyment, A 25foot climb gives access to the top of a rock flake followed immediately
by a 20' descent, after this effort it is a little disconcerting
to find a hole the size of a
fist through a thin area of rock at the base of the flake which allows direct communication between the two sides of the climb. Surely this must one day be chipped away particularly as
the climbs are made more difficult
by the slippery mud on all of ones person and a large boulder lies perched atop the flake. The passage continues and in this section we were amazed at the length of some of the straws which approached five feet.
It terminates in
a low bedding plane 20'
wide with a strong
cold draught emerging. Here the days work began. Some surveyed, some took
photographs, some meditated, and a hard
working few took turns at digging in the bedding
plane at its two weakest points.
Progress was slow and the going extremely laborious as all excavation had to be done
stretched flat out and
with only a few
inches of tool movements possible. A further10' was gained by which was the tantalizing sight of a further 60' of
virgin cave clearly visible and appearing to open up at the limit of visibility. We
shall be back.
John Frankland
P, S. The writer makes no
apologies for adding a new word to
caving jargonese 'Aquamud’ This is a new experience - try it and see!