2016

 

Dave Mitchell’s Dig 2016

16/01/2016 Pete, Nigel & Myself.
Mainly a cementing session. 4 buckets of cement down. 2 buckets of rock down 8 buckets of spoil up. Adrian.

23/01/2016 Jake Parrish, Pete, Myself.
With Nigel sick, Ali lent us Jake. Very drippy underground but pleasant on the surface. 20 buckets of spoil out. 2 buckets of cement in. Pete opened up a draughting hole on the northeast side of the floor. Boulders becoming larger. Adrian.

27/02/2016 Pete Hann, Nigel Graham & Myself.
A bit of a drier day but the outside temperature was only about 6°C. Pete down to the bottom, hacking out mud & stones at the sides and then replacing that with cemented walls. 18 buckets of spoil taken out, 4 buckets of cement in. The hole that Pete had opened up was draughting well and you can see down it about 1.2 metres. The good thing about it is, it seems to be getting bigger as it goes further down. Adrian

05/03/2016 Pete Hann, Nigel & Myself.
16 buckets out, 3 buckets of cement in. More wall built around the North side of the shaft. More of the gap exposed which looks like it is trending North towards Warren Farm Swallet. Adrian.

12/03/2016 Nigel Graham, Pete & Myself.
More wall building & more spoil out. 3 buckets of cement in 19 buckets of spoil out. The gap or void is more visible & more exciting, either very large rocks or bedrock can be seen further down!! Looking good! Adrian.

09/04/2016 John Cooper, Pete Hann & Myself.
More digging at the bottom with a very strong surface person 50 buckets of clatch and rock hauled out. It’s looking increasingly like we have a solid wall in front of us with small black spaces to the right. Fairly dry at the bottom & less draught today. Breezy 4°C Sunshine/Showers. Adrian.

Saturday 9^th April 2016. John Cooper, Pete Hann, and Adrian Vanderplank. Fifty tubs of spoil hauled out by me with Adrian on the Naughty Step and Pete at the bottom. 2½ hours. John.

23/04/2016 Pete, Nigel & Myself.
A good digging session with the floor being lowered by 20 buckets. 3 buckets of cement used. At the end of the session Pete managed to look head first down the hole. The hole extends for about 10’ downwards, to the right small black hole with no visible walls! Still a load of stabilization to do before we get in. Adrian.

30/04/2016 Pete, Nigel, Myself.
It’s funny how a week and 27 buckets of spoil out changes a dig’s perspective. The black hole viewed disappeared as rocks were removed from the floor. At the end of the session, we were looking down a bedding plane / rift at angle of 30° for about 3m about 1 metre wide and about 0.5 metres deep. The cave draught was pulsing on Saturday but when it was draughting out it was more of a wind than a draught! 3 buckets of cement in. Adrian.

07/05/2016 Pete Hann, Nigel Graham, Barry Wilkinson and myself.
More digging approximately 27 buckets out. Good outward draught and Pete wall building on the R/H side which he then accidentally undermined and then it collapsed on him! Lots of very expletive language heard from the bottom and then a request to go and help dig him out. Another two buckets of cement used to redo the wall he lost - hey ho. Adrian.

?/?/? Barry, Nigel, Pete, Myself.
27 buckets of spoil out. 3 buckets of cement in. There is now a ridge of rock on the floor of the slot which will need bang to remove. Less draught today and pulsing when it did. Adrian.

21/05/2016 Pete Hann, Jude, Nigel, Myself.
Small amount of digging done followed by a bang. We then waited for the fumes to clear, which they did … partially followed by digging and another bang. All back to the Wessex for tea and paracetamol. Adrian.

28/05/2016 Barry, Jude, Pete, Myself.
The aim was to clear bang debris from last week, which was achieved with some partial success (some had fallen further into the cave!). Quite a lot of discussion ensued on the rocks being hauled out to the surface which were a mixture of Dolomitic Conglomerate and Clifton Down limestone. I personally didn’t think we were anywhere near any Dolomitic Conglomerate. Anyway 3 holes drilled 1 metre and 2 600mm x 10mm & fired. All then back to the Wessex we decided that attempting some more digging was a bad idea!

Geological map consulted at Barry’s House & coordinates for Mitchell’s overlaid. Results here. Adrian.

04/06/2016 Pete Hann, Barry Wilkinson, Nigel Graham, Jude & Myself.
Having been unable to clear the bottom properly after the last two bangs today turned into a mega clearing session. 83 buckets later the rift was more visible. The rift is 3” to 4” wide approximately 4’ in height and 12’ to a corner (or a blank wall) with a hole in the floor, only time will tell. All feeling very broken and tired with Nigel suffering the worst due to his knees.

A further bang concluded the session. 2 metres of 40gm 1 det. Adrian.

11/06/16 Pete, Barry, Myself.
Stayed on the surface hauling, 33 buckets up 1 bucket cement down. Mainly conglomerate up. Adrian.

18/06/2016 Jude, Pete & Myself.
A mixture of Capping Digging Capping Sleeping Jude)! With various people being at the front. 28 buckets of spoil removed. Adrian.

25/06/2016 Pete, Barry, Nigel, Jude, Myself.
Armed with generator and 240 volt rotostop drill. A good session clearing rock from the bottom. 46? Buckets cleared and a bang at the end of the session done. Definitely a cross rift is ahead noy very wide at present, but definitely a cross rift. Adrian.

02/07/2016 Pete, Barry, Nigel, Myself & Geoff Newton.
Cleared last week’s bang debris. Definitely over 40 buckets of spoil. The cross rift is far more visible and longer than we thought. Another bang this week will easily see us into the rift. Adrian.

30/07/2016 Pete, Barry, Jude, Nigel & Myself.
60 buckets hauled! No visible way on! Adrian.

06/08/2016 Pete, Geoff, Barry, Jude & Myself.
Cross rift now reached, 1 metre wide 3 - 4 metres long. Not sure which end the draught is coming out, it may be both ends! Adrian.

13/08/2016 Barry, Nigel, Geoff, Aubrey, Myself & John Cooper.
A really good session with Barry and Myself being allowed to play at the bottom (on the account of there being no Pete present). Three large rocks to the right capped and removed, then swapped with Barry and the compacted clatch in the centre of the rift was dug out and lowered. I then continued to dig on the R/H side until we could see down about 1.2 metres to a “floor” which seemed to undercut on the left. This side did seem to draught. With time going on three 600mm x 10mm holes were drilled in a bulge on the nearside, 40gn cord, retired & fired. 64 buckets of spoil removed. Adrian.

Saturday 13^th August 2016. John Cooper, Nigel Graham, Aubrey Newport, Geoff Newton, Adrian Vanderplank and Barry Wilkinson. 64 loads hauled out before 3 holes (10mm x ~500mm 40gm) drilled and fired. 3 hours. John.

Saturday 27^th August 2016. John Cooper joined Pete Hann, Charlotte Hilton, Adrian Vanderplank, Jude Vanderplank and Barry Wilkinson about ¾ of the way through their session. ½ hour. John.

20/08/2016 Barry, Pete, Jude, Geoff? & Myself.
Pete at the bottom continuing to dig downwards. Adrian.

27/08/2016 ?
? Adrian.

03/09/2016 ?
? Adrian.

18(17?)/09/2016 Pete, Barry, John, Myself & Jude.
A very brief visit to the dig due to the fact that I was still suffering from campylobacter that I seem to have caught in Greece, so I supervised the bang and then back to the Wessex. The bang was to take the bottom edge of a large rock off so we can further excavate the hole we can just see. Adrian.

Saturday 17^th September 2016. John Cooper, Pete Hann, Mike Kousiounis, Geoff Newton, Jude Vanderplank and Barry Wilkinson (joined for a short time by Malc Foyle and Adrian Vanderplank). Hauled 40 loads out before Pete drilled some holes and more spoil was created at the bottom. 2½ hours. John.

24/09/2016 John C, Nigel, Mike K, Pete H, Jude & Myself.
A good but hard session with 50 buckets of spoil, mainly bang debris, taken out of the cave. The floor in the “rift” was dropped significantly which allowed us to look at the hole in the floor. Pete managed to get a three second drop on a stone down the hole, and the draught coming out of the hole was impressive! Adrian.

Saturday 24^th September 2016. John Cooper, Nigel Graham, Pete Hann, Mike Kousiounis, Adrian Vanderplank and Jude Vanderplank. Hauled 50 loads out before I’d had enough hauling. Some heavy loads! Cementing now required I’m told. 2½ hours. John.

01/10/2016 Pete Hann, Barry W and Myself.
All down to the current end?! Where we continued to lower the floor to provide better access to “The Hole” after which two buckets of cement were used to start building up walls so we can stabilize the roof. The hole in the floor looks more interesting every time I look at it! Seems like we are about to leave the Dolomitic Conglomerate. Adrian.

08/10/2016 Pete, Nigel, John, Barry & Myself.
Fifteen buckets of mainly clatch hauled out. Two buckets of cement taken down. I didn’t go to the bottom today* but the dig is changing and I think next week we will start widening the hole downwards.
* My Back was not good. Adrian.

Saturday 8^th October 2016. John Cooper, Nigel Graham, Pete Hann, Adrian Vanderplank and Barry Wilkinson. With Nigel and Adrian on the surface 15 loads were hauled out before 2 loads of cement went in. 2 hours. John.

15/10/2016 Pete Hann, NikNak & Myself.
Armed with 10 dets the aim was to enlarge the hole between the boulders going downwards. After the initial 2 det bang we moved back a bit further for the next as the first was surprisingly loud! In all we did five firings of two dets. Just before the last as I was wiring up the dets it was a bit of a shock to see the whole right hand wall move down and away from where it was by about 6 inches. After firing the last two we were able to inspect the rock a bit more thoroughly. The rock that has moved is probably Clifton Down Limestone and behind it the more solid and larger “wall” is Dolomitic Conglomerate, so that is the possible reason that it has detached itself from the other. Adrian.

29/10/2016 Pete, Barry & Myself.
Pete & Barry started work on a small wall at the bottom to hold back a mud bank. Whilst I started to cap the large rock that had moved on the last session. I managed to cap about 1/3^rd of the boulder before running out of battery power (only one battery). Adrian.

05/11/2016 Pete, Nigel, Barry, Myself, Jude.
Nigel & Myself initially hauled buckets whilst Jude loaded them at the bottom (Barry was on the Naughty Step). Pete was at work building retaining walls at the bottom of the cave. After we had cleared the majority of the spoil I continued capping the large boulder. Towards the end of the session it began to cap more easily but by then both Hilti batteries were exhausted. The view of the gap is more improved and is looking more promising, although there is no sign of any solid walls at present, possibly a depth of 4 metres is visible. Adrian.

12/11/2016 Pete, Barry, Nigel & Myself.
A mixed digging session with a bit of hauling, capping and using 5 dets as well. More cementing done on the Southern end of the dig, followed by using 5 dets to break up the remains of the large boulder we have attacked for the previous two weeks. Finally the last pieces were capped which allowed us to expose the rock below which is acting as a capstone to the void below. The plan in the next few sessions is to secure the Southern end of the capstone and then to cap the Northern end off and see if it stays there. Adrian.

03/12/2016 Nigel, John Cooper, Barry, Myself & Jude.
More capping and cementing. One large boulder needed capping to give us some clear passage. About ten caps were used and the boulder was significantly reduced. The problem was that with its smaller size it dropped a further metre down the cave. Pete and I decided that it was too dangerous to carry on capping it. We decided to leave it to next week. Adrian.

Saturday 3^rd December 2016. John Cooper, Nigel Graham, Pete Hann, Adrian Vanderplank, Jude Vanderplank and Barry Wilkinson. With John and Nigel on the surface 23 loads were hauled up (Thin rope used). Some capping was done during the second half then 1 mix of cement sent down. 2 hours. John.

10/12/2016 Barry, Jude, Pete & Myself.
Two dets drilled into the remaining part of the offending boulder split it into two. These were then crowbarred down further. Pete was able to descend down vertically another 2 metres to a floor with no visible way on! After Pete had a good look around I went down to have a look whilst Pete went to organize some cement. Pulling a few stones out of the “floor” and it was obvious that the way on was under this floor. Pete then went back down with some cement. As he was building the walls, using rocks from the floor the floor became less and less, until the bottom fell out of Pete’s world and the floor dropped. Pete was quite unhappy about this and even more unhappy when it happened again! So out 2 metre extension became a 4 metre extension. There are gaps below but quite a lot of cementing to do first. Adrian.

17/12/2016 Jude, Pete, Barry, Nigel & Myself.
With a lot of progress being made last week it was a time for cementing and consolidation. Four buckets of cement were used mainly down the bottom but there was some remedial work done at the bottom of the shaft which had been washed out in the earlier month’s rain. Adrian.

24/12/2016 Jude, Nigel, Pete, Myself & Barry.
Digging & stabilizing downwards. Two buckets of cement used, nothing hauled up. Adrian.

31/12/2016 Pete Hann, Nigel Graham, Jude & Myself.
One boulder capped easily, the second boulder didn’t want to cap. About10 caps managed to reduce the boulder but not removed completely. We stopped capping the boulder and cemented a loose boulder that is resting on the half-capped boulder. Adrian.