21st February 2016: with Claire Cohen. Tony Audsley was at the surface, later joined by Alice, organising the on-site testing facilities.
Our aim was to collect the detectors placed in the cave, there are no plans to replace them at this time.
Grabbed the rope and we set off to rig the 80′ pitch and make our way into the cave system below. Headed straight down to Wigmore Sump 9 to collect the detector placed there, then on the way back up the Home Close inlet picked up the detector just upstream of the waterfall. The last two detectors were placed in the inlets at the upstream end of Sandy Passage, one at the boulder ruckle and one near the gravel choke. That part of the task complete we made our way back to the surface. For some unknown reason I really enjoyed the prussic back up the 80′ pitch. Although it was just a steady in and out the trip still took the best part of three hours.
The initial tests revealed nothing positive and subsequent results suggest there might be some contamination at source probably due to the high water levels recently. We will try more testing when the water conditions become more settled.
