28th May: with Roz, Duncan and Nick.
It’s been too long since the last visit to Home Close, the aim of the trip, on my part was to pay some attention to the obstruction along the 60m crawl.
A steady trip through the cave to the pitch, which was already rigged, just needed to lower the rope. All down the pitch and along Sandy Passage. At the start of the 60m crawl we split into two groups, Duncan and Nick headed upstream to the gravel choke, Roz and I went to the obstruction barring further progress along the 60m crawl. I started drilling a couple of holes into the flake of rock causing the blockage, it was quite fractured so drilling was not easy. Also drilled two holes into the right-hand wall, all holes 500mm x 12mm. All set-up, we made our way back to Sandy Passage, Roz with the bags while I laid out the wire. Went along to the gravel choke to meet-up with Duncan and Nick, Roz went to look at the boulder choke. Nick was in the process of pushing through the choke, in a pool of slurry, and gained access into a cross-rift, the low gravelly passage continues but requires more digging, about 10m gained. We made our way back to the pitch. Roz was already on the rope, then Duncan followed by Nick, taking my kit bags with them. I returned to the 60m crawl to bring today’s proceeding to a satisfactory conclusion, a good reverberating rumble. Then, up the pitch and out of the cave.
We even made the Hunter’s!
