Manchester Hole - 10 Sep 2006

Sunday September 10th 2006

Members present: Kevin Francis,  Nicola Gover,  Richard Gover

This was our second attempt at the Manchester - Goyden through trip.

The first notable difference was that the reservoir was not spewing water from the top. In fact it looked several metres lower than last time. We took this as a very good sign.

The cave was easy to locate again, and the number of flowers outside had depreciated greatly. It took us about five minutes (in bizarre light conditions - for some reason none of us could see properly) to get to the part that had stumped us before. A quick investigation led us to conclude that we weren't shit last time. In fact the sump had retreated several metres down the cave this time, revealing the small passage we that had been impossible to find last time!

The passage led to a crawl through water, but it wasn't long before we were stuck again. We found the several digging implements and after some umming and ahhing found the chamber we were sure must have led on. The very muddy duck to it was tight and um, muddy, to the point that we have to dig it out to get Gover through! The chamber was so small that we couldn't all sensibly get in. Both Nikki and I had noticed a small patch of black in the muddy ceiling rift (which in theory we were meant to be going up)

So, not wanting to be defeated having found no other possible way on, Gover joined me in the chamber and we dug out more of the mud at the bottom and then started probing the hole in the ceiling with the spade. It had to be a false ceiling! After several minutes we had caused a fair bit of mud and flood debris to land on our heads. After making a Kevin size slot, I was shoved up to find no easy way on. It definately went up and across, and the name of the rift "the eternal optimist" was definately well deserved. However we could see no sensible way of getting the three of us up it with no gear at all. I only got up myself by standing on Rich and the muddy walls offered no hand or foot holds.

So, after a hefty washing session, with our tails between our legs we headed out of Manchester Hole, the link eluding us once more.