TEAM: Artur Kozłowski, Indrė Kutkaite, Éabha Grainne Lankford
(aka The Beauty and The Beasts), Pavel Cesnak
The planned 9am meeting at DCU was slightly delayed as I needed my beauty sleep but by 10.30 am a truly international Irish - Lithuanian - Slovakian - Polish team of cavers was fully assembled and headed off towards the North. After an epic 5h journey which deserves to be told as a separate story with a glass or perhaps a bottle of something stronger we reached the Hoo and after an initial shock that some experienced after realising that there really was no shower there, we set off to the Marble Arch.
Somewhere after the Wet Wiggle we met Steve Muh and Helen the Lovely Girl coming back from the end of Lagnabrocky Way and after a brief chat we continued towards Mexican. (by the way, an awkward moment at the desk in MAC: when asked who I left the callout with I answered that with Steve McNamara, without having known that he entered MAC 2h earlier...lol)
Once in the Mexican Passage a rope was used to pass the black flowstone mass and we had a small picnic before entering the extension. The Acapulco Stroll was very suggestive and the girls decided to strip some of their garments.The Stripping Room was born.
Down at the previous limit I passed the Montezuma's Squeeze and after 15/20min of clearing the way from the cobbles I gained extra 5m (red line) after which passage got tight and sandy and seemed to turn sharply to the left. Éabha attacked it with a shovel but after 10-15min we run out of available space to move the spoil and decided to check out the other leads. As a result we gained another 25m of passage: the blue line is the section found by Éabha, the green one by Indrė ( myself and Pavel were too fat to get through...). There seemed to be good prospects at the end of the blue extension, after an initial squeeze (which I reckon could be enlarged by few hilti caps) Éabha entered an easy crawl passage that soon became a sitting size passage (unusual in that section of the cave). The way on was partially blocked by a few medium size boulders behind which the continuation could be seen. Again, a few Hilti caps should sort out the problem.
30m+ of virgin passages were found.
On the way out we practised an emergency scenario: reaching ICC through the Flyover in case the Blasted Tunnel sumps. Pavel watched our struggles with a hardly hidden amusement and opted for bone dry Blasted Tunnel. We reunited by ICC gate.
Traditionally I missed the ICC entrance and we exited through the Slot entrance after 6h spent underground.
P.S. Real callout was left with Al Kennedy, just in case you wonder....;)
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