Friday, December 17, 2010

New deep underwater cave discovered in Gort



Discovering a new cave

24.07.10
After an eventful aborted dive in Polltoophill I decided to poke around a bit in the Kiltartan parish. During a recce trip in the area of Ballylee River Sinks a new, previously unknown, active only in wet weather sink was discovered. Located only a few hundred metres to the SW from the Hammer Sink South ( main sink of the Ballylee River - no access, blocked by boulders, mud and dead trees) in a dense woodland, it was hoped to give an access to the Balylle conduit further downstream.



30.07.10
Pollindre, fot. Frank Griga
First dive in the new sink. Weather was much drier and the sink was static at the surface. I descended the pot with 7l and 3l sidemounted, 45m of line, wetsuit and fins configuration. I couldn't resist and went down immediately. -4m was easily reached although there were some big tree branches and wood planks all over the sink. To that point the walls felt solid. From there on I could feel by touch (with my fins) that the way down was through some narrow gap between boulders. It felt quite stable so I carefully wriggled through and after only a short constricted section it opened up into something much bigger and quite vertical.