Prospecting along Half Mile Passage

I’m not sure when anybody last put any effort into following the leads in this part of the cave, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that there’s a lot of passage missing from the survey.

To that end, Adrian, Charles and Andy headed off from HRC on the Saturday morning with the aim of revisiting old dig sites and looking for possible new ones.

First point of interest was a narrow rift on a bend in Half Mile Passage about 100m before the tube linking Half Mile with Eastern Flyover. Quite possibly, this is going to go straight back to Western Flyover, but who can tell? Five minutes of shifting rocks and closer inspection followed. The general consensus was that it wouldn’t do any harm to spend a bit more time here. 

Next on the agenda was Kilburn Highroad, 20-30m further down Half Mile. Charles reported that last time he dug here, the air quickly became foul. Location-wise, it’s a good place to dig. However, we could see that it wouldn’t take long for this 50m+ tube to soon revert to its formerly oxygen-free state. We recovered the digging rope and drag tray for greater things.

In passing, a short passage beneath Half Mile was inspected, reached via a fairly loose descent just before the passage splits. More of that later. 

Next site, the old Half Mile Passage Dig. Interesting location, heading into the great unknown. Approximately 70-80m long, apparently no bad air problem. Biggest drawback however, due to several climbs/drops, it probably needs a team of around 6 or 7 to make real progress.

The draughting choke at the very end of Half Mile was the next spot on the tour. If this were on Mendip, folks would be queuing up to dig it. However, it’s not, so it remains untouched until somebody with sufficient time/bang/scaffold wants to come back. Probably a fairly long-term project. 

Back to the passage beneath Half Mile. It was apparent from the climb down that only one or two folks had been down here, surprisingly. A bit loose, so caution was required. The passage continued for approx 15-20 metres to a point where the sandy floor almost met with the roof, crying out to be dug. Ok, so the location may not be perfect, but the digging looked so easy that it would have been foolish not to have spent a bit of time here, especially since we now had a rope and tray.

After two hours of easy digging, I had the rare pleasure of being able to look up into black space. On a personal note, I should point out that having spent over 20 years of digging on Mendip and finding f* all, this was a moment to be savoured, especially since dodgy bowels had forced me to drop out of the camp when WTSDS was discovered! Unfortunately, the ‘breakthrough’ only proved to be about 3m of hands and knees passage before the roof dipped to the sand once more, but nevertheless it justified the last couple of hours’ effort. Another hour was spent extricating a rather large rock stuck in the sandy floor. Job done, the fill beyond this point seems to be nothing more than dry sand. The new area has been dubbed ‘The Flyunder’, in the hope that it’s going to take us beyond all currently known obstacles into the big blank space on the survey.

Andy Heath