4937
9/8/2024

A Murder of Cows

Cavers: Chris Scaife, Chloe Almond, James Carlisle, Raoul Hidalgo Charman

We all took it in turns to try the entrance — a narrow descending tube. After Raoul nudged a boulder, we realised this could be moved and once we had taken this boulder out the entrance was much easier.

Some cows approached us at the entrance and Raoul had to wave his enormous stick at them.

Down the entrance, we were into a small chamber. In the stream flowing through, we saw water scorpions and leeches. We followed the passage upstream, through a small tube and past a column, then by moving a few rocks aside we entered the chamber and boulder choke that had been the previous limit, described as having “many leads, most very dubious”. We probed all of these and only one went any distance.

From a climb up in the boulder choke, I found a flat-out crawl through formations. This led to a small turning space and a narrow slide down into a chamber of sorts. This seems to be through the boulder choke and the way on was a draughting passage, which will need digging initially but looks caveable beyond for at least another 6m. No idea what’s beyond that, but it’s definitely worth pushing. I think we probably found about 20m of new stuff.

11/8/24 4397
Nepa Hole
Chris Scaife, Chloe Almond, James Carlisle

With outside temperatures of 37C, we chose a roadside option and this time were not harassed by a murder of cows at the entrance.

The leeches were just as abundant as last time, but we were soon into the chamber that had first been reached almost 50 years ago. We surveyed from the entrance and found that the old cave was 72m long. Our small finds from a couple of days ago brought the total to a round 100m. And then we had to dig.

The blocks ahead took a fair amount of hammering, but eventually we were through. Chloe passed the squeeze by accident — having just planned to improve her hammering posture, she thought she was stuck, then pushed on until she was into the comfortable space beyond. She then immediately rolled a boulder to one side and made the exit much narrower. We hammered away until there was a bit more space, then things seemed to be collapsing from above so she shot back through to join us. After a bit more hammering, we had made things safe enough for us all to pop back through.

We crawled on to a small chamber and the draught was fairly strong. There were a few small holes up loose climbs that looked uninviting, but the draught was coming from a sandy tube. We followed that to a boulder choke, at the end of a flat-out crawl. There is a draught here but I doubt anyone will ever bother to dig it.

In total we surveyed 121m, of which 50m was completely new. We also brought out a leech, in a specimen jar, for Terry to identify.

14/8/24 Agua 0059
Chris Scaife, Chloe Almond, Tiff Cooksley, Raoul Hidalgo Charman, Gracie Sharp
With Carolina Smith and Oscar Scaife

A late afternoon trip to the end of Agua, to see the formations and the ancient wall. We followed the river all the way.

Carol and Oscar explored every nook and cranny in the entrance.