h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As a distraction from actual exploration, we're currently involved in a bit of an excavation project at the moment.
One of the major caves has a [mined] entrance passage which passes under a section of natural cave full of clay and rock. The clay seeps down into a short crawl section, ensuring that people going into the cave end up covered, and carry clay into the rest of the [much cleaner] cave on their clothing.

Having had a partial clearance effort some time ago, since cancelled out by more slumping, it was decided that a full clearance operation, emptying the natural chamber and making a walking-height route into the cave would prevent the continual slow spread of dirt.
We managed to secure funding from a conservation body to pay for materials and our labour, which goes to the club, and should secure its financial future for a few years, but does involve us moving an esimated 14 cubic metres (30+tons) of rock and clay from the offending section to the entrance, and off down into the quarry below.
Due to a need to finish the work before the end of the funding body's financial year, we have to finish by the end of the month, and only managed to start last weekend, so we do have a bit of a job on, especially given the small number of potential diggers.

We need a smiley

It makes me think of a couple of songs, not sure whaich is more appropriate:

We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig in our mine the whole day through

Come noble diggers all stand up now, stand up now

Some progress has been made - 4 trips now, of which I have attended 2. The polythene sheeting used to protect the grass on the slope outside the entrance is now getting horribly unwieldy - with a ridiculous amount of clay sticking to it.
We're a little behind schedule, but are planning a bit of a surge this week - as well as tonight's trip, which I'll skip since there are sufficient bodies, we'll be digging on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and possibly Tuesday as well, and I'll probably do all of those.

We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig in our mine the whole day through



We need a smiley too, then we could help Potholer, couldn't we, Phil?

I think you lot might be interested in this

http://www.jurassiccoast.com/index.jsp

Enjoy your digging. I'm off to write some music

After finally starting on digging out the crawl proper last weekend, having excavated a huge amount from the slope leading up to it, we virtually finished on Sunday - less than a bodylength to dig out by ~0.7m to make the passage stoopable througout.
The main issue left is shoring an unstable wall to the passage - the roof and one wall are solid rock, but the other is a face of clay, rocks, and boulders, with several metres of the same above the roof level of the passage we've been digging. Some serious boarding and scaffolding is needed for support, since having the clay makey things possibly wrose than if it was just a boulder-pile.
With boulders, if a pile seems stable, it may need little more than some props to stop it moving sideways at the bottom, the props may not really be taking much load, and may continue to take little load indefinitely as long as they don't allow the pile to move.
With much added clay partly holding a pile together, it can be more difficult, since a pile may *seem* stable but actually be very slowly flowing, and over time it will end up putting a significant sideways pressure on the shoring as it flows.
Still, not being the expert on such matters, I'll leave it to those that are.
Looking at the passage excavated, it does seem like we've moved 15 or more cubic metres out of the entrance, and another few to a chamber at the other end to the crawl. After a long weekend, I'm feeling fairly tired, but quite fit, so I just need to keep up the exercise now.

Sounds like 'The Great Escape'.

You wouldn't like a cup of would you?

Well, the month of activity did result in a subsequent spell of apathy regarding any more digging, but after a few more scattered visits, (mainly to dig out more clay that has slumped in), we only have a little tidying up to do, and some final walling/shoring to help keep the remaining clay out of the excavated passage, and that'll be it. We've already been paid, so there are no worries on that front either, but enthusiasm even for exploration digging has rather taken a knock.

On Sunday we basically just hauled clay all day, but did shift a respectable amount.
While attempting to help remove the remains of some plastic sheeting that had been protecting the grass slope below the entrance from the clay, I managed to start off the day excellently by getting stuck up to my knees in the clay at the lower end of the debris slope, and it took me and another guy 10+minutes to dig me out - the clay was fluid enough to flow around my legs almost as fast as it could be dug out by hand, and very sticky - no way to break the suction by brute-force pulling without losing a wellie.

Good job you weren't alone

Can always replace wellies.

There will never be another Potholer

Thanks. It was more embarrassing than dangerous, since getting out was just a matter of digging out clay faster than it could flow in, - really a matter of digging a larger, wider hole with shallower sides than I tried at first.

Still, I'm glad you had help

I've known people get trapped in mud and drown. Granted in the Humber when the tide was out, but still, mud freaks me out.

glad you're ok.

Well, the clay was lying over a soil/gravel slope, and only about 3ft deep, so there wasn't any danger of disappearing in it.

Consistency-wise, it wasn't quite as sticky when we dug it out, but I think its very gradual flow down the slope had puddled it somewhat, making it particularly gummy.
Apparently, at some point in the future, it's going to get hauled away as part of the ongoing quarry landscaping. I guess it'll probably only take a scoop or two from a large earthmover to shift the lot, compared to the many hundreds of manual man-hours it took us to get it out of the cave.

After a few more 'final' finishing off trips, it really is pretty much all done - the entire crawl is now a walk and the more potentially mobile rocks are braced with metalwork.
Last week a couple of us went in to deal with a few large rocks on the slope leading up to the ex-crawl that were getting in the way of cleaning clay off the slope. It only took 6 or 7 rounds of capping to render the offending boulders into kit-form, so clearing the slope should now be a doddle.
It is really impressive just how far the acid clay has corroded the rocks - on a freshly-broken surface, you can see a band sometimes well over an inch thick where the boulder has been rotted to a weak powdery consistency.

Once the boulders were in kit form and moved outside, did you then do the giant 3d jigsaw and reassemble them

Actually, the boulder remnants are staying in, to help build a retaining wall at the top of the slope, but they probably would fit back together fairly well, apart from a few pieces that had a little follow-up lumphammer work to knock off odd corners.

So have you stopped potholing or have you just stopped writing about your adventures?

I was reminded of you the other day when one of my students was telling me about her two brothers who have a business doing 'Vertical Jobs' (not sure what that's called in English - in Spanish it's Trabajos Verticales) and travel around the country doing stuff like cleaning the outside of factory chimneys.

And in their free time they do such relaxing activities as white water rafting, rock climbing and potholing!

Hope you're keeping well.

az

"So have you stopped potholing or have you just stopped writing about your adventures?"

More that I've generally drifted away from h2g2.
Gave it a rest when I got cheesed off with some people, and didn't miss it much.

Hmmm...seems there's been a lot of that going round the last year or so. I took a break for awhile after I started my blog and 'minimalised' my PS. But now I'm back to posting here and there, though I don't write journal entries here anymore as I prefer my blog for that as I can upload photos there and also edit stuff - and even swear when I want to!

Have you got a blog?

az

Blogs aren't really *me*.

Most of my online action is in a couple of caving forums, a forum of flashlight officianados, a couple of sketptics sites and a tech forum on electronics/computing, though I haven't done much on the latter recently.