vent shaft – sYnc

2012 kind of sucked regarding exploring and ultimately was a disappointment….lots of doors where ‘shut’ in our faces thanks to the narcissistic actions of others (you know who you are, I know who some of you are….and really you SHOULD know better), locations sealed, locations burned…blah blah blah.

The year ended with an epic though, that I can’t talk about in public, so it wasn’t all bad. So while we were out yesterday walking off some of the Xmas Fat we decided the whole Carpe diem thing should apply this year……work hard at making opportunities, hit things fast instead of sitting on them (so they get discovered by others and burned…), well that’s the theory and it’s easy to be so full of enthusiasm in January LOL!

A few pix of the twin bores we visited, there’s another pair about 1.5 miles south that we also went to, (so ended up walking about 5 miles), nothing too exciting I know.

All shots handheld on the Lumix TZ6

This one has been on the To-Do list for ages, so long in fact that someone else beat us too it, c’est la vie!, you win some, lose some…

The truth is we were elsewhere frying bigger fish and were beaten by worthy opponents I know only thru the Interweb. Sloppy Seconds is never ideal but it had to be done as it was still a neat trip to make. The 4Gas had a spazz before we had broken a sweat and had to be shut down as it was blatantly lying about the 02 content and making a hell of a racket. This was far from ideal as there was a bunch of noxious primordial ooze right down there amongst that “Just for me and my dog” orange gloop and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was enough to get the h2s sensor squawking.

The trip involved walking through just over a mile of heavily flooded galleries and crosscuts, gingerly picking our way through a couple of truly unstable & massive roof collapses before we got to the payoff. Water was on average four feet deep with submerged roof collapses, random lumps of twisted, underwater, narrow gauge rail to negotiate and hidden sumps in the mine floor. Two of us had hilarious over wader moments, one resulting in blood loss and my waders sprang a leak within seconds of leaving the dry part of the mine. Other random weirdness was an anemic looking lizard 150ft from the surface amongst corn growing underground and being able to send SMS messages from the base of the shaft.

“Venimus, Vidimus, Vicimus”

Next…!!!

Usual rules apply…No names, no locations, just pictures of somewhere very orange. Please don’t ask for locations as refusal often offends 🙂