Trip to Grand Turk 25th May 2012
The evening started a little deflated with news that Vikki had suffered four punctures on her car and she felt very let down. Being a stalwart (and having the club equipment on board) she made her way to the rendezvous where she turfed over the kit, but, being down for the day, she scuttled off back home.
No worries though, we now had the ladders and we left the rendezvous to arrive at the Grand Turk parking where we discovered Murf lurking around his van, Meaty and Tom.
Armed with cameras, ladders and rope we made for the entrance … missing the turning on the right up to the entrance but later finding it after thrashing through acres of wild garlic.
Now that NWCC have removed the lock, access was easy and in we went ….
Quickly lobbing down the ladders (just a smidge short of two complete electrons) and rigging a safety/abseil line … I plunged first into the deep.
At the bottom of the shaft I was met with the flat belly crawl and being the first down I was also treated to an inch of water along the wriggle. I navigated the 50 foot crawl shoving my bag in front of me which had the annoying effect of splashing water into my face – it seems I was to endure this for the whole 50 feet as well as being soaked to the chest from the 1 inch water I was lying in.
I emerged into Grand Turk, hot, arms aching and momentarily miserable but soon began to cool in the refrigerated passage. I noticed a draft and knowing of the sump at the far end, surmised there must be an escape elsewhere.
Next through the crawl was Murf with his video camera bag and I took some comfort in observing that he too was soaked to the chest. This indicated to me that I had not taken ALL the water- after all, it’s good to share. Isn’t it ?
Whilst we waited for the others, Murf opened up his video kit which included a variety of lights from the £1 shop as well as a somewhat brighter lamp which he told us be bought from China for 6 Hong Kong Dollars. After he had told us this more than 7 times he actually set up his video camera rig which looked like a UFO.
After Tom had been backwards and forwards up and down the crawl passage unnecessarily taking ropes to and fro, we began to head left and “up” the riverbed. The passageway was similar to Poachers cave but with the banks of sediment going up the path. The walls were full of drill marks where miners had previously tried to exploit the area. In the ceiling were excellent examples of fossils, some measuring 12 inches in coiled length. Further still was a small area of stalagmites and stalactites with some formed as columns as well as a very nice gour pool formation. At this terminus there appeared to be an on-going dig. Numerous photographs were taken and Murf spent his time filming the passage walls.
We headed back the opposite way and down river. There was only a small trickle following us down and although we were stooped for most of the journey, the passage was big and wide. The ceiling was a fantastic scalloped, phreatic, archway for pretty much most of the way. After a while we found banks of sediment piled up at the sides – there was clear indication of the many ages of glacial thawing here and the sediment added to the beauty of the passage in exactly the way the sediment in Poachers does not.
To say the passage was akin to a clean washed Yorkshire pot would not be true and, in fact, no one actually said that.
There was a mysterious black and rough covering to many parts of the ceiling and walls. Some of this had broken away and lay on the floor – examining this we discovered the interior to be composed of a brilliant white calcite material. Of course, no samples were taken.
We eventually arrived at what appeared to be a hole in the left side where Murf announced his battery had run out and he had left his spare in his bag at the crawl – so much for underground UFOs. Interested in the hole, Murf sent Mike up to investigate where he found that the miners had stacked railway sleepers although the hole was impassable.
Just a few yards further was the adit back into Minera mine – here there was an electron ladder hanging which reached to the floor. Murf, again being interested in what was up there, sent Mike (again) up to have a look. Mike therefore climbed up the ladder to find himself in “white vein”. He announced, on his return, that the passage went a good distance and then terminated at a blockage although he could see through this and thought it was only 8 feet in depth. He pulled from his chest a large, white and crystalline rock which he had found and showed it to us with great delight. Murf dismissed this and said “Why do you think it is called White vein?”. Unimpressed, Mike dropped the exquisite rock to the floor and, to this day, it remains there surrounded by uninteresting examples of limestone mining remnants.
Having been regaled by various stories from Murf (mostly about his experiences of Peter Appleton draining the riverbed where we stood), we decided to head back without seeing the remainder of the passage or the sump(s) at the far end. We arrived back at the crawl passage and murfs spare batteries without further incident.
We negotiated the crawl, climbed the ladder, examined some clay models hanging about that Tony and Deano had done whilst bored then all buggered off ….
Ian
