Breakthrough in Water Icicle Close Cavern

I'd been into Water Icicle a couple of weeks before helping with the digging for a few hours, so I knew where the hole was at the bottom of the dig, but I was surprised at the sheer size of it, two weeks on.

Keith in the bottom of the dig, with Pete below in the hole that they discovered below the dig.

As Keith and Pete had told me, it wasn't the safest place in the world, but they had almost finished putting in some scaff bar into the roof, to keep any boulders from falling from above.  Once that was complete they dropped down into the small chamber below.  The gap in the boulders seems fairly bomb proof (certainly enough boulders have been dropped down it) albeit a bit shitty and I landed at the bottom, fairly gingerly, to find myself in a rift leading to the right.  Pete was at the far end of it and Keith away off to the left below me.

It didn't look too promising from where I sat, but Keith wriggled into a gap and then moved out of the way for me to have a look and I could see what he meant.  We started re-arranging the boulders in the chamber until there was a dip in the floor and Keith had removed all the stones he could.

Keith removing boulders from our way on.

We collected some other gear from up above and got the last three large boulders broken up, leaving one large one that was propping up the roof.

Keith got rather excitable at this point and decided that although there was a chunk of rock stuck in the floor, which was proving a bit stubborn, he was going through the hole regardless and slowly wriggled through feet first, kicking stones out of the way as he went. Pete then took his place and between them and a lump hammer, in a couple of minutes they had cleared a way through...

Pete crawling through at the breakthrough point.

and I followed... into open passage.

Pete stood in the first section of new passage.

Around this first left-hand bend, we quickly came to a chamber, quite a large one by Water Icicle standards.  Even in those first few metres, it became clear that the floor was covered in some remarkable mud formations and further on calcite crystal formations, none of which are particularly large or unusual, but, untouched by human hand or foot, completely beautiful and so very delicate,

From the big chamber the main passage continued on to the right and Pete headed off this way, but Keith was getting very excited about a passage up on the left hand side - we had a second passage, which was completely unexpected.  Keith followed Pete and I followed Keith - it could wait for a few minutes, at least.  We followed the main passage, trying to follow a route that caused the least amount of damage through the delicate formations, past a large calcite boss on the left at some breakdown.

Pete and Keith near the calcite boss.

We kept going, surprised by the uniform size of the passage and it's shape, in some places very squared off.  After some hundred metres or so we came to a place where clearly a huge quantity of water had sunk through the boulders, washed clean of mud.  Keith went to investigate, but said that it didn't appear to go down far.

Keith exploring where the water had gone - note the stones in the foreground.

The 'stones' in the foreground of this photo were actually rock covered in calcite, which had then been worn so that the rock had worn away within its shell of calcite - something I don't remember seeing before - they reminded me very much of sea shells.

Some of these were removed to the top of the boulder on the left so that the pitch could be properly explored.

Just a short way further along the passage, was a small section of really pretty calcite crystals...

The sea urchins!

and then the mud floor started to rise, there was a section of really nice mud formations...

Four-five inch mud formations.

A drip point with a ring around it.

and then another section on the left where water had obviously sunk at some point.  The walls had obviously been covered in calcite at some point, but then the water had somehow got down the back of the calcite and worn the rock at the back of it.  The calcite looks as though it's almost peeling away from the wall and the rock is very jagged and brittle looking.

Calcite covered walls where water has obviously sunk.

Just around the corner, the mud became even deeper and forced us to crawl to a section of breakdown.  We had reached the end of this particular passage, but we still had a second one to explore.  We moved slowly back along the passage, spotting new things as we went.

More formation where the dark rock had been worn away from its coating of calcite.

Calcite formations on a wall, much the same as in the 'old' passage.

More calcite crystals, with broken straws.

Rock with calcite formations in/on it... or fossils???

The calcite boss from another angle.

Broken stal.

Crystals.

More broken stal.

And yet more broken stal.

Back in the chamber, we turned right up into the smaller passage and scrambled up a mud bank and a pile of mud covered boulders that had come down an aven just to the left of the passage.  This looked like another promising lead, but the passage continued, so we crawled through and continued along walking-size passage, roughly four-five feet wide.  After a fairly short distance, we reached another breakdown and the end of our exploration for the day.