Pollnagossan
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Contents |
Location
Pollnagossan (H0625 3528)
Description and history of diving
Cripple Creek
A series of sumps beginning at Taff's Well (sump 1) - nine sumps have been dived to a tenth.
First dived in 1979 by Martyn Farr. Sump 1 was passed (9 m long at shallow depth) then sump 2 was encountered, and dived for 135 m in poor conditions. In 1983 Farr returned to sump 2, with Campbell and Woods, and passed sump 2 to follow easy walking passage and seven short sumps. He stopped at the tenth sump having run out of line. In 2008 Chris Jewell and Hilary Greaves attempted to regain Farr's limited, but were halted in sump 2 when the old dive line ran into a line trap; attempts to negotiate this failed. In 2009 Jewell again dived sump 2 and bypassed the line trap to regain Farr's line to make some further progress.
References
Irish Sump Index, 1988
The Caves of Fermanagh and Cavan, 1997
Cave Diving Group Newletter, 52; 68; 167
Surveys
None entered.
Recent dives
18-03-08 - divers Chris Jewell and Hilary Greaves; support Simon Cornhill, K. Steckles and J. Wilson
The carry wasn’t as bad as expected though this was mainly due to SC doing repeated trips with pairs of 6 L cylinders and nothing to do with the cave!
CJ dived first through the short sump 1 and headed along the stream passage to sump 2. Here the line belaying technique was expectedly 'old school', though the condition of the line itself was very good. CJ added some silt screws to the line with cable ties (there were no rocks or boulders to use) and followed it for 50-60 m until it literally ran straight into a wall. Upon inspection it appeared either the line had been dragged very tightly into a line trap or there had been a collapse. An arch and continuation was seen on the left of the wall here before visibility deteriorated to zero. CJ headed out. HG then dived to attempt to pass the obstacle by tying in her line and navigating around. This was unsuccessful and most of this work was done in very poor visibility.
18-04-09 - diver Chris Jewell; support Dave Garman
The line trap encountered by CJ and HG on 18-03-08 was tackled by laying a new section of line round this bit of cave and marking the lines clearly. In zero vis four silt screws were used to negotiate the muddy arch and rejoin the main line. As CJ had been working for some time since he’d last seen any gauges it was a relief to regain some open water and check the cylinders contents. With one bottle at thirds the ongoing line was followed until a gravel bank was met. An attempt to pass this resulted in a small free flow on one reg and the diver decided it would be prudent to quit whilst ahead.
