Moorfurlong Mine - Alan Brentnall

Tuesday, 1 March, 2016

Excellent trip into Moorfurlong Mine tonight for seven of us. The weather was pretty wintry, and it took us a while to actually find the hole (despite having been there at least twice before) but we were all very impressed with the new ladder, courtesy of Nick Williams & Co.

Most abseiled in, but a couple opted to be life-lined down the ladder. Once all were down, we explored the way through the buddling chamber and forward through the passages and the vice, before ascending the ramp to the back-filled area and the awkward climb-down into the pipe workings. A couple of scrambles later found the Mask of Zorro, and more workings and pack-walls, before we passed through the squeeze into the Eldon extensions.

A large amount of this section is back-filled and would obviously be worth digging out in future. All very interesting stuff. Returning through the squeeze, some of us visited more pipe workings, before traversing passages to the ramp. At the foot of this a few of us had a look at a promising dig of to the left, before returning to the buddling chamber at the foot of the entrance pitches.

I self-lined up the shaft, and then brought all the others up. Jess investigated a side passage 4 metres down, and found that it eventually connected to another "void" through a very small square hole. Something worthy of future investigation?

After a very interesting trip, we retired to the Bowling Green to discuss tonight's trip, future options and caving matters in general.