The Survey of Gingling Hole
Thursday, 15 July 2004
Seven visits and it is done. The survey of Gingling is complete well pretty much anyway.
15th July 2015:
Survey visit number one commenced bright and early as Noel, Brendan and I headed up to Gingling on a lovely sunny and dry day. The cave was really dry, which at the time we didnt appreciate. We managed to get through the canal without any water in our wellies! We ended the trip at the top of the third pitch having surveyed around 200m of plan length. We had an interesting time trying to locate a suitable place to set our end station. Our current method is to place a reflective strip in place using a nail, therefore allowing removal once were finished, hopefully leaving little trace of the survey behind. However, this requires a crack in a rock, which took some time to find! Trying to come up with a better method no ideas as of yet.
6th September 2015:
Visit number two was not so successful. We ended our trip after surveying less than 30m in about two hours. The start of the session seemed to be going well, but we were soon surveying up a small inlet, located on the left just past the top of the third pitch. This took a while to survey as Peachey and Noel were having problems trying to get decent stations. It was also very difficult to draw in. I ended up sitting in a puddle for about an hour. Towards the end of the session I started to get very angry with myself when I kept drawing my legs backwards, then it suddenly turned into despair and there may have been a few tears. It wasnt until we gave up and returned to our bags that I started shivering uncontrollably and couldnt really think straight. Ah-ha hypothermia. We had some hot chocolate and headed out.
Surveying lesson number 1: no matter how warm you are when you start, always, always put on your thermals and balaclava. If you have to sit very still in a very cold puddle for an hour, you will end up very, very cold!
19th September 2015:
Session number three was much more successful. Noel and I surveyed to the large chamber below the fourth pitch and managed to set up a decent station for the next visit. We even got some company for a brief period when Sam Allshorn and Shez were returning from bolting the big pitch.
29th September 2015:
During visit number four, Katey and Rachel came to help. Four people provided optimum surveying; Katey on disto, Rachel drawing elevation, Noel drawing plan and myself as station monkey. This was undoubtedly the best surveying visit with lots of fun and getting to hang out in the best part of the cave for some time; the large chamber followed by Fools Paradise – beautiful. FYI ‘ its also quite a nice visit up to the top end of the big chamber, usually missed on the tourist trip. We finished up for the day at the top of the fifth pitch and headed back to Quarry Street to bore Rachel and Katey with Survex.
3rd October 2015:
Autumn was drawing nearer and with that the promise of rain, so for our fifth visit we decided to skip ahead to the big pitch to prevent having to surveying it when it is drippy. Which was a good plan as it took us about 1.5 hours to survey the pitch. It was pretty fun, I like surveying big pitches. We finished up at the top of Ammered Ole, dumped some rope for the big rift route and headed out.
9th October 2015:
Sixth visit ‘ getting bored now we decided to try and give it all we could and get as much done as possible; both dreaming that we could get it all done on this trip. No such luck. Our brains had given out by the top of the seventh pitch. Especially after get a good soaking in the wet section as the Thrutch. It was pretty traumatic trying to survey through the wet section, trying to keep as much of my body out of the water as possible, as well as not drop my disto in the water.
Surveying lesson number 2: Make sure you have a spare protractor when they split and mud gets in they are very hard to read! (Luckily we had spares).
1st November 2015:
Time was ticking and winter was fast approaching, so one last visit was made on the Sunday to finish up. Its pretty muddy down in the big rift. And not so much fun on old bolts, some of which have popped. But we did it! Its finished!
Just one last trip to pull out the ropes and tidy up a couple of loose ends.
p.s. If you made it this far through this pretty dull rant, then youre made for surveying. This is as exciting as it gets!
Comments
Looking forward to you posting a picture of the finished drawing!
Dr Footleg
Friday, 12 February 2016