Mining Trip

Well after a long day in the office with Simon Fenna working on the report-ability of m office database, John Riley of Fired Up Design working on the new RA website and myself working on the content of the new site and future programs we all got a little itchy and needed to go do something.

Simon’s Mate is one of the local mining experts, she popped a black bag over our heads span us round in circles drove us to an unknown location and took the bag off only once we had walked 35 min up hill and got into the entrance.

Wow… now both simon and I have done allot of caving over the years, but nothing just compares tonight. Vast man made chambers, hanging floors, stunning blue flowstone, worrying deads (waste rock stacked precariously) long abseils, deep blue water, filled shafts, etc, etc.

This was not sport, nor was it adventure – this is adventure exploration… You do not get that feeling that you have done a great deal due to the sedate nature of your delicate movement through the passages, any heavy feeling and there is the chance of falling through on of the false floors. There is also that missing feeling that you get in a cave of the awareness of water conditions (cave are made by water not man and his dynamite) however it was replaced by the inevitable collapse of what ever lies above or below you.

Towards the end of the trip our resident mine nutter noticed a place that she had been standing just last week was now a gaping whole in the floor dropping down past the distance of a really powerful LED torch!

This level of mine exploration is not safe, it is not fun, it is not somewhere I would choose to take people and it is totally bazar to be walking in the mountains wearing caving kit. However it is really fascinating, learning about the history of what went on to extract a bit of metal out of the earth and learning about the methods and seeing the old workings is just formidable.

POSTED: 28th July 2010
BY: Dan
CATEGORIES: Staff @ Play, Winter Conditions