smashed up with a sledgehammer. Finally his opportunity came but he promptly got the drill bit stuck fast in the first rock. It would not come out so ‘snapping’ rocks for that night had to be abandoned.

The following week, armed with another drill bit, we successfully snapped all three rocks. The three rocks were broken into smaller lumps, one of which was still proudly holding the drill bit still jammed inside it! Dave Turner managed to release it two days later on the Wednesday night, though also managed to break two sledgehammers! The floor at the South end is now 7 feet under the third platform. The rocks in the North end of the dig have fallen a bit on their own since last week, so the plan is to go ahead and build the retaining wall. John Hill and Jonathan Riley will do this; they have done most of the shoring work in the dig. They completed the task in just a few weeks, using the big rock that had jammed itself as a starting point for their wall.

The cable on the winch does not allow the skip to go to the bottom of the dig anymore, and the skip is now filled by Milche (as ever) from the third platform. This is getting further away from the dig floor as time goes on, so NHASA have reinstalled their wooden hanging platform for someone to stand on as a half-way passer-up of spoil to Milche. Digging concentrated at the South end until the wall was built at the North end. This was not easy; the south end seems to have shrunk into a 4 feet wide pot, connected to the rest of the dig by a 16 inch wide rift. It is also filled with large rocks. No room to wield a sledgehammer in there, so more snappers needed. This was duly done at the end of January. This part of the dig is now about 15 feet under the third platform. Reaching the dig floor is achieved by clambering down onto the NHASA platform and then down onto a mound of floor that has been left to aid skip filling.

Once the shoring job had been completed in the North section, digging continued in all parts of the dig. It was not much further down before we saw evidence in the floor to show that the last eight feet of the North end closed down to a crack only 3-4 inches wide. Oh well, less to dig out! The latest digging of the North end has revealed that this crack does start to open out again several feet lower.

In February, Dave Morrison started work on extending the rail-track. Unfortunately, part of the West wall is in the way and some of it will need to be removed. This has been achieved in a few weekends by using det-cord, which has been done by Clive North. We also lowered a 20 feet ladder down the very south end of the cave where a gap in the platform was left specifically for this purpose. This makes reaching the floor much easier.

Once the rail-track has been extended Dave M intends to put a larger cable drum onto the winch so that it will take a longer line of thicker cable and will reach the bottom of the dig again. He and Jim Young fixed this on at the beginning of March. Some thorough testing of the new winch followed during which the full ‘test skip’ failed to be held by the winch as it was lowered off the edge of the sloping track onto the more vertical section. The skip fell too fast to stay snugly on the rail-track, hit some of the steelwork on its way down, completely buckled – which opened up the flap-door at the bottom of the skip – and the test load of rocks carried on down the dig alone. Oops! The steel platforms caught most of the rocks which is a sign that they are a very good safety feature at least! Very good thing that there was no one at the bottom of the dig, and removal of spoil has halted until the skip can be repaired. Dave is also going to make sure that he fully understands and rectifies the problem that allowed this to happen before we use the new larger winch drum again. The plan is to put the old winch drum back on, buy new cable and carry on as before for a while until the new drum is ready to be reinstalled.

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