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I've personally not been undergound for over 18 months - very bad,
but I am trying to address that and get back into mine exploring again. Karli
on the other hand has been working down a mine until recently and doing COMRU
exercises so has had more than enough of underground
exposure.
With a view of me being rusty and not that supple we agreed to
doing something relatively easy and had a trip down Smallcleugh to the far end
- the New Cross Vein. A few days before this trip I had been told that there
had just been a fall in the flats before Gullyback Crosscut whilst some
explorers were nearby. It had sounded really loud and assumed to be a major
fall. At the time it was not investigated. So, this was something we wanted to
check out as well.
At around midmorning we arrived at the adit and made
our way to the Smallcleugh Flats via the Hard Crosscut. Whilst cresting over
the slippery slope I noticed a large amount of fresh shale on the floor, it has
been ages since anything came down here. Some of it was the size of breeze
blocks. Once past this all looked normal and after a short while we were in the
main flats. Just before Robinson's Crosscut where there is a large slab that
forms part of the roof in the main level, we found the fall. A large chunk and
a couple of smaller flakes of the roof above the deads had come down. These had
fallen on the deads and skidded / rolled down into the level. That's what made
all the alarming noises - lots of thumps and crunches. The main chunk that came
down, must have been over a metre long and about 0.5m square. Food for
thought.
We carried on and whilst in George Hetherington's Crosscut we
noticed that the floor was slightly wet with a few puddles of water towards the
exit onto the 1st Sun Vein - what was going on here? To our surprise, there was
water on the 1st Sun Vein and it was coming in from the right hand wall.
Somethings moved up there. From here we headed to the Middlecleugh 2nd Sun Vein
and had another surprise. Where all the sumps start on the right hand side, the
water level in these had risen again after 15 odd years being low and out of
the level. Probably not to the original levels in the mid 2000's, but not far
off - 0.8m ish. As we headed towards Cowhill Cross Vein some of the more
dubious looking hoppers has been shored up - works in progress.
Past
Cowhill, nothing much had changed as we carried on down the incline towards the
New Cross Vein and forehead. Once there I started to take some photographs and
whilst retracing out steps, we had lunch in one of the stopes above - the one
with the ladder and platform. Here we also had a bit of poke around climbing up
the big shale slope to discover two massive bell chambers in the roof - a bit
like the ones at Bog Shaft. This explained all the shale we had climbed up.
Going further along we saw some sumps and manways going back down to the horse
level below. However, getting back down was best done the way we had come. In
this stope we also found a new style empty 0.5L can of Stella - come on
muppets, take it out with you.
On our exit we stopped by the Ballroom
just to have a token visit. Another surprise here, we saw a couple of home made
adjustable box section supports just outside the main chamber. These did not
look modern and had the feel of a dig from the past - maybe Moles? In the
actual Ballroom, where all the deads are, we found what looked like an exposed
hidden stash of these supports along with a bottle jack and old rope inset into
the deads. Along with this find we saw the whole area littered with pieces of
tissue and more of the Stella cans - all sort of half arsed covered with deads.
FFS.
We exited via the Old Flat Crosscut and rather than going straight
to the bypass had a look at Luke Hall's sump. Another surprise, it was
completely filled in with shale. Past the sump the whole horse level in this
area seems to have dropped material from the roof and sides - it was looking
much worse than the last time we had been here. It is amazing how things have
changed in Smallcleugh recently. Back on the surface both of us had grins on
our faces - it had been great to get back underground in a pastime capacity; we
need to start getting back into it on a regular basis.
One thing that
comes to mind is that there was a small earth quake centred around Nenthall on
13/07/2021, however the magnitude was only 0.9 so not sure if this could have
anything to do with loosening things as far away as
Smallcleugh? |
