Smallcleugh Mine - Proud's Sump and Carr's Level

We had heard that there was a link to Carr's Level from the Rampgill passage below Proud's Workings.

After droping into Rampgill from the Proud's working, if you walk up stream you come to a rise just of 2m from the main passage. This is a very slippery rise. At the top of the climb there are 2 passages that run parallel, one is blocked both ends, the other is blocked one end and open the other. The open end goes up a small rise, and whoe and behold you end up at the bottom of Proud's sump (the first drop), we know this as we saw our SRT rope hanging down.

Getting to this involved us scavanging around for metal tracks to aid climbing and to anchor to. This took ages and involved a tricky manoeuvre. The passage that was open to Proud's sump has rail tracks that have been cut very neatly and the blocked end seemed to have newish stacked rocks - with the connection established, it rang a bell in Mike's mind (he had done this trip before and exited via Carr's mine in 1991) and we believe that the blocked passage is Carr's level, blocked up, so that you cannot get access into the Carr's show mine.

We ended up chasing our own tails, but this tied up some loose ends and was a good trip. Unfortunately we where too busy trying to rig up a tricky climb and manoeuvre and ended up with only a few pictures.

Click on the thumbnails for a full picture and description.

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