Dan Yr Ogof - No Man's Land

In our relentless pursuit of the most horrid place known to man, Keith and myself took up the opportunity to join a trip into No Man's Land. I had seen the entrance to this unsurveyed part of the cave, and never had the bottle to squeeze my way into it, it just looked too horrid. We joined Richard, Jon and Mike on our our way into the cave, carrying all manner of photographic gear and arrived at the body sized mud filled tube that is the entrance to this area with a little trepidation. Quickly through the tube we dropped into a flat out gravel floored bedding plane that proved a tight fit to get through, but soon we were in a quite impressive sized passage.

Keith near the start to No Man's Land.

Keith near the start to No Man's Land.

A couple of photos were taken here before we climbed up into a hole in the roof to look at the high level passages, three routes led off at this level, one passage led off to a fork with formations in one branch and a crystal pool floor in the other that prevented progress, one passage closed down into a too tight passage and the third led to the bottom of a blasted upward trending rift passage. Ascending this final passage led to a chamber with a small stream passage entering and a calcited aven above a choke at the other end. The aven was climbed by Keith to find no ways on, but at it's base a small passage could possibly be engineered to make progress. A route was followed through the calcited boulders at the bottom of the aven to and area that could be dug, but no significant draft was felt. Back in the chamber the small stream passage was followed to an ascending loose choke to break out into a small chamber with a large loose choke running down the whole side of the chamber, this would be a serious long term dig. Back in the main passage at the start of the series of passages we headed up to take a look at the choke. Near the choke Brendan and Keith looked at a bedding plane in the roof, several rocks were persuaded to move out the way before Brendan slowly inched his way in clearing a path by moving the loose boulders and zig zagging past the once that were calcited in. Eventually this led to a too tight stream inlet and the challenge was now to reverse out doing the zig zag maneuvers backwards. A good ten minutes were spent doing a very good impression of someone stuck, before an exit was made.

See more Dan Yr Ogof photos here

Present: Brendan Marris and Keith Edwards