Snakes Pyjamas Dig
For information contact John Taylor

Surveying the carnage left by the Battle of Waterloo The Duke of Wellington commented: 'Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won'.

The battle was hard won. To gain the ten metres of passage between The Snakes Pyjamas in the main drag of the cave and Taylor’s Way in The Full Moon series took the Eldon six months with, on average, 2 trips per week. An average of four men per trip meant that each metre of passage won took 35 man-hours.

I hauled my tenth empty kibble of the evening up the five metres of passage between the face and Bob’s Bunkhouse where Bob himself lay. Behind him sat Sam who was on kibble swapping duty. One of the more amusing jobs of the dig this involved sitting in a steady trickle of water, hauling; full kibbles down from the face and empty kibbles up from the main passage. Behind Sam in The Waiting Room Jim took the ‘stalwart backstop’ roll, usually occupied by Bog, of hauling full kibbles down from the kibble swap and stacking their contents. Hovering around filming, hauling and stacking was our ‘media expert’ Mike. The gap between the roof and the bank of mud that I was mashing with a mattock was steadily getting larger. As I lay shovelling mud into the kibble jammed beside me I began to consider the three imperatives that I know faced. We needed to clear out as much mud as possible, we all desperately wanted to get to the other side, and in the distance I could hear the faint voice of a pint of Bass calling me from the bar top of the White Heart. The bartering inside my head got louder and louder until... "Bob get up here we’re going through" The decision was made we were pushing over the top. Bob is not the youngest caver that I know but his digging has been unwavering and his technical assistance invaluable. It was for these reasons that we sent him in first.

Once over the mud we took off our oversuits and donned clean overalls. My wellies were too muddy to drag over the wonderful gours of Taylor’s Way so I left them behind and went on in my socks, pleased to see that the rest of the lads did the same. We then made our way, gecko-like, up the passage.

Once in the breakdown chamber at the head of Taylor’s Way each of us started to absorb the stunningly decorated passage and an air of calm settled around the party. This was our moment of victory but there were no cheers. All of the defences lay broken and we held in our hands the heart of your adversary. This delicate place used to be remote lying, as it did, beyond two sumps and along a kilometre of arduous passage. With the completion of the dig, The Full Moon series can now be reached, from the surface, in fifteen minutes. With the focus of the dig removed the passages fragility was beginning to hit home. The whole purpose of reaching this point was to dig but we could barely move through it for fear of damaging the decorations let alone drag kibbles, tools and the other paraphernalia needed for digging.

A gate has been placed between the main passage and the dig in order to divert the curious and a leader system will be adopted for the far side. The next job will be to figure out how to conserve some of the best-decorated passage in the Peak District.




Report by John Taylor - June 2002

Whilst drinking a pint and exchanging tales of exploration, as cavers do, the muddy fellow opposite said:
"I used to think that digging caves was scientific but nowadays I don’t think that it is"
I found this to be one of those succinct but superbly pertinent sentences, to which any explorer can, I am sure, relate.
‘Is this dig really going anywhere, or am I just expending an extraordinary amount of effort in entirely the wrong place?’
‘Just the other side of this will drop us straight into the continuation of that series.’
Looking for evidence, assessing a digs potential, doing your research, surveying; none of them take away the tormenting combination of being convinced that you are right and suspecting that you are wrong. On Wednesday 24 April 2002 my fears, about one of my digs at least, were proven to be unfounded.

It was to be a hard and fast trip; there was a lot of work to be done and not a lot of time in which to do it. There had to be two teams, one team would get to see the most precious cave passage in Bagshawe and the other would be disappointed. Being able to put the imperatives and the aim of a trip above your own personal goals is a trait that I admire greatly and Stick did a top job when he volunteered to take Mike, Jim & Gary for a look around the Upper & Lower Series whilst Sam and Nige and I shot off up the New Series.

I knew that the sump at Pool Chamber would be down as Nige and I had been in the previous Saturday and this would give us access to Cosmic Juice Extractor II; The gateway to the Full Moon Series. Our job was to get to Cosmic Juice II as fast as possible, pump the sump, make our way along the Full Moon and then down Taylor’s Way where we would attempt to make a voice connection with the Snakes Pyjamas.

The sump normally takes two cavers about an hour to empty using a small bilge pump but, as the main goal of any mid-week trip is to get out before last orders, we had, at the most, three quarters on an hour. I began pummelling the pumps handle as Sam and Nige bailed. It took what seemed an age for the exponential curve of time against litres remaining to steepen but, as the sump dropped, it’s dished bottom started to empty more rapidly.

We had all taken a turn in each position of the bailing/pumping chain as the last slurps were pulled from the beautiful orange flowstone and a new Cosmic Juice II pumping record was set at thirty minutes.

It was now time to steady the pace a little as The Full Moon is a place that needs great care and respect. This was an emotional moment for me. Tony, Moose, Dave Whitely and I were the first to move along the astonishingly well-decorated continuation of the Aven Series back in 1999. With Tony now gone the experience of moving carefully through the pure white flowstone cascades and stunning stals was overwhelmingly poignant.

The four previous trips had taken their toll on the passage but if our mission was successful this would be the last time that route would be taken. Connecting Snakes Pyjamas and Full Moon would give access to the digs at the current end of exploration without the need to use The New, The Aven and The Full Moon Series’ and hopefully, with time, the muddy streaks made by our progress would wash away.

By 9:00pm we were at the breakdown chamber where Taylor’s way, a low calcited tube, heads down and east. Stick and the lads were to meet us at 9:15 - 9:30 and, approaching the possible connection, I thought I heard voices. Waiting until Sam and Nige crawled to a halt behind me I strained to hear what was beyond. It was the other team! I knew it! It connects! My excitement was to increase as it soon became apparent that they had only just begun to make their way towards us. Their voices became louder as I crawled down the low calcited bedding to my right. Gary’s light glinted between the four meters of calcite floor and low roof between us as we bartered our estimates of how far apart we were. Meanwhile Sam debated excitedly with Stick in the muddy tube to my left and Nige tried to dry his hands so that he could smoke a fag. The tube, which corresponds with our digging face on the other side, appeared to be between one and two meters away from connecting.

Congratulations all round and an extremely fast exit to surface soon put us in the pub where pints were drunk and tales of exploration were exchanged.


Report by John Taylor - November 2000