Poulnacapple - The Heart of Darkness

Poulnacapple (Poll a'Chappaill - Cave of the horse) is believed to be resurgence of Boleyneendorrish or Ballylee river. This vertical sided pot is situated in obvious copse 80m south-east of Polldeelin (the main Coole River Rising). Site is double wire fenced and would need 3m rigid ladder for safe access. Provisionally I have installed system of ropes that temporarily do the job. River rises in northern corner of the pool and sinks again in obvious cave entrance at the southern end of the opening (see picture ). 

Most of the credit for exploration should go to Steve Marsh, Pat Cronin and Martyn Farr I believe. Downstream, after 90m it connects Polldeelin 30m from the main rising through narrow horizontal slot at depth of 13m. Right now this short traverse is rated as very risky after some backfill and bulldozer job at the surface. Anyway it’s not really worth as it’s filled with domestic rubbish including fridge…;)  Upstream story is much more interesting. Initially lads explored place for 80m where they faced boulder choke. The started working on a dig and finally they passed it. From there passage was heading SE on dept 7-9m for a good while but then it started dropping, turned back underneath itself a  the depth of 30m and continued NE. Last exploration in 2004 left EOL somewhere 350-360m from the entrance.

I asked Pat Cronin for permission to continue from that point. For the first time I dived there on August long weekend.

07.08.2008.

Old lines were all broken and washed out to the entrance pool. First impression - the darkest site of them all - vis MAX 40cm when undisturbed ( and it was basically clear , no particles in water). Real Heart of darkness. Finally I came across 6mm line laid along left hand side wall ( I was moving along right hand side one) but soon it turned out to be buried under ....rocks ! This is not good sign, I thought, passage started going up , when it got to 7m it become tighter and turned east. I felt strong flow ahead but decided to turn and talk to Pat first as that line under rocks was quite worrying. He reckons that lack of silt, mud banks and presence of rocks on the line at the bottom of the slope indicates that during last 7-8 years floods must have rearranged the place and he memorized roof as solid. That was one of the last days before it started raining so the next time I had the chance to come back there was last weekend.

27.09.2008. 

There wasn’t much flow from north side to south side of the pool but this indication was always said to be misleading. 10m of my line was washed out and was hanging on the tree…I have started relining the cave and soon it turned out that most of 60m of line I put last time was f*cked. I reached my previous EOL, somewhere close to the squeeze ( tight section dug through the boulders), I added few meters of line but flow was way too strong to move on! I was pulling myself along the boulders but soon I had to give up (which is something I really don’t like… When I let myself off the boulders I was literally washed out from the cave – lesson for the future

29.09.2008

There were only light showers over last two days so I hoped the flow near the squeeze would be much reduced. I brought 90m of line with me for expected line repairing. At the squeeze flow was again very strong but I applied my last resort approach ‘Now or never’ and finally went through it. As expected and hoped flow after the squeeze has been substantially reduced. I kept laying my line on the right hand side of the passage then I crossed it in search for the old line and found it covered with all sort of flood shit I attached my line to it, marked the junction with cloth peg ( Martyn’s style  and continued. There were sections, up to 10m long, I had to pull the line out from underneath 20cm of sand - some flooding! At the end (that was my understanding while comparing depth and bearings with lad’s survey after the dive) at -27m last belay was broken and substantial section of line was floating toward the entrance. No further advance as I used up all my line for repairs and I reached my gas limits. On the way out I removed ~50m of my old line completely.

Afternoon I visited Boleyneendorrish or Ballylee River Sink South some 2.5km away from which water has been traced to Poulnacapple. The Bible ( Caves of County Clare and South Galway) says it’s completely blocked with soil, mature trees, branches and boulders but after 2h of digging and clearing under the water I got to some sort of open passage. It still seems to be way too unstable to enter but I see some prospects for the future.