The weekend was arranged on Adit Now and the dates were set we just needed to work out where to go. The first trip was the reason for the weekend so that was set as the Masson / Gentlewomans Shaft - Youds level through trip. The second day was meant to be Odin but after a recent collapse we fished around and Snake Mine came up. Seeing as a lot of the group were coming a long way and heading over the night before we decided to think of something local to do on the Friday evening tokill a bit of time, a local stone mine sprang to mind
Friday evening
Then on to Saturdays trip.
The Mines of Masson Hill have been previously described by Flindall and Hayes (1976) and Flindall and Swain (above2 whose
survey reached as far as Gentlewomen's Engine Shaft, whilst Workman (1974) described an isolated shaft and working, probably on
Shining Rock Vein. The almost simultaneous rediscovery of an extension eastwards, towards Matlock, of Gentlewomen's Pipe, and of
a sough system now identified as Ringing Rake and Masson Sough in 1977, led after much digging through blockages to a connection of the systems.
My previos pics of the Sough tail are here -
http://nwex.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6712
I had a dumb moment and forgot my camera hot shoe for the tripod so ending up leaving the tripod on the end of the rope for hauling up after rather than dragging it through so all my pics in this one are flash jobbies.
The Gentlewomans pitch is 45m straight down a pipe vein so get a bit narrow in places but is a good fun abseil.
Didnt get many pictures of the stopes due to no tripod but there is plenty of graffiti to admire.
The overseer
Some rather old dates
Then comes the squeezes
A quick video too -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/urb_edd...57626665370411
Next is the coffin level and seeing as i had already got some pics there i decided to storm out and go and relax in the sun while the others explored the fun of a 4.5ft tall coffin level
Sunday saw us back in hopton for Snake Mine. No one i had heard of before but certainly looked interesting. 250 ft Engine shaft abseil and then similar heigh in climbing ways back up didnt look to appealing tho
The abb in was superb with plenty to see on the way. Near the bottom you pendulum into a level and go exploring before dropping to the bottom of the shaft again.
Bit of info on snake here -
http://www.pdmhs.com/PDFs/ScannedBul...20Findings.pdf
All in all a damn good weekend but i now have purple knees and i ache all over