01/04/2025 - Evening

 01/04/2025 Evening - Alex Randall & Sam Hill. Plus Tuska on surface at the start

The first 3 surface skips of the new South Pot Team.

AR met Tuska on the surface shortly before 6pm, to go through fluid checks on the various engines, dumper operation and where to tip the rock when we do fill the dumper to extend the spoil heap.

Part way through this SH arrived and headed down to the end to clear the face back just enough that we'll be in a position to drill and fire next week, as our supplier of rock softening chemicals will be unavailable for a couple weeks after that.

AR lowered the surface skip with some tools, then added some new shackles to the South Pot winch as the old ones looked a bit suspect, and then cut the old bits of wire rope and excess chain off the south pot sled.

SH returned and haulage commenced, with SH solo working the Echo Pot winch and loading the South Pot one, and AR unloading the South Pot and loading the surface skip with the stockpile we'd amassed last Friday. While this sounds like it would be inefficient, with SH doing a huge amount of ladder climbing to load the Echo Pot skip, it actually worked fine as the limiting factor was still the thermal cut out on the electric winches.

Once the surface skip was full, AR ascended to empty it, leaving SH to operate both electric winches for a bit.

A second surface skip was filled with rock and two empty beer bottles (how did they get down there??) in this manner and at the end of the session there was still a large pile of bags at the 166', so SH stayed below to fill a third surface skip. I'm told there's about 10 bags left at the base of Echo Pot, and about the same at the 166'.

We didn't think 9pm was a great time to learn to drive a dumper with no handbrake, so left that for another day and made a beeline for the Hunters to discover a pint of Butcombe has gone up 30p, so you get small pointless coins in your change!

Surface Skip in Operation

Mouse found by SH at 166' level

The end

The end with SH foot for scale

Part filled dumper on surface




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