Coolagh River Cave

Fantastic trip!

A rather unpleasantly wet entrance followed by some mildly difficult traversing (for me anyway) led to some scrotty bedding plane crawls and canals to avoid the pitch at the end of Gour Passage. Definitely would not have wanted to be in there if there was any chance of rain. However on reaching the streamway - which I found quite reminiscent of OFD in places - there was much stomping and splashing and swimming – great fun! Getting out of the plungepool on the return required a bit of hauling from Matt! We went all the way to the terminal sump (quite pleasant, as sumps go) before retracing our steps back upstream and through the scary second bedding cave. Just after here, instead of taking the inlet we had entered through, we continued following the water upstream. At one point whilst in an oxbow we had to take a small and scary looking secondary oxbow on the left to avoid a dodgy climb up. Scary looking because it was full of straw and other flood debris. Slightly dubious that this was the way on we followed our noses and eventually found water again.

The canyon on the way out of Polldonaugh Swallet was pretty cool – looking up to see how the path of the water had dramatically changed over the years. Towards the end a slight navigational error caused by miscommunication led us to a bedding crawl with cascading water and a noticeable draft. We had a few moments panic when we thought the entrance may have closed up and we’d have to return all the way back to the Polldonough South entrance but on retracing our steps to where we guessed we’d gone wrong, we soon found the correct way on and within a few minutes were walking out of the canyon and back to daylight, hoorah.

NB. Entrance B9a appeared not to be blocked as Selected Caves states. Entering here instead would allow you to bypass the majority of the minging wetness at the start.