John Cooper, Nigel Graham, Pete Hann, Kate Lawrence and Adrian Vanderplank. Cool again, 10°C, but sunny with a slight breeze. Sorting out ladders was the plan for today. Initially John hung a 10.3m electron ladder down fastened to the scaffold bar adjacent to the pulley. The bottom rung was still about 3m from the floor! John descended and used the hauling line to attach to the top of the bottom ladder. This was hauled up a bit so the tape joining the bottom and middle ladders together could be removed. Then undid the bolts holding the middle ladder in place. The top bolt could be knocked in to release the ladder but the bottom two could not so Adrian descended and cut through them using a reciprocating saw. The now free section was carried to the surface out of the way. Locations for fixing the previous bottom ladder in as the new middle ladder were then identified before it was hauled to the surface for drilling. Unfortunately both are on the left. It was then lowered back down and the spot on the wall where the top anchor was to go identified and drilled. The top fixing was then loosely installed. Using the electron ladder’s bottom rung it was just possible to descend and mark then drill the bottom fixing. This was loosely installed. A new section from a double extending ladder was then lowered down to become the new bottom ladder. At the end of the day Pete ensured the fixings were tightened up. We still need to put in a bracket to hold the right hand side of the ladder securely in place. Kate was then sent to the bottom to dig out mud that had slumped in. After a while Pete went down to make sure she was excavating a suitable base for the retaining wall, I think he had to keep her focused a few times! We lowered a piece of plastic board and a stronger wooden piece for Pete to use as a retaining wall in the hope it would stop the mud slumping in too much. Unfortunately Pete’s batteries all died and he was unable to securely fix them to the walls. There was a mutiny at 30 buckets of mud and 2 of rock. 3 hours. John.
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