John Cooper, Nigel Graham, Pete Hann and Kate Lawrence. Warmer today, 17°C but with a gentle breeze so not too hot. Lowered the bottom ladder which sat nicely on the spoil from Tuesday. John descended and attached it as before. Then used his chisel drill to remove enough of a protruding buttress to allow the next section of ladder to be attached directly under the existing one. At present the bottom one sits at 90°, ie parallel to the rift. This took about 90 minutes with the surface team getting very bored. Once completed another section of ladder was lowered and put in place so it could be decided where to attach it to the rift walls. The position for holes to be drilled through the ladder were marked, then it was raised and drilled. The top 2 fixings were to be opposite each other and consisted of 10mm threaded bar seated in holes and secured each side onto the ladder.The ladder sides here are about 100mm from the wall. The bottom 2 fixings were offset by a couple of rungs and consisted of 10mm expansion bolts with the ladder sides in contact with the wall. This occupied another hour. Finally Kate went down to fill a token 10 buckets. 20 loads of rock and 10 loads of mud later she came out. Total of 4 hours. John.
