Day 19 Monday 05/10/09

After breakfast we climbed into caving gear to investigate a couple of holes that the Moroccans had seen. At one of the holes a large red “52” was painted on the rock. Not a good sign for virgin cave! At another hole near-by, Mohammed Eyore had dropped his coat so we decided to investigate this shaft and retrieve his coat. JC and the Moroccans free climbed down into the depression and looked down the shaft. It was decided to drop a rope from the top, down into the depression and continue down the shaft.MC and EP rigged a rope round a large boulder and hung the rope down. MC descended to the end of the rope and ended up on a small ledge with the pitch continuing. It was whilst looking for a suitable bolt position did he notice a rusty spit. We had been beaten by the French again! After ascending the rope a faded red painted “A53” was spotted.
We decided that all the shafts would have been investigated by the previous expedition, but JC spotted a small slot that felt that it was drafting. Having crawled in it was going, dropping through large breakdown to a small pitch. MC and EP then went in with a rope to rig the pitch. MC rigged the rope and descended 4m to a rebelay and down another 2m. The passage sloped down and soon ended. We estimated the length of the cave to be 50m in total but it looked virgin cave!