Description by Mark Bown - 1987 LUSS Journal.
Sima 55 is located approx. 300m south west of the entrance to Sima 56 at an altitude of 2010m, some 50m higher than 56. Since the original exploration of this massive daylight shaft in 1977, when a snow plug was encountered at a depth of 180m, it had been revisited twice. In 1980, Jes Peterson found the situation unaltered and in 1984 Steve Foster had the gross misfortune of running out of rope in sight of the snow plug which had stopped everyone else. With the amount of snow around 1985 being considerably less than in previous years it seemed worthwhile revisiting 55. The objective: connect 55 to 56 and make 56 a 1200m deep cave the easy way - from the top!
Despite the initial problem of locating this "massive open shaft at the bottom of a huge snowfield" by following the prescribed directions: "Oh, you just walk up the ridge beyond 56 to the second snow patch then walk off right" (which ain't very useful with no snow around), the tackle was eventually carted up to the entrance. The following day it was rigged by Steve Bunton to -100m (who as usual only became interested after all the hard work had been done).
A few days later with confidence, agility, an audience and the onset of the shits, Julian Walker (male model) set off to do what no other man could do - get 200m down a shaft with no ledges, find he'd got the shits and prusik back out without shitting himself. At -200m the shaft reached a snow plug. A swift (and hypothermic) investigation around the sides of the snow plug by the audience (who were wondering whether Julian would make it to the surface before the inevitable happened and whether it was possible to do it on a rope, but more importantly whether standing directly underneath him was really a good idea) revelaed the snow plug to be resting on the rock floor of a chamber with no apparent way on down. The chamber narrowed at one end leading to a 4m climb up to a strongly draughting hole to the head of a 10m pitch, landing on a boulder slope. Descending the slope leads to a tight rift over which it was possible to climb to give a 20m pitch beyond the restriction. The bottom of the 20m pitch landed on a boulder slope which continued down the rift and closed down to a blockage of easily diggable head sized boulders covered in wet mud.
With rop running short in Dossers' the cave was photographed (?), surveyed (??) and derigged (!!) the following day by Steve Bunton, (who had lost interest in it when it became a little more taxing than a 200m open shaft!).
With a strong draught and good potential of dropping into 56 (or even better not dropping into 56), 55 should be revisited (yet again!).
