This may sound like a stupid question but its something that crossed my mind today.

I was on top of the spoil heap at nangiles with a friend today, we were on the concrete cap which has some vent holes.
He wanted to hear how deep it was so we dropped a couple of stones down it.
Has anyone ever been exploring and had a stone hit/land near them from doing this as although its unlikey its not an impossibilty :confused:

yea was in a slate mine up in walesthe chambers brake surface i was down the bottom and some one lobed a rock dam near took my head off i did shout up and ask them nicely not to do it again!! (this promted a second rock)

Once had a good few tonnes of chamber roof come down about 20" away from us. Rather closer to one chap who was boating across the flooded chamber at the time... It was, interesting, but a bit like being in a car accident, all in slow motion and strangely not terrifying.

Also been underground during an earthquake. Right underneath us, but verydeep. Heard it rather than felt it. We all looked at each other and said "what was that". It was only when I looked up the BGS web site a few days later that confirmed it as a quake.

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Not a mine but... Gaping Gill Main Chamber is a classic for idiot propelled rocks

As is Alum Pot (yes, another cave I'm afraid) - it's nothing new ...

In 1936 a Miss Mabel Binks, a 42-year-old schoolteacher, was killed by a falling rock in Alum Pot. Statements were made to the police of members of a cycling club standing at the top of the shaft and a witness reported seeing one of the men hurl down a large stone. (Race against time, Jime Erye and John Frankland, Lyon Books, 1988.

Dave

We were exploring the flooded stopes in Mountain Mine, Berehaven in 2005. We used a small rubber Dinghy for the purposes of crossing the flooded main stope, one which anyone reading who has visited the site knows goes straight to surface....
I was across the stope exploring the passage beyond when there was a sound of objects falling down the stope all the way from surface, debris kept dropping into the flooded stope and we could hear voices above!!! My dad who was on the out-bye side was shouting at the men on surface, who I suspect got rather more than they bargained for as they were fly tipping refuse from Cork city!!!
Having woken the demons of the deep I suspect they packed up as they vanished pretty promptly...
Having averted the obvious danger of having our Dinghy holed and sunk by a copy of Sky magazine originally delivered to a lady in Cork we retreated back to surface and took the offending garbage to the local Garda station...
Cork council actually traced the offenders from the address on the magazine from what I remember!!

In the days when there were plenty of uncapped shafts on Alston Moor for exploration, we went down one with about 100 ft of ladder. The level we reached went only about 120 ft before it was blocked. On our way back to the shaft we could see stones raining down the shaft. We shouted up but to no avail as the wind "up top" was fairly strong. Then we heard the morons at the top saying we must have forgotten to retrieve the ladders so they might as well nick them.
It was only by someone jumping on to the bottom of the ladder that saved the day. He made the top in about 20 secs flat but was too knackered to chase after the B*****ds. :curse:

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2 of us were in a mine near redruth with a waterfall in it.

We had been in before and got to the end of the level where this waterfall was absolutely arsing it down. I looked down the slope and decided to rope it. I tied off to a very serious balk of timber and backed down the pitch carefully, just allowing the rope to control my descent. I had been on 3 bars of my rack and was stood there with the slack rope slightly to the side of the pitch unhooking myself. Suddenly there was this almighty shout, (shout isn't enough of a loud word, there was this almighty 120dB noise in both of my ears) I turned around to see a huge (think man curled up) boulder bouncing down the stoping, sparking as it hit the walls. It wasn't just slow motion, it was really slow motion. I had a chance to do a lot of descision making and decide exactly where to step. I jumped into a side drive and the boulder landed in a shallow pool, completely snapping a 5"x2"x2 ladder. The rock left a socket in the side and there was no way of knowing it was coming. We are always very careful.

There is a lesson here. 😮

Ammo thrown by T***S, yeah its happened! GERRRRR :curse: :curse: :curse: :curse: :curse: :curse: :curse:

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