 Meanwhile, climbing operations in the ninth chamber found an abandoned outlet passage which terminated very close to the surface, as well as a dry overland route downstream through the higher levels of the eight to sixth chambers as far as the fifth chamber. These discoveries were used to enable the show cave to be extended into the ninth chamber and the cave divers to start directly from here, bypassing the dive from the third chamber onwards. The way on from the twenty second chamber was at last found by Colin Edmond and Martyn Farr in February 1976 and was explored until the line ran out. A few days later Geoff Yeadon and Oliver Statham somewhat controversially reached the twenty third chamber after laying just a further 9 metres (30 ft) of line. A further three short dives and they surfaced in the twenty fourth chamber to be confronted by what Statham described as "a magnificent sight — the whole of the River Axe pouring down a passage 40 feet high by five feet wide" terminating in a blue lake after 90 metres (300 ft). This lake was dived by Farr a few days later for 90 metres (300 ft) at a maximum depth of 18 metres (59 ft) to emerge in the twenty fifth chamber 25, a desolate, muddy place named "The Lake of Gloom".
