In the paper, Maloney described:
The stratigraphy of Pea Bullok contains much wood and this, with the extreme wetness of the bog surface, makes coring very difficult. Several attempts were made during late 1973-early 1974 to obtain long cores using a Russian peat borer, with a Dachnowsky piston sampler for the stiffer material. Most were frustrated. However, the final try in February 1974, which was really aimed only at collecting data for stratigraphic description, resulted in considerable success: an 8 m long core was extracted from the edge of the site.
However, only a few samples from the last metre were kept as it was assumed that it would be possible to core again taking samples rather than just describing the stratigraphy. In fact it was not possible to get beyond 6 m during the second coring. So there is an unfortunate gap in the core (Core A) from the edge. The infill base was not reached either in the 8 m core or the shorter core from the centre of the site.”
The radiocarbon dating shows that, at the bottom of the peat (8 m), the age is close to 30,000 years BP.