Derbyshire I
Photos to come later.
Ben Richards, David Wilson, Chris Hayes, Julien Jean, Edwin Fernando, Matt Ellis, Thurston Blount, Jackie Li, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Zain Fletcher, Lamya Adam, Claryce Yap, Hannes Reichle
Friday
We set off at the very reasonable time of 5:55 pm in trusty old DXB, and zoomed away into the night. Immediately Chris requested that we stop by CaveHouse since he’d forgotten a bunch of his electronics, and halfway down the A40 while in slow traffic he bolted out of the sliding side door and sprinted off down the road ahead of us. It turned out the majority of the people on the bus were not aware of his plans, and so this came as something of a surprise to them. After all were assured that our glorious president had not in fact completely lost his mind, we saw him reappear at the crossing opposite the Lidl by cave house in East Acton, but alas the lights turned green and we had no choice but to leave him behind. Turning left we strategically managed to make a scenic detour, by which time Chris was waiting up ahead by some traffic lights that turned red at exactly the right moment. Who knows what the cars behind us were thinking as we pulled away with our stowaway onboard.
We stopped by St Neots Tesco to pick up a dubz for the weekend, of the Davey variety. Remi found a shockingly cheap giant chocolate cake and then proceeded to eat it for his dinner. This was very tasty. Much faff, as is traditional.
The TSG had been booked out, so instead we were staying at the Orpheus. We’d not stayed there before as a group, so Chris was looking up the hut instructions, after briefly being thwarted by the entirety of the Union Microsoft accounts going offline, to find out what lay in store for us. The week prior had seen loads of snowfall across the country, but roads were all clear by this point in Derbyshire and Winnats Pass seemed clear and ready for action. Spirits were high but gradually plummeted as Chris read out line after line from a recent email from the Orpheus. It became clear that the track leading to the hut was suboptimal in wintery conditions. Next, we learnt that there was a big hill which can be very treacherous, followed by learning that many vehicles crash here, then that a hut warden had tried and failed to get to the hut very recently and finally that there’s a tall gate in the middle of this lane that is regularly submerged in so much snow that it becomes completely buried, causing it to be destroyed on a near-annual basis. Fantastic.
Alternative strategies rapidly began to take shape, mainly revolving around an impromptu visit to the NPC should things fall through. We had snow chains which Hannes alone seemed to know how to use, but before we knew it the verges became whiter and whiter with dustings of snow followed by coatings and finally deep drifts as far as the eye could see. The fields on either side of the road finally opened out as a glistening white landscape under the full moon. It seemed very unlikely that we would make it to the hut. The thermostat on the van ticked lower and lower, eventually reaching -7C when we finally made it to a small layby that marked the start of the farm track.
We tried our luck driving straight onto the snow and immediately lost all traction. Stopping to put snow chains on helped a bit but we still felt it was high risk and low reward to try and take the bus onto the track so instead we unloaded everything and sent out a scout team to investigate the rest of the track. The hut didn’t turn out to be that far, and so waves of weary travellers were loaded up with sleeping bags, batteries and large quantities of milk before joining the long string of headlights stretching out into the polar wilderness and over the horizon of the hill.
The weather was perfect - bitterly cold, but still and peaceful with a full moon to light the way. It did feel a bit like being on an epic rescue where the lonely and forlorn characters must trek across the endless tundra, carrying all their belongings with them and nothing but the moon to guide the way. After passing over the top of the hill you could see the mist hugging the valley floor below, stretching out as far as the eye can see, with trees on faraway hills poking out into a clear sky full of stars.
The minibus was parked further down the road in a small car park after we decided the pub car park looked far too treacherous to even attempt. The hut itself was lovely, but freezing cold and the showers were frozen solid. Everything else seemed fine, and we quickly had two roaring fires going to warm ourselves up. Julien found some opera binoculars and watched the group of flame worshipers from the other side of the room. The outdoor toilets were particularly exciting given the weather but thankfully seemed to be working fine. We cracked out the giant chocolate cake, rebranded from Remi's dinner to instead being a celebratory cake for Davey's recent wedding to fellow caver Yan Jin over December.
Eventually all headed to bed in the early hours of the morning, after conclusively deciding that attempting to make our meeting with the peak key holder for 9:30 am was absolutely inconceivable given the ungodly faff that would ensue in getting everyone up, fed and into the bus a kilometre down the road in time for the 40-minute drive to Castleton.
Ben
Wow, I can't believe this trip was so successful!
Things started off rough as I had forgotten lots of my personal kit, but managed to delay the minibus by only 5 minutes. I leapt heroically from the moving vehicle at an astonishing 0.2mph, and epically outpaced it as it sped down the Westway, before heading it off at the East Acton traffic lights and confidently re-entering the minibus welcomed by everyone's roaring applause.
Davey had kindly shopped for us already, and we found an excellently cheap chocolate cake we consumed on the bus.
Next challenge: The union servers were in complete shutdown. After the infamous Mr Feiner spilt his morning coffee on the 5 lemurs locked in the west basement that manage their IT services, they went on strike, and started a fire. This means we had no access to the Outlook account. The outlook account had all of the hut details and door code.
Hurriedly, we emailed the hut warden on the Gmail who graciously replied and warned us about the conditions. As it had snowed heavily over the previous week, the hut would could be completely inaccessible. We began to panic. Our fears were came true as we arrived and saw the dirt track was a foot deep in snow. we were forced to walk the whole distance, but we rose to the challenge and made it!
Chris
Saturday
JH: Chris Hayes, Edwin Fernando, Matt Ellis, Jackie Li, Zain Fletcher
The weather brought us more challenges, as we never stood a chance of making our peak booking. We spent hours debating cave plans before finally driving to Winant's pass. there we struggled to park, and opted to abandon the bus on the roadside and risk a parking ticket after 1 hours debating.
Eventually my team began making our way to JH. Many of us slipped in the snow on the way (extremely hilarious) but we made it in the end, and began our descent. Matt and I were leading the trip, and unfortunately our progress was very slow (2nd pitch took over 2 hours!?). We made it to the workshop where we had to turn around and begin our exit. Almost missing callout, we were greeted by Ben and Davey who had wandered over to check on us, and we slowly made our way back together occasionally stacking it once again in the snow.
Chris
Nettle: Julien Jean, Thurston Blount, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Hannes Reichle
Hearing about geological formations and pyroclastic flows, Julien and I eagerly agreed to follow on a Remi rigging trip down Nettle, a place where tales of Davey clothless seemed countless. Arriving in the deepest snow around Mam tour seemingly ever, we changed in front of thousands of watchers (including one person actively trying to take a photo of the numberplate), and headed off over random fields, hoping the few footprints ahead were people making their ways to the same caves. Heading up the hill, Ben suddenly alerted us of the need of our Derbyshire key (such a strong name for a glorified spanner), where I subsequently lost all the maillons to the snow (recovered later I swear).
Finally entering the cave (a grate in the centre of a snowy field, thankfully another group of cavers had already unearthed it), we came across this deep ~100m rift straight down to the horizontal level. As Remi rigged, and Julien and Hannes followed behind, I quickly ran back to just above the Oxlow lot, scrambling to recover all the maillons I had just realised had been lost (these were already replacements for the maillons Remi lost to the snow by the bus). Following after Hannes, I finally reached the bottom after a quick descent, finding a lot of crawling to the next pitch.
From here, we followed some sketchy in-situs tied with very interesting knots (one of which appeared to have a maillon made of rope or some weird variation of an alpine), and very glazed rope. Reaching the squeeze to Derbyshire hall (as we lost the argument for having more ropes to the other groups), Remi and Julien had a go, realised we all couldn't be bothered, and left leaving me to derig. Unfortunately, at the bottom of the main shaft, my pantene broke and I had to prussick up the whole non-spacious rift with one foot on the rope (rip). Covered in mud, Remi and I finally escaped, met with a Ben surprised to see us at the top.
Then we waited at the bus for a while.
Thurston
Oxlow: Ben Richards, David Wilson, Lamya Adam, Claryce Yap
Awoken at a surprisingly reasonable hour, I had a somewhat decent night’s sleep ruined by it being utterly and literally freezing in the bedroom to the point that I felt like my feet might fall off. This was while wrapped in every layer of clothing I had brought, including my fury, buff and giant down jacket. Probably the coldest night I've ever had indoors comet to think of it.
The view outside however more than made up for this. Clear blue skies, the pastel colours of the sunrise and soft wispy mist filling the valley below us. Every surface was white with hoar frost, large spikes of ice crystal a centimetre long coating the ground and producing a wonderful powdery tinkling sound when brushed aside with each step. A great fry-up was consumed, Chris’s friend Matt turned up at the hut and we all wrapped up warm before heading back up the long track back to the bus. Some axe throwing happened for some unknown reason, and Chris let out a large amount of energy chopping up ice in a large frozen bathtub that looked amazing against the low sun as the shards of ice flew off in every direction. Lamya and Edwin made some top-notch snow angels before we set off. Matt and Thurston volunteered to be oxen by carrying a giant pan of water between them with a broomstick threaded through the handles, so that we could fill up the water bottles that had been forgotten in the bus the night before.
We trudged back up the actually quite busy road to where the bus had been parked the night before, wandering through a winter wonderland with small cottages encrusted in glistening frost, their gardens shrouded in icy mist and lines of trees leading off into the distance, each powdered with ice. Shockingly almost all of the water in the pot made it, and after filling the bottles we of course took turns to chug as much as we could before a quick round of curling in the car park, with the wooden brush brought as carrying handle.
The caving plan was three trips: JH, Oxlow and Nettle. This meant that we could all park in the same place, and we wouldn’t need to deal with Peak Caverns access or time restrictions as all three trips were bounces. However, as we drove up towards the farm we found every single track to be seemingly impassable given our 2 wheel drive minibus, and so we begrudgingly joined the very long line of cars parked on the side of the road. A friendly fellow caver warned us that they’d likely ticket all of the vehicles on the side of the road, but we didn’t think we could make it out of any of the other parking spots without damaging the bus, so decided to accept any tickets that may arise and finally go caving.
I was in team Oxlow and we stomped off down the road, climbed the hill and then parted ways with Nettle after reaching our entrance at the end of the fences. The field was pristine with a thick layer of powdery snow on top of a thicker icy base. Davey got to the entrance grate only to find that it wouldn’t open and 12 bolts were holding the grating down to the concrete pillar. Argh. We had given the Derbyshire key to Nettle gang, so shouted at them and thankfully Thurston quite literally threw himself down the hill in order to give it to us. We tried the Derbyshire key on the bolts but it was so rattly that we couldn’t get any purchase on them. Frustrated, we decided it best for Davey to go back to his car and fetch a better spanner while we did what we could in the meantime. Thurston headed back towards Nettle after hearing that they didn’t need the spanner after all, and so Lamya, Claryce and I got to work on the 12 bolts as Davey disappeared off down the hill.
After a good 10 minutes of trying, I felt like having a break and thought I might as well Google the grate in case it came with any helpful info on how to open the damn thing. This turned out to be a very good idea and I immediately found a photo of the opening in summer, realising in horror that the whole thing had been welded to the floor by ice and that the bolts we were trying to remove were in fact a core part of the frame.
After much whacking and chiselling of the ice around the base of the grating we finally managed to lift it up with ease, and so frantically screamed and waved for Davey to come back, who was by this point on the road in the distance. Fortunately this worked and so I got to work rigging down the entrance pitch at about 3 pm.
Davey soon returned and took over the rigging, while I followed up at the back of the group, after an excellent discussion with Claryce about life in Singapore vs London and our mutual cravings for Hawker food at that very moment. Before long we were sliding down the entrance shaft, icicles collapsing all around me only to then pop out in the first chamber. I had forgotten that Oxlow is part mine part cave, and this was very apparent after looking at the various walls I was standing on after descending down below them. Horrifying.
The route onto West chamber looked really quite wet, presumably from all the melt water given the warmer temperature of the cave, and so we dropped down into East Chamber instead. This was awesome - a huge rift that followed a big seam of some white ore with purple streaks through it, presumably something horrendously radioactive given we were in Derbyshire. There was also an ultra-dodgy-looking ladder descending down the far end of the chamber into an abyss below, but we decided not to investigate that one.
We tucked into a sticky toffee soreen I’d picked up on the Friday shop, and then I unloaded my latest arrangement of enormous flashes for a photo session. This was my first outing with three giga flashes, having previously only had one on winter tour, which were so large that they now only fit into the survey laptop case which completely filled Ged together with my orange camera peli case and various other bits of SRT and rescue equipment. This worked very well, other than the fact that I’d closed the case in warm and humid South Kensington and then opened it in a cold and equally humid cave. The subsequent condensation was actually rather bad, so much so that one of the flashes didn’t want to turn on at all until I’d wiped the battery contacts a couple of times, but finally, I managed to convince it that everything was going to be okay and it started to cooperate.
I also had no clue what it would be like photographing with three giga flashes given they’re so omnidirectional. Quite difficult, it turned out. Holding them at waist level tends to mean that the floor is completely overexposed, with the roof far up ahead still completely dark. Note to self, need to make some snoots. Despite this, I think I managed to throw together some decent photos of everyone in the large chamber, and then realised that Davey was sitting in a magnificent spot, lying out in typical dramatic Davey fashion, so I managed to get a photo of him as well.
After this, we felt we’d had a grand day out and Chris had been particularly insistent that we all had to be back at the bus for 9 pm, especially me since I do sometimes have a bad habit of approaching callout just to get that perfect shot. The way onto West Chamber also looked very wet and uninviting so we headed back out, I de-rigged the first pitch and then overtook the others so that I got out first and could suffer the cold instead of the others.
As Claryce headed up the entrance behind me I got some cool photos and then ushered her into the lovely warm bothy bag I’d kindly heated up for her. Lamya was soon out as well, and I gave them each an electric hand warmer, which went down a treat. Having only had a gentle bimble of a trip, I felt like jogging up the hill to see how Nettle were doing. After arriving at the manhole cover I couldn’t see anything so was about to turn around when I thought I might as well poke my head in the hole to see if anyone was there to throw snow at. As I lifted the lid I was surprised to see both Thurston and Remi cowering just below it, pulling up the ropes from the last pitch. Apparently Julien had just headed off so I must have missed him on the way up.
After helping them pull up their ropes I took a couple of hilarious photos of the two of them covered head to toe in mud and then wandered back down to the Oxlow gang, before doing a couple massive glissades on the hill on the way back to the bus. We arrived back a little early, at about 8:30 pm, but there was no JH gang in sight. After changing and warming up in the bus, Hannes, Davey and I decided to wander up the hill to see what was going on.
Just as we were layering up in the bus we saw three cars drive up the lane towards the farm. As we walked up we could see that one of them had gone off the track and the other two were pulled over beside it so we went over to help. A 4x4 was completely stuck in the snow, with its driver furiously shovelling away with a winch attached to another of the cars. In front was a guy in a camping chair with a beer in hand watching his mate dig out his car. Fascinating. After exchanging a brief laugh, it was clear that no one was allowed to help this muppet who’d intentionally driven off the road and so we headed on to the farm.
After enraging every dog within a mile radius, as is tradition when walking to JH it seems, we headed out in the field to see headlights on the horizon. I got strong flashbacks to last year’s Derbyshire trip where I was similarly walking over to JH with Davey, having just returned from Nettle Pot to help Chris’s team get out of JH. Oh, the irony. See the D1 2024 writeup for further details. After jogging over we caught them just as they were finishing pulling out the last of the rope from the entrance, and of course reminded Chris of the strict 9pm back at the bus time that Chris had insisted on this morning, as well as reminding him that it was currently 10pm. I shall of course stop reminding him of this incident and not rub it in any further, after 5 years or so.
We all piled back in the bus, zoomed back to the end of the icy track to the hut where we unloaded all the various goods and humans, and then stomped back down the lane to rustle up a pasta bake of interesting texture given the overwhelming prominence of refried beans. Claryce commented that the past bake looked done in the oven and also that it didn’t look great. She wasn’t wrong, but it did taste wonderful after a long day out.
The evening and early hours of the morning consisted mainly of poo and poo adjacent discussion by the fire, until a surprise guest appearance from crowbar Andy, the one and only that Davey, Julien and I had spent a night with in Aggy after he’d whacked himself in the face with a crowbar while digging in the subsequently named “crowbar surprise" passage. He was also joined by a couple of mates and told us tales of the legendary Ken of the Orpheus, who had apparently been promoted to a member of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
After wrapping up extra warm for the cold night ahead, we stopped back upstairs for a long night’s sleep and looked forward to a nice lie-in the following morning after agreeing that no one could be bothered to do anything the next day. Fantastic.
Ben
Sunday
Snowsports: everyone
Well, no one really wanted to do any caving today. We’d all had grand days out the day before and the thought of putting on wet kit in the snow was deeply unappealing. Instead, we opted for a snow day + lie-in combo. The lie-in was superb. After finally deciding I should exit my delightfully toasty sleeping bag and venture into the cold, cold world, I looked outside to see nothing but white - the fog had descended and merged with the snow to make the entire outside a blanket of white, with the occasional bench or tree floating arbitrarily in the middle of it.
Some decent porridge was whipped up by Chris and we all settled down in the living room for a relaxed chit-chat about all sorts of nonsense. This lasted for an enjoyable few hours before it was decided to do some washing up, and finally venture outside to see what we had in terms of low-friction devices.
The snow had started to melt - the temperature clearly having risen above freezing due to all the clouds - and this made it incredibly sticky. Within moments Lamya had rolled a gargantuan snowball in preparation for a snowman, but after realising that we had hours to spare and vast quantities of snow to work with, we set our ambitions significantly higher. An igloo was proposed, and a whole squad of ball rollers dutifully got to work. In the background Thurston, Remi, Hannes and Julein continued their rapid iteration on various sliding devices, including large pans, upturned tables, crates, planks of wood tied to feet and even one pot per leg. This was incredibly entertaining to watch as they practiced sliding around the front yard of the house, amidst the swarm of ball rollers in every direction.
I rolled a decently sized ball, perhaps a 2 foot-er, nothing compared to Lamya’s which must have been over a metre in diameter by this point, and Edwin was furiously rolling large balls in the adjoining field and passing back the rolled balls across the wall. Chris joined and quickly got to work outlining the foundations of our glorious igloo. It rapidly took shape, with large balls being carved into shape around the base, and then packing in between from the loose powdery snow that lay all around. The snow was a good 15cm deep, and before long Edwin had rolled the largest ball yet - perhaps 4 ft in diameter, and I ran over to help him get it to the igloo. This changed everything. Chris grabbed a saw and realised we could carve the huge snowball into incredibly satisfying blocks, with the dense snow cutting like squeakless polystyrene - it was perfect.
This breakthrough in igloo technology meant we went into full construction site mode. Quickly a supply chain of large balls was set up, their weight being the perfect way to compact the snow into dense enough bricks, which could then be assembled into the finished igloo. Jackie also came up with a great innovation of compacting snow into the large cooking pot, producing perfect cylindrical snow bricks for the effort. A large ball processing centre opened where Chris carved the bricks, with Lamya then taking the role of chief packer within the igloo itself, using fresh snow as mortar to join together the endless supply of bricks.
With this system we rapidly built up some surprisingly tall walls. Eventually the large balls became too enormous and started to implode under their immense internal forces - the supply chain shifted to instead ferrying the ravaged remains off of the driveway and down to the construction site thanks to a large wheelbarrow and considerable human power.
All was going well until the front right wall experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly onto my head. I at the time happened to be on packing duty with Lamya and managed to escape after seeing both my life and a large volume of snow flash before my eyes. We had built too tall too fast - more dome was needed, less tilty wall. We accepted that we had to more aggressively dome inwards and Chris laid the blocks in more and more daring positions. Triumphantly we joined the back roof over the top, and then the front arch, leaving only a tiny window in between through which you could spot Lamya furiously packing snow into any gaps and cracks.
The trio of low friction enthusiasts departed for steeper hills, walking across the valley along a farm track until they were little more than ants sliding down the opposite hill, occasionally disappearing into the fog. They later returned with tales of Thurston sliding stomach first across a frozen lake, Julien snapping the leg off of a table and of unfortunately very sticky snow that unfortunately wasn’t great for sliding over.
Hannes was furiously innovating in the background while the rest of the construction team continued their furious march into the sky. First, he came up with a lovely ICCC logo made out of specially split kindling, then a cool border for the sign made out of twine neatly tucked into the snow. Next, he made a perfectly round window in the wall by gently tapping in a large cooking pan, before making a series of smaller peepholes in the igloo by tapping a pint glass into the walls. After this bout of innovation, he returned with a spray bottle of tea with which he drew some rather brown-looking cave surveys and decorative patterns on the igloo, before then disappearing into the hut only to later announce that he’d rescued the endless refried beans from the night before and turned them into a delicious curry. What a man. But for his final act of innovation, he took our vast quantities of leftover milk and turned them into a fantastic vat of hot chocolate, which was incredibly well appreciated by the construction workers outside in the bitter cold. Needless to say, he made many friends that day.
Once the main dome was complete it was time to add an entrance tunnel, some chairs, a table, a storage ledge, ice panes to go in the windows, entrance columns capped with snowballs, cutlery and a plate to go on the table, interior lighting for the main room, accent lighting, a glass of hot chocolate to go in the window, a bottle of sloe gin for the shelf, a toilet plunger donated by Davey (?) and after a new flooring to hide all the mud brought in by the interior designers it was time for a video tour. After this came a group photo where I propped up my phone on some very slimy wood against a log, only for it to lose all of its 20% battery in 5 seconds meaning Julien’s phone came to the rescue. A fantastic igloo indeed, and incredibly cosy as the wind started to pick up outside.
After this we made a mad dash to tidy up the hut in about an hour (shockingly) and portered all of our belongings back up the icy hill where the bus was awaiting us at the end of the track. We set off at a very reasonable 5:30, bound for London with a minibus packed with warm coats, snowy caving kits, good vibes and great memories. Until next time Derbyshire!
Ben
After a long long sleep, waking up the latest on a caving trip ever, I got up into the freezing cold, non-insulated room, and went downstairs to realise that despite my long lie-in, very few people were still awake. Eventually, we headed outside, determined to sledge and ski using whatever materials we could find, eventually trying to make skis for Remi using wood slats, a saw, and part of the washing line. After 3 attempts, we thought we had perfected the design, but needed a steeper hill as the wood appeared to have too much friction.
Heading off with Remi and Julien, bringing a plastic stool found outside and a bike, we walked up to the old railway, jumping a few fences on the way. Following this along in the overwhelming fog, we finally make it to this large field (already having tried a few and seeing a death fence at the bottom), and begin ski preparations on Remi. This did not end up working, and somehow he ended up being better at walking up slopes than before rather than going down??? Complete opposite to the aim but oh well.
After Julien broke the stool (no help from me), we wandered down to a frozen lake at the bottom and start thinking up elaborate stories if we were to make it across. With a proper risk assessment in place (including the throwing of multiple rocks seen scattered around me), we decided to voyage across the ice. Deciding I would go first, I spread myself out as flat as I could and flat-out crawled across the ice, fearing the pinging noises the ice was making as I moved. Eventually I reached the end unharmed, and turned around to see Remi walking across the ice... show off.
We then headed back in the ever-thickening fog, reaching the hut just in time to witness the last few bricks of the igloo being placed.
Endurance Member 1 (Thurston)
Well, there was no chance of us making it underground this day. The snow was far too much of an obstacle. We isntead, decided to make the most of the weather, and built and igloo! it was incredible! much fun was had.
My reflections on this trip: The snow presented a major obstacle and could have completely ruined the trip. However, we made suitable, and sesnible adjustements to our plans that accomodated the presented limitations well. Everyone gave an eccellent effort when faced with the challenges, giving no complaints about the cold conditions and walking to/from the hut even taking multiple trips. I'm extremely grateful to everyones efforts. This was easily one of the clubs best trips of the year, but could very well have gone a lot differently. Thank you.