Wales I
David Wilson, James Perry, Ellie Pizey, Jan Kożuszek, Julien Jean, Thurston Blount, Jackie Li, Joshua Ho, Kinsy Li, Steven Sun, Aurelia Eberhard, Snehaa Rajkumar, Michael Williams, Remi Soubes-Goldman
Friday
After an arduous day of remote sensing and continental tectonics, coming over to stores to start helping get the trip out of Imperial by 6.30 was just what I needed. After grabbing most of everything and with some help from Chris (who was binning us off on the first trip of the year for some reason), we finally managed to set off before we even planned to at 6pm (although there was a lot of worry that we may swap freshers and/or kit with the outdoors society). The trip ahead was long, but with my navigation skills (google maps) we eventually made it to just past Bath, on time to hit the Bristol Lidl at 8.30 (it closed at 10), when we hit an hour of traffic and the M4 was closed between junction 18 and 19. ☹. We did not make it to Lidl. Instead the biggest Tesco was found, and using the shopping list Julien and I threw together on the bus, we bought some questionable quantities of food. Not much happened from the Tesco to the SWCC, however we did hit what felt like 30 miles of roadworks with no one else nearby, and it felt very disorientating and apocalyptic. We finally arrived just past midnight at a similar time to Davey car.
Thurston
Caveat: I am writing these reports about a month after the actual trip, since before now I’d found myself occupied by actually doing things connected with my PhD non-caving stuff. So, if I forget some particularly funny incident, I only ask your forgiveness and understanding. With that out of the way, let us begin
This was to be my first trip as a driver, and an only driver at that. I wasn’t too concerned about the driving itself, confidence reinforced by my not having killed anyone on the drive from Slov, but I did ask just about everyone I could about the process of actually picking up the minibus. In the end, I received the keys without any hassle whatsoever, although they were for a different minibus than originally planned, and the minibus we did get came with a somewhat concerning number of cobwebs.
Not to worry! The freshers and kit packed in record time, we set off in pursuit of the setting sun. Thurston and Julien took the other front seats, partly navigating and partly figuring out the food shop. Our hopes of getting to our chosen Lidl in time were dashed when it turned out the M4 got shut just before us, landing us in an hour-long traffic jam. Clearly the government was afraid of what our power level would be had we made it. We instead stopped for far too long at a big Tesco, where I eventually had to collect some freshers from a nearby McDonalds.
The last bit of the journey was almost unremarkable, except for the repeated outpours of torrential rain and miles upon miles of weird bumpy roadworks. So I guess it was pretty remarkable, actually.
Jan
Saturday
With Julien and I leading the trip, unfortunately we had to make breakfast for the first time on any trip so far. This breakfast consisted of too many hash browns and beans, not enough bacon and vege sausages, and not enough eggs for the 2 loaves of eggy bread we were aiming to make (although not all the eggy bread we made in the end was eaten). We were so dedicated to being out of the hut and in the cave before 12 that we woke up at 7.30 just to cook this food and have everyone eating by 9. Whilst that did end up being the case, the SWCC was a maze, and with 80 beds to find all of our group in, and two other clubs (NUCC and MCG) sleeping in most of the beds that weren’t members, Perry wasn’t found until all the bacon had been eaten and only the starch and gluten left over. Poor Perry (Sorry).
Thurston
OFD 2: Julien Jean, Thurston Blount, Joshua Ho, Snehaa Rajkumar
OFD 2: David Wilson, Jan Kożuszek, Kinsy Li, Steven Sun, Remi Soubes-Goldman
OFD2 with Davey, a certified classic. With us came Remi, who turned out to be quite experienced, Steven, a keen fresher, and Kinsy, a force to be reckoned with. With a huge and odd-shaped headtorch he’d bought online, with a GoPro stuck to his chest, with a clarity of mind and a strength of purpose, he began vlogging his underground adventure from the first steps he took inside the cave. Every couple of minutes the pristine silence of OFD was pierced by the beeping of his camera turning on as he acted out being chased by monsters or something of the sort. It was highly entertaining, especially once we figured out he wasn’t in fact hyperventilating.
Davey gave me the surveys and I took the lead, going first down Gnome Passage to the entrance of the bypass of Edward’s Shortcut. Here, through some miscommunication, I ended up waiting by myself for 20 minutes or so while the others disappeared down the squeeze, but I entertained myself by listening to the confused voices of Thurston and Julien, engaged in debate at the entrance to the actual Edward’s Shortcut (which for me, the avid reader might recall, was the site of The Incident). Once the rest of the gang reappeared, we made our way down the corkscrew and through Salubrious towards the crowd-pleasers. This didn’t go entirely smoothly, as Kinsy almost took a tumble when climbing down the streamway, stopped only by the fortunate placement of Davey’s body. Then it was tourism time, going to Trident, Judge, Selenite Tunnel, Frozen River, Moonlight Chamber. Once or twice we bumped into Perry and Ellie’s group, who were having some trouble telling which passages on the survey were real and which were actually unclimbable 5 metre drops. The map could be a little clearer in those areas.
On the way back, on Davey’s suggestion, we decided to try to make our way through the Maze. We heard Perry’s group again, this time passing directly above them, and plunged into the unfamiliar narrow corridors. There was some gymnastics involved, going high and then low to avoid the tightest constrictions, waddling through pools of water, keeping an eye out for the turns we had to make. At last we found ourselves at a junction, somewhat confused as to where we were. Davey did some exploration and found what he figured had to be Swamp Creek, meaning we’d somehow missed several prior side passages, but at least the navigational problem was solved, and we were back on known ground within a few minutes.
With energy reserves dwindling we decided against going out through Davey’s preferred option of a long crawl, and instead walk back up Salubrious and the Corkscrew, collecting Perry and Ellie’s team in our wake. The rest of the way was straightforward after that.
Back at the hut Kinsy announced that he wanted to go see a friend in Cardiff, so Davey dropped him off at the nearest bus stop and he was not heard from again until late the next day, when he announced he’d made it all the way back to London. Meanwhile, concern was growing as the Julien+Thurston team were still not back, and their callout was getting nearer and nearer.
Finally, as Davey and Perry were already drafting rescue plans, a light appeared making it down the hillside at great speed. They were safely out, and Thurston made a mad dash back to the hut to cancel callout. Relieved of any concerns I had some extra beer and went to sleep nice and early.
Jan
OFD 2: James Perry, Ellie Pizey, Jackie Li, Aurelia Eberhard, Michael Williams
The trip that almost called cave rescue. Jumping into the cave at 11.50 was not an easy job. After Julien and I both had amnesia and forgot the location of the entrance to OFD 2, we climbed up the wrong ridge and started off the trip tiring the freshers through contouring around two hills to get there. We left the SWCC at 11.20, and took 30 minutes to get to the entrance this way. Ah well. Once finally in, we had decided we were trying to get to the judge and trident, so slowly ambled along the main passage (whilst talking geology to the freshers about all the pretties there), and made our way towards gnome passage, meeting with Davey and Jan’s group a couple of turns later. Misreading the map is easy as we found out about 5 minutes later as we hit the Edward’s shortcut passage, and realised that the actual passage to judge and trident we wanted to enter was about 30 metres below the floor. After finally being redirected by Perry, who had caught up by now, and talking to Jan as he stood outside Edward’s shortcut’s shortcut, we found our way to the wedding cake and climbed down to the corkscrew. This part was easily done by every member, and although some confidence was lacking, all the freshers were very able to do these climbs and tight sections, with no complaining during the process. The walk down salubrious was nice, and the waterfall section didn’t even take long at all. All in all, we made it to judge and trident at 2.15 with a callout at 8pm.
From here, we decided we had a lot of time, and wanted to visit selenite chamber, as it sounded cool and who doesn’t like a bit of gypsum every now and again? This navigation was quite easy to find our way through, getting to the crossroads in no time. It was at this point that we couldn’t quite tell where the map was saying president’s leap was, and ended up deciding it was up the c2 passage (it was not). With a lot of guidance and a lot of balls, both the freshers very safely made it across with no worries in the world, and it didn’t even cross our minds at the time that it could’ve been president’s leap (although I did hear Julien let out a big sigh as he came round the corner to see it).
Finally, we made it to selenite chamber after this for about 3.15, and at this point made the (very poor) decision that we should try and do a different route back, past shattered pillar, and walking past northern canyon to start heading back to the entrance. It was here that we found the c3, which I hadn’t seen on the map, and realised the route we wanted to go wasn’t going to work. It was here that I chose to turn off towards what I thought was the connection to Edward’s shortcut, where we were going to skip it using the bypass to not do the sketchy traverse. In retrospect, this was a horrible decision – neither of us had done the bypass, knew where it was, or even knew exactly how to get up there, as we were just about to discover what I thought was a connection was just the bottom of the sketchy traverse at Edward’s shortcut that Julien had been shaking at on W3 two years prior. We hadn’t actually noticed this at the time, so thought continuing down the tight rifts was good until we hit a large chamber that I couldn’t find on the map until I took 5 minutes to scout and finally realised we were in Northern Canyon 40 metres below Gnome passage and that it did not connect to Edward’s Shortcut. It was here we considered continuing to what I thought was the connection of Northern Canyon to the entrance, but with a closer inspection, the c3 that I had seen was actually a c5 about 20 metres below the entrance tunnels, and didn’t even connect until the labyrinth. We decided to turn around and find a different way up, although not before taking some photos of Joshua in the drippy chamber (and seemingly taking a photo of a ghost??).
Finally, after retracing our steps and climbing down the ladder, we found the large 20m boulder climb up to Edward’s shortcut, where we were going to try and find the bypass. As it turns out, the map calls the climb in Edward’s shortcut Edward’s shortcut rather than the traverse – definitely the more sketchy of the two as you are bridging on a slippery slope 40 metres over Northern Canyon. It was 4.30 at this point, and worry started to set in about making it back on time for callout, so a decision had to be made about whether to attempt this or turn back and retrace our steps all the way to the entrance. It took 10 minutes, me crossing the traverse 3 times, and Julian attempting to crawl around it, before we finally made the decision to turn back. The way back ended up being a lot faster than we thought – I guess route-finding is a lot easier when you actually know where you are going and opening yourself up to be a personal ladder. No wrong turns were taken here and the trip back was actually quite pleasant. We finally made it back to the gnome chamber at 7.25, and after a lot of stress got out the entrance at 7.45. With a callout at 8 it was quite clear one of us had to run and the other stay with the freshers, so I offered up running down and potentially slipping, making it down in about 5 minutes, and being very warmly welcomed by Perry. Thank god we got back just in time.
Thurston
Sunday
After exhausting ourselves the previous day, Julien and I again had to wake up to make breakfast, although this time let ourselves have an extra 30 minutes in bed as we were making porridge. Mistakes had been made the previous night however, as I had left my phone across the room with an alarm set, so had to jump out of bed and across the room in my sleeping bag to turn it off… all witnessed by Jan. I may be a chef, but I would love if I could renounce that porridge as being made by me, as I tried to wing it without ever making porridge before, and ended up with burnt tar. Luckily we had some crumpets and breakfast food left from the previous day so everyone did end up eating properly before all the trips set off.
Thurston
OFD 2: Julien Jean, Thurston Blount, Aurelia Eberhard, Remi Soubes-Goldman
OFD2 with Davey, a certified classic once more. This time in the company of Jackie and Joshua, we decided to try and check out the upper-level passages. In this we were quite successful, swiftly finding the small columns and other pretties, and spoiling Perry’s fun when we spotted his group at the bottom of the Speedy Caver climb and informed them that was where they were. It turned out he’d offered the freshers the chance to navigate by the survey, with not too surprising consequences. We then had a little bumble around the bedding chambers, trying generally to stay away from the big holes in the floor, and getting unreasonably muddy in the process (at least in my case).
After making it down Speedy Caver we went exploring towards Arete Chamber and the disappointingly bagpipe-less Bagpipe Chamber. An attempt at finding an exciting way out failed due to time constraints, and we made it back to the hut in good time.
Cleaning went smoothly and in no time the bus was back on the road. The M4 was still closed so we ended up taking a funky route all the way north to Gloucester and then back towards south-east. Julien and Thurston again took the front seats, sometimes falling asleep one at a time, sometimes both, and sometimes maintaining an impressive level of wakefulness. No further adventures awaited and we reached the Union before 10pm. A great achievement, even despite the slightly mistimed Bella Ciao (we were thrown off by a youtube ad).
Jan
OFD 2: David Wilson, Jan Kożuszek, Jackie Li, Joshua Ho
After 40mm of rain the previous night, a decision was made to return to OFD 2, although this time for our group we were set on finding the Edward’s Shortcut’s Shortcut, and actually finding out whether we could have taken the freshers through it the day before. A little trek through the entrance chamber led us to Perry and Ellie’s group, who were already lost (Michael and Steven were navigating). I tried to lie to the best of my abilities and do believe it worked, as we did not find them until a few hours later (despite the fact they were aiming to take the same route as us).
Gnome passage was familiar, and the way to the bypass was an easy one, although once in we found that there was no way we could have helped the freshers through – I was struggling myself just due to being a bit too tall and banging my femurs and shins constantly on the floor. It wasn’t difficult just annoying. Navigation was easy thankfully, as checking the map in some areas would have been hell, so props to Davey for guiding us the night before. After exiting, we finally worked out that to even get to the bypass from shattered column you have to do the traverse – the same one as yesterday, and ended up doing the traverse another 3 times in this direction to help both Remi and Aurelia across. So far, this was my 6th time crossing the traverse this weekend. Frozen river is a short walk from here, and has some amazing pretties after a little slide, only taking us about 45 minutes from the entrance!
Here, we decided to turn around and head out towards the entrance and find the bedding chambers/mini columns, but decided to try the Edward’s shortcut climb instead of the double bypass, which is where Julien and I both struggled for 10 minutes to get up (Remi showed us both up), and decided that it would be best to head back through the bypass, reminiscing on the fact that getting past Edward’s shortcut the day before would have resulted in trying to get up the same climb when even more exhausted. The bypass was actually a lot more difficult on the way out compared to in, and I struggled a few times, mainly due to positioning and the size of my leg bones (each time Aurelia was catching up to me so clearly this was a skill issue), but in reality it only took about 15 minutes of struggling to get back to gnome passage. Again, navigation here was easy (and good that it is, as I would NOT have liked to struggle with my oversuit when in the tight rifts trying to look at the map and decide which turning to take).
Once all out of the bypass, the walk to the bedding chamber was quite easy, and we got to speedy caver in record pace, meeting Perry and Ellie’s group as they were on their way down (they were yet to find gnome passage). Half-way up, we decided to have a break and eat some cave cheese - because why not? We deserved it. Anyway again the climb up to bedding chamber wasn’t too difficult, and the bedding was, indeed, pretty. From here, we walked to the mini column chamber and took some nice photos of what we hoped were the mini columns (although looking at Davey’s photos this may not be the case?), then turned around and headed back to the entrance. A short climb down lead to the entrance passage, where we met Jan waiting for his group (why is this always the case??), and he informed us they were about to head out, following Perry’s group who had left 5 minutes prior.