Yorkshire Winter Tour
Ben Richards, Rhys Tyers, Matti Mitropoulos, Ellie Pizey, Chris Hayes, Julien Jean, Laura Temple, Jergus Strucka, Thurston Blount, Janak Subberwal, Aurelia Eberhard, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Ollie Oddie (Bangor), Oscar Chan
Friday
I don't remember much of the drive up after a month has passed so clearly nothing that exciting happened. A large quantity of alcohol was bought from the most terrible Tesco ever in Knowle, surrounded by bricks in an a fake shopping centre street thing. Matti (I think?) had a ridiculous conversation with one of the locals, as per usual.
Ben
Indeed the most interesting thing to have happened on the Friday was the weird Tescos we decided to stop by in. I for some reason was insistent that we stop near Solihull, which in my mind had a great Tesco or Lidl or something similar. Turns out, after we got briefly horrendously lost and ended up driving into a cul-de-sac twice, we stopped at the crappiest tiny Tescos we could've chosen. Thankfully it didn't really matter since most of the food was to be delivered.
Remi and I got quite excited by the Wendesleydale, especially the ones protected by wax (which Jergus would later choose to eat as well but that's just Jergus), and a store clerk made a comment along the lines of 'I've never seen anyone be so excited about cheese' - then launched into a bizarre soliloquy wherein he recounted a man aggresively buying and 'scranning' a whole block of cheddar; established that Solihull was the nicest area of Birmingham, stating that if we had bought as much alcohol as we did anywhere else in Birmingham we would've been robbed on the spot; and pointed at Ellie and said she looked way younger than everyone else, stating we'd all definitely get ID'd because of her. There were many things I could've said during that conversation (would someone really try to rob a group of 10 just for some bottles of rum? Why is it so problematic for our purchase that we get ID'd?) but I mostly nodded along and enjoyed the weird interaction. We didn't get ID'd at the till.
Matti
Saturday
Gaping Gill:
Flood Entrance Pot: Ellie Pizey, Laura Temple, Aurelia Eberhard, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Oscar Chan
This group went slow and didn't make it to the main chamber, but the adventure was the friends they made along the way or something, idk I wasn't there.
Ben R
Dihedral > Small Mammal Pot: Ben Richards, Chris Hayes, Jergus Strucka, Rhys Tyers, Matti Mitropoulos, Julien Jean, Thurston Blount
We found a little moth at the top of the pitch whilst hiding from the hoardes of people at the top looking down gaping gill. The pitch was cool but the moth was cooler. The walk was so long god I barely even remember it anymore, all I remember is Julien joking about Gaping Gill being up this far away cliff and passing it 40 minutes later, in disbelief that it was still further.
After the pitch we waited at the bottom of Small Mammal, waiting for the other group to descend. Just hit turn around time and were about to leave when Chris finally called out to us. Not too much to Small Mammal, the pitches in the middle are a little awkward and the squeeze itself was quite fun! Note to self, not enough water don't do small mammal again, must swing into gaping gill waterfall more.
After leaving Gaping Gill and taking the forever trek down the hill (almost rivalling the hike[?] to Kal from Planje), we finally made it back to Rhys' car early to cook dinner for everyone else. Making it back to the NPC, Rhys started up the tunes - a whole multi-day long playlist of every cover of last christmas ever produced. It surprisingly wasn't actually horrific and we didn't actually go mad. Anyway, the dinner ended up well, and making the workforce cut vegetables was easy. We did, however, have to wait for the other group at the NPC to cook, and they did take many hours, though this was actually quite useful, as my eagerness to cook was ruined by Chris' eagerness to derig Small Mammal despite coming out of Dihedral. The best part of the dinner, in my humble opinion, was definitely the whole tray of yorkshires divided out evenly between all guests, although the potatoes were a close second. Overall yum, maybe 7/10 in terms of Christmas dinners I've ever cooked (points deducted for forgetting pigs in blankets and crackers).
Thurston
Small Mammal Pot > Dihedral: Ben Richards, Chris Hayes, Jergus Strucka, Rhys Tyers, Matti Mitropoulos, Julien Jean, Thurston Blount
A big GG trip was in order, since it meant that the Chefs could get out early, and everyone would be happy since we could go our separate ways on our separate little adventures.
Before setting off the Christmas tree from Slov was finally unpacked and assembled. Shockingly, despite this tree having gone all the way to Slovenia and back, after I impulse purchased it thinking it would be a great idea to take it down to underground camp given it's christening of "Christmas Camp", however I didn't stop to think that conservationally this was a hourendous idea and would fill Mig with plastic needles for eternity, and so after having this explained to me by various other members of the group accepted that it should be left in its box and brought back to the UK. Until today! It makes a perfect addition to the NPC dining room, sitting neatly in the corener of the benches, and covered in Christmas lights. What a well travelled tree.
Finally the others were ready, and I stopped setting up the tree and went caving. I was in a group with Chris and Jergus and we were, finally, off to Small Mammal. I'd wanted to go here ever since Fiona whispered to me that there was a secret entrance next to Bar Pot that's way better. My immagination racing as I pictured tiny mammals squeezing down tiny holes right next to the already quite squeezy bar entrance. Perfection. I had to go. Chris and Jergus were up for my later crazy plans of carrying 7 flashes, yes you read that right, 7 S-E-V-E-N flashes, after I stole all 3 of Rhys's original peli case style ones, my 3 copy cat peli case flashes and my brand new giga flash all together into the main chamber. It was going to be magnificent. It did however mean that I had to carry 9 peli cases in Ged, which was quite insane given the long walk up and large prussik up Dihedral. Alas, there is little I won't do for a good photo.
After making it to the Clapham car park, we duct taped the back of Chris's car back on (it had fallen off the day before or something something) and then faffed around for a while as we waited for the minibus to join us, pissing in nearby bushes and the likes, passing time by passing fluids. Eventually the bus arrived, parked on the complete opposite side of the car park, and then rocked back and forth quite violently as everyone got changed without leaving the bus, for some reason. Bizarre. Rhys and co went in their own car so had presumably headed off long before.
We stomped on up the mountain, enjoying the traditional gloomy yet impressive view out over Yorkshire, and finally made it to the top where we saw a distinctly Rhys shaped yellow blob on the horizon. He started aggressively pointing his little Canon 100D at us, and I knew it could only be him. He then took an interesting photo of the three of us pissing into the fog, before running away to the top of Dihedral.
Team faff then got to work trying to find Small Mammal. I had thought it was the hole in the wall right next to the Bar entrance, as I had seen a small cave thing there before and it would have matched the description Fiona gave me. This was not to be. Fortunately these days I have started bringing my phone caving with me in a waterproof sleeve thing and so I could just google where it was, and it turned out to be that hole in the pavement with a small grating over it.
Chris was already down said hole by this point, so fortunately this news only meant that he could stay down there and start rigging. I quite like the entrance pitch to Small Mammal. It immediately becomes a decently sized chamber, right below the surface of the pavement, and then drops down into the first puzzle of the day. There was a scaff climb off to the left, which contained Jergus by the time I arrived, or a muddy crawl off to the right. Jergus made negative sounds from his direction, and Chris had apparently thought likewise, so I poked my head down the right crawlf and it looked like the way on, so the others followed. I photographed some nice moon milk on the walls while the others went ahead, only for them to return saying that it really didn't seem like the way. The topo conveniently just shows a nice sloping tube down from the bottom of the entrance pitch down to the Bar Pot connection, and the obvious downwards passage was apparently a dead end. None of the chambers we were standing in were on the topo, and a side passage off to the right at this point seemed to have an even weirder shaped continuation, with a crawling height slot on the far wall between two bedding planes and above a deep rift being the only remaining lead. Surely it wasn't this?
I went back to take a look at the scaff dig, not convinced that the others had done it justice, and Chris inserted himself into the bottomless rift, as Chris so often does. I quite enjoyed zipping through the crawls in the scaff climb, but I was clearly going upstream and it became very veritcal to the point that the only way on was a rope leading up into the ceiling above me. There was zero chance this was the way down, I returned to Chris.
By this point Chris was quite far gone. I could see his light in the distance down the rift, and Jergus was bravely investigating the bedding plane crawl above the endless hole the Chris had found himself in. Jergus declared that "it goes" and Chris was get increasingly concerned about a large pitch he had found himself seemingly at the top at, so I performed a Chris rescue by inserting myself halfway down the rift and threw him a sling so he could hoik himself back out again. The two of us then continued into the bedding plane crawl until... thunk... thunk... Ged didn't fit. All 9 peli cases had filled poor Ged to such a point that he had considerably more gurth than I did, and in a moment of terror I wondered whether I had royally cocked up by being so ambitious with my flash setup. Fortunately, a small slot on the right which I could scoot Ged into and then back out the other side of had just enough centimetres to get Ged past the constriction, and onwards to glory. Soon I dropped into a small chamber, found a glove on a rock with an echoey Jergus voice emanating from it, or perhaps from the hole in the wall behind it, and so I picked it up and followed the voices.
We then popped out right by the crawl at the top of the greasy slab. This meant Chris must have somehow popped into the main Bar Pot chamber I guess? Unclear where he went, but we were now back in terra cognita. And immediately proceeded to get lost. I had managed to go down and to the right - the rocks looking incredibly polished. The others managed to go down and to the left, finding the other pitch that you can do from Bar Pot, but not the one they were aiming for. Oops. Never mind, we could now hear the others below and were shortly down to meet them. Or at least we would have been had there not been a series of miscommunications and for Rhys to start coming up before I had gone down, to exchange navigation directions? The faff continued. Eventually I managed to explain the actually-quite-simple-now-I-know-the-way directions through Small Mammal, and we waved them goodbye as we headed on towards Dihedral. Given they were the cooks we left Small Mammal rigged just incase we or the Flood team wanted an escape route, and would circle back later on to derig it.
Heading past Flood aven we heard voices up above and so headed onto the main chamber, where I setup a spectacular series of flashes all ready to go for when the other group would appear and stand exactly on the designated spot across the chamber. The giga flash was incredible, lighting up the entire back of the chamber all by itself - I was hooked, and decided at that point that yes, I should indeed order two more and try my best to make them my default setup. In the meantime, while waiting, I got Chris to climb up and down a tiny rope which I think is in place for the winch meets, where they must position a giant light for when then run power into the main chamber. Either way Chris was increibly helpful in positioning a very finicky flash in exactly the right position up there. And again, and again, and again.
Finally, after setting up all these lovely flashes, Jergus asked if he could get a cheeky photo of him on the Dihedral rope as it disappeared up into the ceiling. This was a great idea and so I of course obliged, given he said he only wanted to go halfway up to the bolt and then back again. Naturally, after seeing how good the photo was I insisted that he carried on climbing all the way into the roof and then came back down again. It did look amazing. Sorry Jergus. After seeing the cool photos Chris of course wanted to do the same, and so he shot up and did all sorts of crazy acrobatics without his chest jammer popping open, which was nice, after which we all gave up waiting and I instructed Chris and Jergus to wander around the passage so that I could stitch them together to look like a large group of cavers since at this point they were all I had. They also started lifting each other up and doing handstands and all sorts of other antics. Very amusing indeed, during which I was whistling and shouting over the deafening roar of the waterfall, as is traditioning in the main chamber.
We cleared up and had some spare time, so headed for Sand Cavern, where I remember there being a cool chamber that I had only zoomed through after coming in Stream. This turned out to be a great idea - the chamber was as lovely as I remembered it, and as we got to the end we started thinking if there was anything more creative that we could do given Chris had brought his Lidl Christmas jumper and his fairy lights. Chris then suggested that he could toboggan down the giant mud slope, and piece by piece we came up with the now iconic Christmas Card photo of Chris sledging down the fairy-light outlined path. Much fun.
After this we headed back to the main chamber, Chris zoomed up Dihedral first so that he could derig Small Mammal, I came second with Ged the Gurthy, Jergus nobly volunteered to derig, and we all headed for the surface. Dihedral is incredibly, easily one of my favourite pitches. At the top I wandered around to find that it was thick fog and I couldn't see a thing. Fortunately I had my Garmin watch and so when Jergus popped out we could both retrace the breadcrumbs from the GPS and save ourselves the headache of walking off in the wrong direction, given neither of us were particularly sure where to go. Poor Jergus had carried up a vast amount of rope, and so was very relieved to be done with the ordeal of the derig. Chris had just popped his head out of the hole when we wandered over, and toegther we headed back down the hill, with Christmas Dinner on the mind.
Christmas dinner was fantastic, courtesy of Chef Thurston and the gang. Complete with a veggie wellington, a large ham and all the various trimmings, it very much hit the spot while listening to some man scream "last christmas". Some buffing occurred but overall a relatively tame night from what I remember. Perhaps the evening was so wild that I suffered from a bout of rapid onset amnesia.
Ben
Sunday
Long Kin West: Julien Jean, Laura Temple, Thurston Blount, Aurelia Eberhard, Remi Soubes-Goldman
Yeah this wasn't great. Probably worst trip I have ever been on in terms of caving. FIRST off, we didn't even find the right cave in the fog the first time. SECOND off, the actual cave ended up NOT HAVING ANY BOLTS????? THE HELL?? get that out of here. THIRD off, Julien and Aurelia almost froze to death. FOURTH off, Laura almost died to rope rub whilst I was trying to sleep in the reeds (hell yes), so Remi and I had to employ the super mega tri-hang deviation rigged using two slings.
Thurston
Trapdoor: Ben Richards, Matti Mitropoulos, Ellie Pizey, Chris Hayes, Jergus Strucka
Woke up to some surprisingly good porridge. Much faff in the morning, with plans floated for trapdoor, wizard's chasm and various other quirky unusual choices. An Inglesport trip was in store for Fiona, DKP and Rhys, which although tempting I decided to pass up on under the promise of magnificent photos. At first I was down for trapdoor, having not done it before, until hearing that it was in fact a terrible cave. At this point I changed to Wizard's chasm, but felt bad given that Fiona had been trying to go there for months. I was finally convinced that Trapdoor is in fact a good idea after seeing that the final pitch, megatron, is huge and actually quite cool. As a wise Jergus once told me, yesterday in fact, "don't think, just commit". And so I did.
We zoomed over to the parking spot, only 5 mins down the road from the NPC, and found the others there cowering in the minibus as they changed before heading up to Long Kin West. We got out the car and Chris complained that he didn't want to go caving. We all emphasised that he didn't have to join us but he insisted that he would, as well as insisting that he would complain the entire time. Slowly, we started getting changed only for Ellie to let out an "oh", followed by "I might have forgotten my wellies". Sigh. The faff had began. Ellie went for a rummage in the minibus and shockingly managed to find one of her two wellies, despite having not thought she put either on the bus. She would have to return to the NPC to fetch the other.
Chris was ecstatic at the prospect of returning to the NPC and so gladly lept in the car and zoomed away with Ellie on the long 5 min journey back to the hut. Jergus wandered over with some bread, and Matti and I ate much chocolate and bread. So much in fact that we had only just finished eating when Chris and Ellie returned, at which point I was completely changed and Matti hadn't moved an inch since the car left.
Ellie returned with her other wellie, and Laura's single wellie (apparently Laura only owns one????) which she had mistaken for hers the night before, having taken both from the bus the night before and left her other one there. We carried on getting changed, at which point Ellie let out another "oh", followed by "I might have left my light back at the hut". Unbelievable. This trip was doomed.
Fortunately Ellie had a functioning backup and used this instead for the trip. Jergus became very offended that Matti was wearing size 11 wellies, for reasons unknown. Matti then overheard Laura complaining that her wellies were large and flopped over to Laura in his wetsocks before asking the ridiculous question of whether her large wellies might fit him. Hilarious.
At this point Jergus asked me to rearrange his bum hole, which obligingly Matti and I agreed to. Jergus did in fact have a very large PVC rip over his bum, and amusingly shortly afterwards Ellie reached down to pick something out of her bag only to hear a loud ripping noise and finding that she too had grown a large bum hole.
After all this chaos we finally set off for the hills, stomping up the side of the moor and ascending into the mist as the winds picked up and the views receded into the clouds. I used my shiny garmin watch to find the cave entrance, dodging hours of wandering the thousand shake holes on the mountain and Chris got to work rigging the entrance pitch.
The cave was indeed rigged on p bolts, not spits, so rigging was fine. The entrance pitch was a taste of things to come, a tight squeeze with awkward pitch head which Chris immediately slid down as the sling he rigged with rotated around the slippery rock rotated by a hundred and eighty degrees. After this was was a 5m-ish hang, with a dodgy crawl immediately afterwards. Next was a crawl through to a 2m drop, which was best approached stomach down, feet first, since there was only one tiny hand hold on the far side, which Jergus conveniently rammed my foot into as I slid out of the crawl.
Next up was foam pitch, named due to the entirety of the roof being held up with expanding foam... Chris looked every possible way in the small chamber but had a sinking feeling that the way on was under the foam. Asking Matti what he thought the structural integrity of foam was, Matti replied "hmmmmm". The small pitch below definitely benefited from a handline - do take a 7m ish rope for this next time, we had to re-purpose a different one.
After this is the first of the squeezes - the Ripper. Chris slid through, followed by linear Matti who also breezed past, but Jergus found this significantly more entertaining. While Jergus was in the middle of the squeeze, Chris shouted up from the next pitch that he didn't have enough rope. At this point Matti, Ellie and I were discussing whether to de-rig the rope we'd rigged on the previous free climb, at which point Jergus loudly announced:
"My penis is stuck"
- Jergus
Fortunately, this was resolved without Jergus needing any, err, external help. After this Ellie and I wriggled through and I continued down the next big pitch. At this point we found the others waiting at the top of the choke, considering whether to turn around. Chris has dislodged a large rock by merely making eye contact with it, but we decided it was worth pushing on a little further. Chris headed down the choke, shouted it was actually fine and started rigging the next pitch, with Matti following him down. At this point Jergus popped another classic Jergus quote, and with no context at all asked me:
"Ben, what is your favourite item on the menu?"
- Jergus
to which it turned out that he had had the first 90% of the conversation in his head with the 10 voices that democratically decide his every move. After the voices won a 6-4 vote in favour of going to the pub, Jergus was no longer in favour of continuing in the cave and wanted to leave immediately. He attempted to set multiple traps for Matti and Chris in order to trick them into saying they wanted to go to the pub, and then conveniently Chris came across a truly horrible pitch-head with water flowing into him or something, so wanted to turn around anyway.
I headed back up, hearing a horrifying conversation behind me that went something along the lines of:
Matti: you are too British
Jergus: Matti you are too German
Chris: Matti you are too Jergus
It was unclear what any of this meant. Anyway, I carried on up, squeezed through the squeeze, crammed my Ged full of unused flashes back out the crawl and then popped out the top of the entrance into the dying light of 4pm ish. Ellie followed, we had some chocolate bars and then Matti cracked out the cheese. Yet another classic Jergus quote followed:
Jergus: why is the texture of this cheese so odd?
Everyone else: Jergus, did you eat the wax?
Jergus: Err...
After Jergus had finished the wax, Ellie pointed the way back down the mountain, which turned to be off by about a hundred and eighty degrees, and thanks to some garmin magic we made it all the way back to the car for a very reasonable time. The quotes didn't end there with a great one in the car on the way back:
Can foreigners have bread and butter pudding?
- Ellie
An evening of table traverses, pasta bakes, apple crumbles, mulled wines, cutting of Jergus' hair and other assorted chaos followed.
Ben
Monday
Simpson's to Valley Entrance: Ellie Pizey, Chris Hayes, Julien Jean, Aurelia Eberhard, Oscar Chan
Trapdoor 2: Laura Temple, Thurston Blount, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Ollie Oddie (Bangor)
I think I'd like to blame my balls for stopping me from completing this hole.
Thurston
Boggarts Roaring Holes: Matti Mitropoulos, Jergus Strucka, Janak Subberwal
TLDR: Excellent cave, club should come back. Good day out, not too challening. Size marginally larger than me is still fine. Does not respond to water too much.
Upon empirically discovering that Trapdoor pot was in fact a shit cave only held together by expanding foam, rotten planks, and deeply upsetting lack of anything good, I lost all faith in Dowlass Moss as a viable caving region. In a desperate attempt to remedy this, Papa Speleo and I browsed the black book and discovered Boggarts Roaring Holes - another option on Dowlass Moss approximately 5 minute walk from Trapdoor. It was clear that this cave had to be incredibly good, because only an excellent cave could justify why Yorkshire has not publicly funded a large amount of explosives to remove Trapdoor's existence.
On Monday Papa Speleo, Janak, and I decided to embark on a journey of discovery. We reached Dowlass Moss by 11:30, efficiently changed into caving kit, and walked up the fell. At this point I should introduce what I believe is the basic British farmer geography: dales, fells, and mosses. Dales are generally valleys in between limestone hills with (usually) streams going through them. Fells are barren moor-filled landscapes on top of hills. Mosses are something else.
It takes approximately 25 minutes to walk up to Boggart Roaring Holes, there are no notable features, and taking a GPS-enabled device will prove invaluable. The shakehole is very obvious once you see it, but it would likely take a while to find. Even with a phone, Janak, Papa, and I sampled all the local peat bogs along a fine circularly convergent path. At one point, I decided to take a shortcut across an incredibly flat part of the fell only to swiftly sink into a bog. It was at this point that I thought I was going to finish my life's journey swallowed by liquefied moss. Fortunately, Janak proved his rescue skills by getting me out of the bog and I have acquired a new fear.
Boggart Roaring Holes is an excellent cave. It's nice and stable, it has fun rigging, squeezing, and crawling, it's full of dead sheep. It is what Trapdoor would like to be. It begins by dropping into a spacious rifty entrance followed by a sequence of short pitches where one posts themselves out of a crawl directly into the pitch. Then crawls towards the next pitch and repeats. Janak seemed deeply suspicious of this pattern, and did not appear to appreciate the combination of tightness and SRT, but despite his best efforts to claim that he did not want to move much further he kept pushing through pitch after pitch with endless motivation. At points, the cave has clearly finished, but its original explorers have not. As such, they produced more cave with liberal quantities of help from Mr Nobel until they intersected more natural cave.
Throughout the trip Papa Speleo kept baiting Janak with a mirage of spacious chambers, dry bits of the cave, or claims that the next option to comfortably turn back is just around the corner. Janak was very hungry for this bait and kept miraculously believing it. I was also trying to advertise the cave as very very pleasant, but the success of this technique came to an end when I rammed myself into a squeeze for about 15 minutes without much success. As I could not make this option seem very attractive, we turned back.
This is an excellent cave that I will certainly come back to quite soon. Its proximity to NPC means that it is possible to be dropped off by the minibus and to walk back to NPC afterwards. Dowlass Moss is a spectacular caving venue with one notable exception.
All I remember of the way back was that I was cold waiting outside on the Moss while Papa Speleo was taking his sweet time to derig, the compass on the cave phone is shit, and the bogs were even more intimidating on the way back in the fog.
Jergus
After the mildly unsatisfying Trapdoor Pot trip yesterday, Jergus was keen to experience an actually nice cave on Dowlass Moss, hence picked out Boggart’s Roaring Hole, often joked about since it’s technically within walking distance of the NPC.
Similar to Trapdoor Pot, Boggart’s Roaring sits on a featureless moor where GPSless navigation would have you wandering aimlessly into a bog – Even with navigation Jergus and I managed to submerge ourselves partially into a marsh, him even needing external rescuing from Janak.
We faffed a bit at the entrance, but once Jergus got started rigging the going was pretty steady, consisting of a tight pitch head followed by a relatively pleasant pitch, leading into a tight crawly bit, then rinse and repeat 4 or 5 times. A few times Janak expressed that he wasn’t super keen on the wet tight bits but reluctantly was pushed into keeping going by Jergus and myself, until we reached the squeeze just above the second-to-last pitch. Here Jergus began to make his way through, exclaimed that he could push himself through if he wanted to, but wanted me to go first to prove that it was possible; or something like that. I wasn’t really following his train of thought, but then remembered that it was Jergus so most of the time he doesn’t follow his own train of thought. He reversed back out and let me wriggle through first. It was admittedly a far tighter squeeze than all the previous ones, and upon exiting you did have to free climb over the top of the pitch head onto the ledge on the other end, which was a little sketchy; I did keep my SRT kit on so I think it would have been possible to rig it from within the squeeze and clip in before clambering over the top, but the logistical faff of organising the rope and kit would’ve meant I’d need to reverse back out and do it again, and the footholds on the climb down are quite good, so I felt pretty confident going through. Anyway, Janak made it pretty clear he didn’t want to do the squeeze so we turned around.
I was derigging and was enjoying the peaceful slow-going climb out, so didn’t spare much thought for poor Jergus freezing his arse off on the surface, who loudly proclaimed his annoyance at my taking my sweet time after I made it up. In fairness they did leave me with two tackle sacks for the last bit which was tricky to get through the squeeze. A swift walk down and a change and we enjoyed a quieter evening at the hut.
In summary – if you want a challenging trip on Dowlass Moss, go for Boggart’s Roaring and not Trapdoor, it’s way better. OK, Rhys just said this is slander, so maybe do give Trapdoor a chance, but go to Boggart’s Roaring first.
Matti
Tuesday
Big Easy <-> Deaths Head: Matti Mitropoulos, Chris Hayes
‘Rest day’. What is cheese? I know not what it is, nor its method of production. Alas, I indulge in the finest selection.
Christopher returns from his excursion, with an eagerness unparalleled. An enthusiasm begins to stir within me, as a golden opportunity presents itself - The maws of a familiar depth beckon, complimented by the blissful peace of solo caving. We prepare.
The moors are our foes, as the caves are our friends. Darkness blankets the fell, as we rampage over stubbled grass, blinded from reason by excitement. Not too soon, however, the Head of Death was located, Christopher plunging inside. I return to the maw, and thread myself through.
Rocks, and drips; mud, and… a slightly different texture of mud. No sooner had I passed the most intense constriction, was my ear blessed with the familiar call. Peculiar, I thought – Christopher had rigged the chasm’s traverse before my own simple descent was complete, despite my non-tardiness. No matter; we shared a brief moment of intimacy as he brushes past me in the constricted passage, and in an instant he was gone.
My own stupidity suffices to slow my ascent’s progress. A simple lack of podiatric protection, and the weight of rope becomes too much to bear. Alas, if speed were the sole purpose of life, we would achieve our goals far too quickly – we must relish the challenge. Hence, Christopher was kept patiently waiting, while I relished the challenge.
Nevertheless, the infamous exchange was completed, and in less than 100 minutes.
Matti
Rescue Training with Tony Seddon
On Tuesday, six of us took a break from caving to join Tony of the Starless River for a session to learn SRT rescue techniques. In the first half of the day, we mainly worked on short ropes near the ground and learned how to rig different pulley configurations useful for hauling items or people up pitches. We then did an exercise in which we hauled an “unconscious” person up a pitch by first getting above them by clambering over their body while on the rope, and then prusiking up with them with the assistance of a pulley.
We then took a lunch break where we had sandwiches we made in the morning. Thurston ended up eating most of the tray of cheddar and butter sandwiches.
After lunch, we prepared ourselves for the final few rope exercises. Despite Tony telling us to pair up with a person of similar weight and size, I ended up pairing up with Thurston. I was getting cold in the barn before the exercise, so I put a Santa hat on beneath my helmet. This turned out to be a mistake, and I ended up getting very sweaty in my thermals and Santa hat while laboriously prusiking Thurston up the pitch.
I struggled the most at the top of the pitch trying to get Thurston onto the traverse line. I had to find a way to suspend myself off the floor at the same time as pulling and pushing him upwards. All this work would result in Thurston only going up at most an inch for every one of my maneuvers. I finally tried a different technique in which I suspended myself just below Thurston and pushed him up with my legs, and to my surprise he went up a good few inches. Tony praised this from the bottom of the pitch, since it showed that if your technique is good, you can manage to haul someone heavier than you in a rescue situation.
Thurston then had his go at getting me up to pitch. However, this time around, the weight difference was in his favor, and I flew up the pitch at a surprising speed. It all seemed so easy compared to the Herculean effort I had just put into hauling him up, and my legs were barely even numb by the time I was on the traverse line.
The final exercise involved lowering an “unconscious” person down a pitch, and when I did it with Thurston, I lowered him what I thought was all the way down. However, it turned out that he was still a floating centimeter in the air, just high enough that his harness was still causing his legs to feel very numb. I finally descended him the final centimeter and the shouts of discomfort stopped. Matti then kindly drove us back to the hut.
Julien
Wednesday
Knock Fell Cavern: Matti Mitropoulos, Ellie Pizey, Julien Jean, Jergus Strucka, Thurston Blount, Aurelia Eberhard
TL:DR; COME BACK!!! It's an amazing place, not too far of a walk, and great for map reading skills. Sad that it's an hour drive. Also remember the poles you park at.
Setting off on a perillous 1 hour journey to the Northern Pennines, we decided Knock Fell was the cave today, guided by Jergus' thoughts. Reaching Knock village, everthing looked quaint until we reached the first absolutely no access sign. Guided by menacing poles up the road, Matti kept driving. Eventually we reached another sign. Matti kept driving. Finally, reaching the third, we decided to park the minibus, and at the right place too as this layby was the closest to Knock Fell Cavern itself, and we could easily beeline straight to it. If only we had actually downloaded the right map... yeah my bad.
Grabbing the coordinates from the CNCC, we finally beelined it straight up hill (forgetting to memorise the pole number - note for later), and made it to the cave, making sure to memorise the compass direction just in case. Jergus rigged the only necessary rope in the cave - a 7 metre aid climb, which is why we had ditched our harnesses at the bus in favour of comfort and not being as heavy as a sleeping bag in Notts 1.
Jergus started with the routefinding, making his way to the trans-pennine passage before giving up and giving me the map, though I cannot actually remember what his reasons were, I think he may have just not been bothered enough. Well, I guess that means we're going through this in the most efficient way possible (whilst taking as many secret detours as possible sorry not sorry).
After the trans-pennine passage, we headed North towards all the pretties, and pretties there were! Chambers of stals hanging from the ceiling and small pools of crystals were presented in front of us. Aurelia did also almost get crushed by a metre-diameter rock, but we will be ignoring this in favour of safety. The walls were a little loose but this shall also be ignored. Carrying on through the many twists and turns after the 10th left was almost missed, we finally made it to the very northern part of the cave, trusting the 1980s map over the Northern Caves map, and stopped for a quick cake break. YUM.
Eventually we mustered up the courage to make our way back, and decided to follow the amazing paths of the oldest map possible, which turned out to no longer be included in the Northern Caves map (maybe for good reason but the route wasn't even that bad).
Matti suddenly fell ill. Who knows why, possibly the midnight trip to Big Easy, but I guess we will never know. Shame he was our only driver, as otherwise we would have left him for the sake of time. I think at this point it was the maziest of caves I'd ever mazed and it was amazing (pun not included).
According to the map, this path back was FILLED with avens, and with Jergus raving about the avens from the back of the group, morale (except those near Matti) was high. We never encountered an aven, except possibly earlier where you could slightly peer into one through a gap in the wall. So many passages were named here yet so many were disappointing, such as helm chamber. I mean I loved the cave, don't get me wrong, just where are the avens? Anyways, following on from here we eventually made it back to the trans-pennine passage, after one of the coolest tubes I've ever encountered, where its 3 metres of superman crawling, eventually having to full-commit hand stand at the end to get out of the tube.
Here, we wondered on back, hoping Matti was in well-enough condition to drive. After exiting, it was very clear the fog had thickened, and leaving the shake-hole, this was ever clearer, not being able to see more than a few metres ahead and behind, only being able to see head torches. Making it down the hill, we hit the road at pole 185, and decided it would be best to go up the hill towards 184, as I had purposefully tried to aim left of the bus due to fog. After 10 minutes of walking and hitting poles 90-100, we decided this was wrong and ran back down the hill to discover that the bus was in fact at pole 181, within 10 metres of the initial pole we hit unfortunately.
After changing and getting into the warm bus, we embarked on our journey home, all feeling the weight of sleep, perhaps even a little too much in some cases.
Thurston
When I went with Ben R last year, we found many cool avens but did not finish the route. Guided by Thurston, we successfully finished the route and evaded all of the nice avens.
Jergus
Thursday
Bull Pot: Julien Jean, Thurston Blount
Yeah never do fifth pitch, we almost missed callout. Though we did get attacked by bats on the way up, perhaps this is karma?
Sincerely,
Thurston
Super Speedy Simpson's Pullthrough: Matti Mitropoulos, Chris Hayes
I awoke on Thursday after a solid 10 hours of being conked out, feeling notably better than the previous night. I cautiously signed up for a chill trip, opting for a trip that couldn’t really go very wrong. While packing ropes and kit I had a wave of dizziness which made me question whether this was a good idea, but committed anyway, and just gave Chris a warning.
After a chill walk up Chris wanted to do a cheeky Jingling Cave to Rowten Cave through trip, tried to convince me to come as well, but I was more tempted by the prospect of sitting by Simpsons entrance in the rare Winter Sun and wait for him to get back.
45 minutes of ruminating and we were ready to go, optimising each pitch ruthlessly thus: Chris fed the end of the rope through the two bolts, secured the loose end to his central mallion and rigged his descender onto the end that fed into the bag. Then he descended down, C-rigging, using the 2-1 ratio straight through the bolt. At the bottom he disconnects both ends and calls rope free – I then rig a phat krab onto the long end of the rope to act as the stop, and descend down the other end, which ends perfectly at the floor. Then we can pull the rope down, release the hitch quickly and pack the rope into the bag. This means we only ever pull as much rope out of the bag as is necessary.
Using these advanced techniques, and the fact that Chris had done the same route earlier this week so route finding was super optimised, we made it to the bottom of the valley entrance rope in no time. We had relied on it being hard rigged, and would have resorted to one of us (probably Chris since he’s done it before) climbing the bolt traverse and hard rigging for the other if it hadn’t had been. But it was all fine, and we were crawling out of the entrance hole just over 1.5 hours after entering the top, remarkably still in daylight. A great uncomplicated trip that cured my sickness.
Matti
Friday
A strict NOCAVE day for me (not least because I needed to do some work in the morning). In what has now become tradition, we bin off caving for the day, and instead take our sweet time getting the hut ready, and drive back at a leisurely pace. A solo drive from Yorkshire usually isn’t too problematic when it’s partially in daylight, but I did get strangely irritable somewhere between Birmingham and London. I think it was the lack of sleep. We made it back fine though, and began a ridiculous exchange with the Security at Beit Quad. Although these were quite friendly, they still refused to open stores for us and tried to convince us that the safest thing to do was leave the stuff in the minibus until term started (haha no). Jergus and I waltzed over to the main Security in the Sherfield building, Jergus flexed his Employee card, and they gave us temporary access to the West Basement, no questions asked. So smooth, so simple; why can’t all interactions with Security be so straightforward? Anyway, crisis averted, and we did all the unpacking right there; which I wasn’t too keen on, still being inexplicably subliminally annoyed at the world from the drive, but nevertheless participated in.