Yorkshire III
Ben Richards, Chris Hayes, Jan Kożuszek, Julien Jean, Laura Temple, Davin Sheikholeslami, Thurston Blount, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Leonie Siepmann, Hannes Reichle, Josie Skirrow
Friday
We set off from the union at 6pm, even though everyone had been packed and ready by 5pm. Unfortunately, I was informed only after I had already begun my epic cycle across London, which meant everyone had to wait for me to reach Union at 6pm. Oops.
Immediately after setting off, Thurston "just followed what Google Maps told him," and we promptly went down the tiniest street in London, hitting something substantial on the left side of the vehicle. This was followed by a symphony of honking from other cars, incredibly steep streets, and many other near misses that I can’t quite remember.
Fortunately, I was sitting in the very back with Leonie, blissfully unaware of all the chaos up front—until the loud crunching noise and Jan threatening to kill Thurston, or something to that effect.
Eventually, after many heated exchanges, we made it back to the normal route and continued on our way. We thundered on towards The North while I had a lovely chat with Leonie about all things boats, chemicals, knees, and Germany. (She has many incredible stories to tell, including one involving her granddad throwing her books into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. You should ask her for the rest.) Before stopping for dinner and shopping at a ridiculously late hour in Crewe, we picked up Josie, who joined us from SUSS after hearing our Slov talk and wanting to join us next summer. We were, of course, very excited to hear this. While I was sad that my boats-and-knees conversation with Leonie was cut short, I had a lovely chat with Josie and learned all about SUSS, Remi's former life before becoming an Imperialite, and a whole host of exciting facts about the caving kit store in her basement, various horror stories from Derbyshire caving, and other tales of cats in Morocco and hamsters on trains. Cavers really are the most interesting people around.
We eventually made it to the NPC to find Andy, Goaty, and another caver friend of theirs there. We chatted for a while before all heading to bed for a grand day of caving in the morning.
Ben
Driving the bus out of London. What could go wrong? Well for one thing the navigator might forget to check whether google maps is suggesting a reasonable route or something mad. This, hypothetically, could then lead to a situation where you’re trying to squeeze the bus between two lines of parked cars and a herd of lime bikes down a narrow street, faced with oncoming traffic. If, in this imagined situation, you heard a loud thud somewhere behind, you might understandably be worried that the back of the bus clipped something. You might also (again just in theory) get a little heated, especially when the final stretch of the weird detour ends up being the steepest little street you’ve ever seen in London. And at the later stop for the shop, imagine the relief of confirming there are no scratches on the bus (apart from all the old ones), so the earlier (hypothetical) thud must’ve just been due to some kit moving in the Big Kit Pile on the space formerly occupied by two seats, currently stashed away in stores.
Anyway, it’s fun to imagine things, isn’t it?
We drove for quite a while before stopping for the shop and it was quite fun to watch everyone immediately sprint for the Tesco loo. I had actually been holding in a need to piss for the previous hour or two, since stopping for just a toilet break would have been unacceptably inefficient.
When eating in the covered parking lot in front, I noticed a figure burdened with a backpack and a sleeping bag eyeing the minibus intently. This turned out to be Josie, joining us for the weekend from Sheffield, and being the whole reason we stopped for the shop so late to begin with. Though I actually think it worked pretty well in the end.
Remi took over for the final bit of the drive and not much else happened before we got to the NPC at around 00:40.
Jan
Saturday
County Pot: Chris Hayes, Laura Temple, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Josie Skirrow
A team went in county pot, made it to the minarets in record time, Chris found a delicious looking chocolate bar and brought it back to the bus just to find someone had crapped in it, and other than that a good time seemed to have been had by all, including large amounts of cave napping?
Mr Ben
I'm very happy! I achieved 2 goals I have had for a while now. I now know the route through the Manchester bypass, and have confirmed that I can free-climb all of County Pot with a rope!
The four of us wandered over the fell to County and began our descent. The first pitch was quickly reached, and then my memory failed me. Improvising our way through a waterfall following the short downclimb, we returned to rifty passage, where I spotted the right hand turn on to a raised bed just before spout hall. Crawling along then turning right and climbing up, we entered Battle of Britain chamber. There we proceeded onwards through the bottom far corner and followed some up and down climbing boulder rift before hitting a ladder. Above the ladder was a short crawl to a chamber called something like "stinky", "smelly" or something grim. An uplcimb with a muddy handline was the way into the bypass itself. I had a bit of a bad time here being the longest member of the team, and having a bag!
after an arduous and technical crawl, we made it to a larger passage that brought us to the main line terminus. Here we turned left and began marching our way to the Minarets where we hoped to meet the Cow Pot team. They unfortunately failed to meet us, (for reasons which become obvious in Ben and Thurston's gripping reports) but we broke out the emergency Christmas and huddled in the bothy for a glorious hour of napping!
Unfortunately the time came when we eventually had to leave. we made good progress back, but be warned; the Manchester bypass is a little tricker to follow in the inverse direction. After the large chamber you cross from the LHS, to the semi-rockbridge ascending the RHS you come to the flat low-roofed 3-way junction. Left dies in a grotto, ahead goes to the large square boulder traverse with he stumpy gnomes, and right, takes you to the Manchester bypass. Following the RH branch is up-and-down-ey, tall, rectangular passage with reasonable pretties, until an opening is reached. Here a low crawl on the tope right enters the bypass (missing this turning takes you around a large hole in the floor with sloping sides like that pit from Star Wars, then a spacious sand bottomed crawl that is a long-dead dig). The 1st part of the Machnester bypass crawl is short and easy, ending with an upwards twist into a mid-sized chamber. at the back is another dig, instead you proceed immediately back into the floor, for 50m technical crawling into the stinky chamber. there is only one way out here through the lower far left side, where you bear right to the ladder head. Mounting the ladder carefully, you climb down, turn right, and follow the polish to battle of Britain chamber. In BoB, climb up to the mid-level, and enter the low downclimb in the RH corner finding some almost paved stones that are neatly aligned. Here, you have re-joined the classic county streamway, and can simply follow it upstream and out. I tested the 1st pitch, and discovered I can comfortably free-climb almost to the top, where I can comfortably place a rope over the in-situ pole to mount the pitch head.
Chris
Cow Pot: Ben Richards, Julien Jean, Davin Sheikholeslami, Thurston Blount, Leonie Siepmann
This account is titled "Ged is Ded."
I woke up to a beautiful morning with the sun shining over the hills in the distance. An enormous feast of a breakfast was being prepared while I whipped up some Slov surveys that Jana needed for some publications. After the others were roused from their slumber by gentle German wake-up music (?), we established that today would be an Easegill day and finally settled on Cow Pot and County trips, with Hannes going for a stroll up Ingleborough given the lovely weather, and Jan making a visit to the cheese shop as he woke up feeling ill. Our plan was to meet in the Minarets, take an iconic series of photos, and then mix up the teams on our way out. I’d never been to Cow Pot before but saw Robbie Shone’s stunning photo in Northern Caves, and the topo looked like a larger and more exciting way into Easegill. This was also to be Davin’s first SRT trip, but apparently, other people had done this as their first SRT trip as well. So far, so good.
We zoomed up to the Red Rose, Andy and his gang having already arrived and just setting off as we started to get changed. Thurston was showing off his new purple and green striped descender that he’d created in a recent social, and it matched his purple oversuit particularly well. The County team strolled off; we noticed they’d left a tackle sack, screamed at them, Chris ran back, told us he’d intentionally left it, and then ran off again. Much faff.
It was then our turn to stroll across the moor, bathing in the glorious sunshine and enjoying the magnificent views down the valley and across the lowlands. We easily found the entrance (after a little GPS assistance) and Thurston got to work rigging the first pitch. It’s a cool opening, very green and nestled among trees, before opening up into a large vertical abyss beneath, lined with ferns and mosses all the way down. I got some cool photos of the others as they descended into the depths, before helping Davin start his first-ever SRT trip in style. He hopped over the lip of the pot and descended into the depths, immediately running into his first-ever deviation, which he also did a great job of tackling.
Sadly, this was the end of the nice parts of Cow Pot, and we were immediately faced with a body-sized scrotty hole in the wall into which we first inserted our tackle sacks before then inserting ourselves. This was a 45-degree slope for about 3 meters, after which the tube becomes vertical following a small ledge and drops 3m into another small chamber. After this is another crawl/squeeze thing before you enter into a surprising amount of crawling through muddy pools just deep enough to top your wellies if you’re not careful. Finally, the tubes get wide enough to scamper along, and at this point, we reached the holes in the floor where our two sub-teams were to split up.
Thurston started rigging a traverse to the first hole in the floor, the “devious” route, whereas Julien started rigging a terrifying-looking roof traverse over to the "direct" route. Davin went next, and I followed last with Ged down the various twatty pitches and small squeezes before waiting for a while at the final pitch down into Fall Pot. Thurston announced that he was rigging another rope and proceeded to rig a second Y-hang on top of the first one. Fasctinating. Davin found a convenient resting place by wedging himself into the rift, and eventually, the rope-free came up from below. Davin inserted himself into the pitch head and wriggled his way through while on the rope, eventually freeing himself and heading down the pitch. I sighed, staring at the awful pitch head, and started wriggling over towards it. Ged was below me on the tether and, just as I had for the previous three pitches, I pushed him ahead while holding the leash tight in my hand and letting him down. The Ged-shaped pitch head was a bit of a pain, and as I pushed him through with my feet, to my disbelief, the taut leash in my hands suddenly went slack.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
Terrified, I shouted to check if everyone was okay, and thankfully they all were. Davin had already swung out towards the ledge, and Thurston was further up the ledge as well. I’d not even thought to shout “rock” given my confusion and my mind finding it impossible to process what had just happened. The top handle that I’d used to attach Ged for the last three months, including with exactly the same amount of weight on last trip in Derbyshire, had cleanly ripped off. I’d even done the exact same maneuver three-ish times that same day, over every one of the pitch heads. Of course, the huge pitch above Fall Pot, probably about 40m in height, was the one where the seams finally gave way. In retrospect this handle had probably been wearing through slowly over the last few trips, hence why it gave way with so little warning.
Thurston later described this moment as hearing a shuffling sound, presumably me getting Ged through the pitch head, before seeing a streak of blue fall from the sky. Ged had then hit the ledge, spinning on the way down before smashing onto the floor below with an almighty boom. Davin had already swung out from under the pitch at that point, and even if he hadn't the pitch head was a good meter or two metres back from the Y-hang, but it was still incredibly lucky that he was nowhere near the line of fire.
Surely all my precious camera equipment that I’d saved up for and bought over the past year was now a crumple of splintered glass, plastic and circuit boards. There’s no way it could have survived such a ridiculously large boom. I looked down with my light on spot to see the contents of Ged scattered over a 5m-ish blast radius. There was no hope at all. Even worse, I was set to leave for an expedition to Meghalaya in only a week’s time, which I was hoping to be the biggest test of my cave photography skills to date, and I’d spent months optimising my equipment and kit for it. How could it all be gone on this trip of all trips, where my main intention was to practice with my new flashes for Meghalaya? Much emotions.
I zipped down the red rope that Thurston had rigged for Julien to join us since he was doing the direct route, which doesn’t go straight to the ledge. At the bottom, I saw the orange Peli case that contained the camera, which cost more than the rest of the contents of the bag put together. It had been catapulted a few meters away from the bag itself and was perilously close to another ledge, beyond which was another drop down between the large boulders below and into the main drain. I looked away, grimaced, and prepared for the worst as I opened it. The lens cap had fallen off, but as I looked at the front of the lens, shockingly it wasn’t cracked. Next, I opened out the camera screen and again, to my deepest shock, it wasn’t cracked either. I immediately turned the camera on, and unbelievably it came to life and started autofocusing. It was a miracle. My camera seemed to have survived the insane fall. I let out some scream-like communication to Thurston and Davin above in disbelief and couldn't believe my luck. Even if everything else was completely lost, my camera was saved. It was going to be okay. The orange Peli case did have a busted hinge, so hadn’t survived, but that only meant it had served its purpose as intended.
Next up, I inspected the various detritus that had been scattered around the chamber. My two electric hand warmers were strewn across the other side of the passage, seemingly having been smashed into the wall above and then rebounded a few feet. I could see the exposed lithium-ion batteries and circuit boards through the mangled plastic housing, and the lid of the tiny Peli case they were in was a few feet away from its base. All my metalwork was strewn about the floor, presumably meaning my Pantin was full of exciting microfractures, but it was probably full of those already.
At this point, Thurston was doing an incredibly convoluted changeover onto a second rope so that he could come down to help me at the bottom of Fall Pot. I do not know how he managed to do this so slowly, but I'm sure emotions were running high. I went to Ged himself and opening the top flap I found my Smartwater bottle that I’d sat on countless times over the past two years was completely empty despite being full only minutes before. It looked fine from the top, but as I turned it over, I saw that the bottom had been completely blown off, a circular blast hole where the bottom of the bottle used to be. And finally, I peered inside Ged to see the shattered remains of the yellow survey laptop Peli case that I’d been using to carry my flashes. This was an ancient piece of club kit, and it felt seeing there in such a sorry state. The top half in the bag looked surprisingly good, with only a few large fissures running through the body. As I slid it out of the bag, though, the shards of Peli case rained down onto the floor, and I found the bottom half of the lid was mostly missing entirely. What remained looked much like a bomb had gone off in the case, leaving splinters and shards of the thick plastic sticking out and curving away from their original positions. My flashes were surely destroyed.
I opened up the one remaining clip on the Peli case and saw my poor flashes lying there on what was only their second-ever outing. The twin hotshoe adapter was completely destroyed, its metal and plastic body having been mangled and ripped in two by the power of the impact. All of the plastic flash housings had been obliterated, but those were jus tupperware in fairness. I removed the metal bulb protector of the first flash and was speechless to see that the fragile glass filament bulb seemed completely fine. Spinning the flash around, I saw the screen was also completely fine. Powering it on, it gave a friendly beep and flashed completely fine when tested. This was ridiculous; the glass bulb was surely the most fragile thing in that entire case, and the g’s alone would surely have caused it to break. I shouted up to Thurston, and he let out a cheer on hearing that the first flash was alive. I opened the second bulb cover, and this also was fine, as was the rest of the flash. Sadly, the third flash had only just succumbed to the impact as its screen was completely imploded, which sadly included the power button, so I couldn’t check if anything else in the flash worked. The bulb on the third was also completely unscathed, though, so I suspect the rest of it was completely fine other than the screen and perhaps some adjacent internals. Two out of three flashes and the camera itself being fine is nothing short of a miracle. I was pretty shaken but in good spirits—worst comes to worst, I can make do with two flashes.
Thurston arrived at the bottom of the pitch and helped me clear up the various micro and macro plastics that I had littered across the floor, rounding them up and collecting them in one of the waterproof bags I’d used for my flashes. We headed back up to the ledge that leads off to Lancaster Pot, brought Davin up to speed, and attempted once again to communicate with Julien and Leonie.
This whole time Thurston had been shouting to Julien, who we could hear was up above us, and at this point, it sounded like he was on his way down as he was much louder than before. “Ged is ded,” Thurston shouted up, and something was shouted back, but we couldn’t tell what he was saying. It was nearing turnaround time, but given Julien sounded like he was nearly here, we decided to give it 15 minutes of exploration time before we were to head up. I very much wanted to go explore a little, so that this trip wouldn’t be a complete disaster. We went for a little loop around the large passage towards Lancaster Pot, and after circling back, decided that it was definitely turnaround time. So I headed up first, with a rather battered but otherwise surprisingly resilient Ged on my back. The top of the pitch was once again completely terrible, this time even more so given Ged no longer had a handle, and the tether was instead on one of the interior loops that was part of the cinching loop at the top of the bag.
After making it through, I tried to help Davin negotiate this terrible pitch head before heading up to meet Julien and Leonie at the top, after managing to escape with Ged through the series of short twatty pitches. It turned out Leonie had been waiting for over three hours at this point, as Julien had rigged the direct route only to find it had terrifying rope rub, abandoning it, and then waiting for us. Our communication had turned out to be with them while they were waiting here where we'd split routes, meaning we had both been waiting for each other this whole time. Argh.
This meant that I was traumatised by losing hundreds of pounds of flashes and Peli cases, Davin was traumatised by his first SRT trip being a series of twatty pitch heads and awful rifts, Julien was traumatised by his horrifying rope rub above the enormous Fall Pot pitch, and Leonie was traumatised by waiting for hours on end in exactly the same spot, hiding in a bothy bag and not even getting to see the bottom of the large pitch. Keen not to be left out, Thurston at this point was busy being traumatised by getting stuck at the twatty pitch head of the big pitch. He apparently had two tackle sacks, one on each hip, and was so wedged in the top of the pitch that he couldn’t even reach his whistle to call us for help. As if by some cruel divine intervention at this exact moment, the volume button on the cave phone pressed against one of the many stuck things and ramped up to blasting Florence and the Machine into his face at full volume, which for the cave phones is famously the loudness of an ambulance. Eventually, he managed to free himself without help, and after derigging the other twatty pitches, he emerged at the top an hour and a half later looking very bedraggled indeed. We redistributed bags, this being the whole reason Julien and Leonie had waited for us in the first place, and headed back through the twatty entrance series. In total Leonie had been waiting there for four and a half hours at this point. Wow. Shockingly she was in quite good spirits despite this. I guess she does have a lot of traumatic caving stories after all.
Given my bag now contained loose lithium-ion batteries, and that none of the three Peli cases were waterproof anymore, I had to crawl back through the pools, getting very wet indeed, to prevent blocking the entrance to the cave with a cascading lithium battery fire. That would have made for an interesting rescue report from the CRO. I finally reached the entrance pitch, missing the squeeze at first after having confidently assumed that no one in their right mind would have inserted themselves into that crack in the wall. I slid up the entrance pitch with great difficulty and managed to eventually get up the 45-degree tube of doom with Ged on my cowstail. After this, I set up a progress capture to haul up the other bags behind me, after which Leonie joined me at the bottom of the entrance pot. After hauling up some SRT bags, I ransacked them and set up a basic 3-to-1 system to lift the last of the ridiculously heavy bags. Of course, we had brought vastly more rope than needed due to the ridiculous shortage of tiny ropes this year. Typical.
After the bags were done, I realised I could use the same setup to haul the others up the tubes as well, and Thurston said that this was apparently very helpful. While I yoinked the other three up, Leonie shot up the final pitch, carrying a bag as she went and returning to the bottom in an effort to stave off hypothermia. Davin zoomed up the pitch next, and Julien shortly followed him, while Thurston decided that now was a great time for a shower and so went and dunked himself in the small waterfall next to the pitch. Insanity. While waiting for Julien to reach the top, the three of us still at the bottom decided to go investigate the route to Aardvark County, which was actually superb and far prettier than anything we’d seen so far that day.
A tall white canyon about 5m high and a meter across wound its way off from the entrance pot, with holes appearing in the walls, mysterious branches leading off and the main canyon eventually ending in a small slot, in what I presumed was Shale Cavern, where we saw a note about some resin anchors being usable until September 2024. At this point Thurston threw himself into a Thurston-sized tube leading off into the wall, where he promptly disappeared into the darkness and turned a 90-degree bend, around which he apparently found an aardvark, which he talked with about the many nuances of caving. After extracting himself from the aardvark tube, he proceeded to insert himself into another small tube, which made him so muddy that he had no choice but to go for another shower on the way back. There was also a beautiful stream that appeared out of a hole in the completely flat ceiling on one side of the chamber, formed a couple-meter-long streamway, and then disappeared just as quickly into a similarly small hole in the flat floor on the other side of the canyon.
When back in the entrance pot, Thurston finished his shower, zoomed up the pitch, and showed the other two the way back to the bus. Leonie kindly volunteered to make this her first derig, on only her second-ever SRT trip, and after a brief briefing on what to do, she did a great job of clearing up all the tackle on the entrance pitch. She popped onto the surface to find me cowering in a bothy bag wrapped around both Ged and me, as I fended off the impending frostbite. The temperature felt way below freezing, and everything around me had become encased in a glistening layer of ice, as the equally icy wind whipped through the trees. Chris from the County team came bounding over in a typical Chris fashion, so characteristically in fact that I managed to identify him from little more than the bobbing of his headlight. After sharing our stories of trauma bonding with him, he told us about his unfortunate experience with a chocolate bar. In the cave, he had found what seemed to be an unopened chocolate orange bar, and so he’d taken it back to eat on the bus as a reward for his removal of litter from the system by the caving gods. Upon returning to the bus, he opened it in his porta-pocket to find that it had instead been used to wipe someone’s arse after relieving themselves in the cave. Much laughing ensued. His porta-pocket smells very bad.
Returning home, we found Hannes had outdone himself once again by making incredible dauphinoise potatoes and ratatouille, together with help from Jan, who had returned from the cheese shop after what sounded like a fantastic day out. Many tales were exchanged at the dinner table, and many laughs were had. It also transpired that Josie, having only joined our club the day beforehand, was unaware of what Ged was, and so was incredibly concerned to hear that he’d fallen down a 40m pitch, had become ded, and that all I seemed concerned about was my flashes. I attempted to convince her that we aren’t all complete sociopaths. The power for the whole area then went out, but came back on shortly afterwards. This repeated itself about 20 times before finally, an hour or so later, it went out for good and remained off until 10 am the next day. By the light of some emergency candles we exchanged the last of our tales, before making our way up the very dark stairs to think about the insane day we'd just experienced.
UPDATE: Giga flash 3 is alive?!?!?!?! The screen is smashed and the power button was a bit stuck, but it's alive!!!!! All praise be unto the Peli Case gods.
Ben
Please stop taking SRT freshers into Cow Pot, love Fiona
Fiona
Cheese Shop
Woke up feeling horrible, after a night of keeping Leonie on the neighbouring bunk awake with a mixture of snoring (when I managed to sleep) and tossing and turning (on the frequent occasions of being woken up by my Extremely Sore throat). The moment I opened my eyes I started questioning whether I should be going caving, and my reservations only grew when I found out the gang were going to Easegill, where, as the avid reader might know, both of my previous trips had been rather unpleasant.
So, after some soul-searching I decided to go to the cheese shop instead. It turns out that there is a convenient bus going from near the NPC all the way there, greatly cutting down on travel time. I bid farewell to the cavers and to Hannes, who’d decided to go on a hike instead, and went off.
The weather was wonderful, and I could feel all the vitamin D being generated in my skin. The cheese shop was of course amazing, but I was left wanting more. An NPC member had suggested I visit Settle, so I quickly devised a route and began my walk. The start was maybe one or two hundred metres along a main road, but this quickly gave way to a small country lane, which I then abandoned for a simple footpath. This took me up, above the valley, into a land of grass and rock and sheep. Gazing at the sun-soaked fells, finally finishing my audiobook, I thought about the people who were just now somewhere, under a thick layer of rock and dirt, fighting the dark and the damp and the squeeze. Hopefully they were having fun. (Note: they were not)
After a bit over an hour, the path descended steeply back towards Settle, and I found myself in a lovely town of stone houses and businesses of various degrees of touristiness. I ate some rather nice fish and chips and ensconced myself in a café that was also a bike shop, where I learned of a coast-to-coast bike route that happens to pass through Settle. I ordered a mocha with marshmallows and whipped cream, and read a bit of the book I’d bought myself for Christmas.
Then it was time to catch a bus back to the NPC, where I found Hannes in a fury of cooking. He’d pretty much done the dauphinoise potatoes by himself, but I got to help with the ratatouille. A concerningly long wait later we heard from the caving team that they were on their way back. It turns out that they had a truly awful time, further vindicating my choice to stay above ground. What a lovely, lovely day. Also the power went out.
PS It’s now been three weeks and I’m still coughing. Ugh.
Jan
Hiking
This was supposed to be my first real Yorkshire trip! So what else could I do other than hiking on Saturday? This was something I had already decided to do on Friday as the weather was supposedly very nice, something not so common in the UK. I had a look at Komoot, which proposed a 16 km circular route into territory unknown to me, and after having a nice breakfast, I set off alone. The route first took me north over the A65 and then west along a "public pathway," which at some points was a small stream following the downwardly offset route between the walls. I followed the route in the direction of Ingleton, only taking a small detour when a sheep approached me alarmingly rapidly. Just before Ingleton, I turned right and followed the slopes up the mountain.
I was really surprised to see the karstic area with a lot of sinkholes and streams disappearing again into the mountain, which I somehow didn’t expect, being there for the first time. On Ingleborough (the mountain), it was extremely windy and cold, so I put on everything I had, which included a winter jacket, some gloves, and a hat. However, the view was amazing, and as I faced east to start the descent, the mountain blocked off all of the cold wind, and I started to walk in the warm afternoon sun.
This was probably the part I liked the most about the hike: I looked out on Osmand (the OpenStreetMap app) for cave entrances. There it was—Gaping Gill. Not expecting the longest waterfall in the UK and a very big and deep hole to appear on my trip, I was properly impressed. The route onward was just as scenic, offering many different surface elements like stones scattered around on lawn-like grass, walking through a small valley that suddenly opened up to big stone walls on both sides, and following the route to Ingleborough Show Cave, which, in the afternoon sun with mossy walls, looked like a path the Hobbits took in Lord of the Rings.
After unknowingly walking on the "Ingleborough Estate Trail," I sneaked through the entrance gates and walked the last hour or so back to NPC, returning just after 4-ish. There, I started making dinner and was soon joined by Jan, who had spent the day in Clapham at the cheese shop and proved to be a very helpful cooking partner.
When the groups finally arrived, I was somehow happy to hear that hiking during the day had been a good decision, as Leonie had literally waited for hours in a cave, and ged was destroyed. I don’t want to think about what could have happened to me! I can definitely recommend other people to walk this circular route as well. It is easily the best hike I have had in the UK so far.
Hannes
Sunday
Swinsto: Chris Hayes, Jan Kożuszek, Thurston Blount, Leonie Siepmann, Hannes Reichle, Josie Skirrow
A very wet pull through that took longer than expected but was apparently quite fun.
Having already completed a Swinsto pull through with Chris and Matti before, I assumed that this one would similarly go swimmingly. Turns out 6 people adds a lot of faff, along with Chris attempting to solve this by tieing un-removeable clove hitches on two krabs to try and double the speed, yet no one was having this.
Swinsto is a very wet cave, and much to my enjoyment. Of course the entrance is straight into a river, and whilst waiting for Chris and Josie, I (of course) sat in the water a little whilst everyone else entered the bothy to try and stay warm. Once they arrived, we set off towards the first pitch, dragging the welsh tackle sack (god forbid I try and pronounce her name) behind me. Having never properly rigged a pull through before (except kind of on my last trip here, though I swear it was basically set up anyway), I faffed a bit whilst rigging, enough so that some annoyed (though incomprehensive due to the waterfall) words may have come from Chris' mouth. Alas, I was sent to the back to derig.
After already being tired from getting a little tangled the previous day, I now derigged the first pitch and headed on behind the rest along the 300m crawl. It is long. It is rocky. It is wet. Might buy some perry pros, the length and the wetness were not really considered, though my hands were starting to go a little numb, I did start to overheat a little. Occasionally, the sight of Leonie and Hannes up ahead reminded me that I was not alone, and eventually I made it to pitch 2. It was here that things started to go wrong.
After Hannes descended into the floor, I was left to work out what on earth Chris had malicously plotted for me to find - the rope, threaded between two bolts as per usual, now had a krab on either side of the double bolt, with clove hitches, attached to said bolts. Apparently this brilliant idea was thought up as a way to double descend people down the pitch, however this also had the consequence of cinching the clove hitches extremely tight on both the krabs. To be honest, I was very confused at this point, and in this confused state, removed both krabs from the bolts and descended, before realising that I forgot to take out one of the knots. That was my fault, however once at the top I realised that it didn't matter anyway as the clove hitches were so tight it took me 15 minutes, a spare krab, and damage to my hand, to undo them, all whilst Hannes watched (and definitely judged, understandably so).
Finally. I managed to derig this pitch, and hurriedly carried on with Hannes to the next. Here, we met Jan at the top of the pitch, where ecstaticly I yelled at him to tell Chris to never tie another clove hitch ever again, and he set off as my personal messanger (thank you Jan, without you we would have never made callout). It was at this point that I noticed this pitch also had a clove hitch at the top... At least this time it was only one and that should work normally right??? WRONG. I descend to the bottom and attempt to derig, however could not pull the rope through for some reason. I decide to check it out by ascending to the top, and to my horror find that the clove hitch was halfway through the bolt - the thin 9mm rope was small enough that it could just go through the bolt somehow and only the krab was stopping it. At the top, I then had to tug it back with all my force, undo it for another 10 minutes, and retie an alpine just to descend again. Exhausting.
Finally, at the next pitch (which I was very late for), I find a traverse line tied with the rope, and have to fully derig before going down; but at least this time there were no clove hitches thank god. Anyway this was split pitch, and at the bottom I find that I cannot do the pullthrough without derigging the traverse to the next pitch head, before I am meant to lean over the next pitch, which was mildly terrifying. At this time, the water seemed oddly forceful, most likely due to the fact it was raining outside earlier than predicted, and whilst in split pitch, the rescue bag Chris had left behind somehow managed to get perfectly stuck whilst I was in the middle of the massive waterfall (which I didn't really mind the getting wet, I was just worried about falling off the ledge). Most odd about this was then coiling a rope in a cave, as the bag was at the bottom of the next pitch, and I didn't want to just throw it off in case it got stuck. Anyway descent again.
Here was where I found everyone except Chris and Josie (who had run off to extend callout) huddled in a bothy bag, and after derigging the pitch, decided it was the perfect time to take the SRT kit off for a few minutes... Thank god for the triact (sorry). It was here that my journey with two bags (again) happened, exhausting me as they dragged behind and constantly got stuck (especially that blue bag those straps are awful).
From here it was pretty uneventful, with derigging going a lot easier, and the routefinding back is quite easy. Water levels were slightly high, but not as high as Y2, so attempting to slide down the master streamway did not really work as well as planned. Finally, I exited the cave at 4.55 (5 minutes before callout), and bimbled my way back to the bus.
Thurston
Fuck it, let’s go caving. I was feeling better and decided to join a Chris-lead pullthrough from Swinsto to Valley Entrance. This took a lot longer than expected, due to the size of the team and various knot-related incidents (see Thurston’s report for details). I ended up in the middle of the group, having neither to rig nor derig, my responsibilities reduced to ferrying rope and complaints from Thurston to Chris and making sure nobody got hypothermia. This was achieved through judicious use of bothy bags, with one especially notable wait after we’d just gone down a pitch fully inside a waterfall. It was fun, though not necessarily what I’d expected from a quick Sunday trip.
Chris ended up rushing ahead to cancel callout, but it wasn’t even necessary as we made it back to the bus with an entire two minutes to spare. Unsurprisingly, the Yordas group had already been waiting there for hours. My phone, stashed somewhere in the bus, was still connected to the speakers and had started playing music by itself, so Ben and co. had to spend their time with an unedited feed straight from my Spotify. At least they could skip songs.
Back at the NPC I did a frankly absurd amount of washing up – did we simply not wash any of the dishes we used at any point during the weekend? The drive back went without incident, with me crawling to a stop in front of the Union (still a little mistimed with the bella ciao) at around quarter to one.
Jan
Yeah, Thurston and Jan described it all pretty well. The group size was too large, and I was overly bold after my pull-through successes on Winter tour (Simpsons is waaay better than Swinsto). Fortunately, everyone had a good time, and we hit callout, but there was absolutely no margin for error, so I consider this somewhat of a near miss.
Chris
This trip was chosen because Chris was sure that it would be a very nice and short Sunday trip. I had learned from the previous Derbyshire trip that long hair and mud don’t mix very well, so I was very happy that Josie braided my hair.
When we arrived at the cave, it was already quite late, and so many people participating was something Chris hadn’t anticipated when he first made the plan. I had hoped to get through while getting wet as late as possible, but my wishes were shattered when I entered the cave, which during the first 50 meters or so was just a small stream flowing through a circular cross-section. This meant that from the first meter on, water was flowing into my PVC suit through the foot openings, as I had to crawl due to the low ceiling. Luckily, I had merino wool thermals on, which proved to be invaluable at keeping me warm later.
The first pitch was a bit exposed, so I was very happy that Chris lent me one very long sling for extra safety. The route onward was basically descending through waterfalls, crawling an extremely long section through knuckle-deep water, and waiting for people to descend. I had a blast, as I knew that I didn’t have to go back up again, but the number of people took its toll, and so we were much slower than anticipated. Also, Thurston had trouble undoing the ropes from the bottom at some points, so he went for some repetition practice in rope ascending at least twice.
All in all, it was a lot of fun climbing through and over several obstacles, although it was a bit cold in some places. The bothy bag was our best friend while waiting. In the end, we joined Kingsdale Master Cave, and Thurston and I tried floating down in it, which was a bit difficult with the low water. Just two minutes before callout time, we arrived back at the bus.
Hannes
Yordas: Ben Richards, Julien Jean, Laura Temple, Davin Sheikholeslami, Remi Soubes-Goldman
After Chris gently informed us that there was still no power and we couldn't go caving today, the power decided to one-up him by returning about 10 minutes later. Feeling both a bit knackered and photography-deprived given the adventures of the day prior, I decided on a relaxed bimble to the main Yordas chamber to gain more experience with my two surviving giga flashes. This would also serve as a sanity check to confirm that they were in full working condition. It turned out that a few others were also in a similar mood, so a small group of us signed up for this trip, while everyone else went on a classic Swinsto pull-through down the road.
Our photography trip went remarkably well, and, incredibly, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the camera, both lenses, the flash controller, or the two surviving flashes from the incident. I spent a good two hours dreaming up elaborate flash setups and following through on them. Despite all the trouble they caused me over the weekend, the giant giga flashes proved once again to be truly unparalleled, and I got some fantastic photos with them. After many unsuccessful attempts, I finally managed to achieve the light bloom effect from having a flash behind the subject. I also captured some great close-ups of Julien looking fashionable as ever, Davin looking dashing, and Laura performing various ridiculous yet impressive handstand gymnastics.
We then walked back to the bus in the horizontal rain and waited for two hours for Chris to obliterate his ETA of 3:30, arriving instead at a quarter to 5 to clear his 5 pm callout. He arrived with Josie and informed us that the others should be back in about half an hour. In fact, they made it back at 4:58 pm, which was, admittedly, quite impressive. The weather was particularly foul, and I had spent much of the prior hours trying to dry out my left shoe, which was completely sodden after the sole partially detached from the rest of it. I was therefore very glad not to be tasked with investigating the valley entrance pitch in such a state, especially since I had no caving kit.
We then zoomed back to the hut, cleaned up, and finished off the fantastic food from the night before. At around 7 pm, we set off for the long drive back to the Union. What a weekend. Despite the disasters, it was actually a lot of fun, and I learned a great deal in the process. I think Ged and I need some time apart, although I’m sure we’ll be reunited soon enough.
Ben
