Yorkshire V
Ben Richards, David Wilson, Ellie Pizey, Jan Kożuszek, Julien Jean, Laura Temple, Edwin Fernando, Thurston Blount, Jackie Li, Aurelia Eberhard, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Lamya Adam, Ollie Oddie, Hannes Reichle, Esther Mueller
Friday
Thanks to another classic case of Chris missing the trip proposal deadline, there was no minibus this weekend. Apparently, the minibus was nearly cancelled for the wrong weekend, but luckily, the two mistakes cancelled each other out, and we still had no minibus. Sadness.
Jan's hired car seemed to dream of being a container ship, Davey drove up the trusty Nissan and Remi, Laura and Oli all headed over from Sheffield. I got the train up, having been kicked out of JanCar, and Hannes and Esther got the train also. While waiting for the cars to arrive at the trusty NPC I spent some time telling tales of bowels-related adventures with Matti, Salwa and Leo in Central Asia but before long everyone was united, tired and heading for bed.
Ben
Saturday
Trapdoor Pot: Ben Richards, Julien Jean, Edwin Fernando
The mighty Trapdoor Pot. Merely uttering the name of this Black Book cave is enough to strike fear into the wellies of any caver who is above average height, length, girth, mass or wits.
I'd already tried to conquer it once, in vain, on the last winter tour, which had featured no less than two trips there. Despite this, I had turned around after only the first of the three magnificent squeezes, such was the overwhelming call of the pub. I yearned to behold the mighty Megatron pitch, with its shedding walls and large extruded cave turd, and given this weekend I had not brought my enormous peli case of camera kit, today seemed like the day to return.
During the breakfast trip planning I pushed for a trip that wasn't too easy, wasn't too photogenic, wasn't too wet, wasn't too unknown and wasn't too boring, shockingly, Trapdoor emerged as satisfying all of the above. Julien was up for an epic, and despite our best attempts to warn him of what he was signing up for, Edwin opted in as well.
Remi whisked us over to the layby in his vast people carrier car he'd driven up from Sheffield, complete with weird overhead storage bins in the roof, presumably for tiny items of cabin baggage. He ran away soon after for a hike up Ingleborough and instructed us to call him for a lift home when we were done. Julien informed us that despite his slender physique, he had apparently been told that he had "very wide hips" and so was concerned about the legendary squeezes we had set our sights on. We reassured him that he was probably going to be fine but that if he got stuck we would laugh a considerable amount before fetching the emergency butter.
Navigating to Trapdoor is shockingly easy with a GPS watch, and the hike up wasn't too bad either given the great company and endless conversation. Before we knew it we'd made it to the entrance, found a club knife that had presumably been left there on Winter Tour, and proceeded to wait for an eternity for Julien to rig the ultra twatty entrance pitch.
Neither Julien nor Edwin had been to Trapdoor before, and given how traumatic just getting into the cave was, they both seemed concerned for what lay ahead. I chortled to myself knowing what was to come as I scurried down the passageway, disappearing beneath the horrifying ceiling of boulders psychologically supported by extruded foam at foam pitch and slithered my way through the first of the three squeezes - The Ripper.
Trapdoor has three famous squeezes: The Ripper, The Gripper and The Stripper. The Stripper of course is the most esoteric. All three of us made it through The Ripper, which is a helmet-width rift of about a metre in length, with only one point at waist height large enough to slide through, with head first being seemingly easiest. Go too high or too low and the rift narrows enough to wedge you tight. Edwin, naturally, practically walked through the squeeze, and Julien made it through after some trial and error on the optimal approach height. After this we bombed down the pitch immediately behind it, noting the bolts high above us that we had been warned about, and reached the incredibly well-named FTSE choke at the bottom.
We went through this one by one and had read warnings of looseness and water. The weather wasn't great, with rain gauges showing medium water levels and recent rain, but there wasn't much water here (or elsewhere in the cave) at all really. A similar amount of water was there on Winter Tour as well. We went through the choke one by one, but it felt a lot more sturdy than some others that I've been through. That being said a lot of it seems to be held up with rotten wood, and given how narrow the way through is the whole thing could be blocked by a single shifted boulder.
Next up was the scaffolding bar pitch, which was indeed very twatty despite the addition of two bolts in the free climb above it, and after that was squeeze number 2: The Gripper. This did have a small stream running down it which I managed to mostly avoid sitting in, but it was nowhere near as large as the guidebook made it sound. Perhaps in particularly high water levels this becomes super grim; it is supposed to be a mostly dry cave after all.
The Gripper is a downwards rift squeeze that intersects a flat-out horizontal bedding plane crawl. This means there's an awkward transition where you must contort yourself into the crawl without snapping any bones. Long cavers must find this particularly sporting. Edwin did attempt it head first, but retreated and decided to go feet first after all. Julien somehow managed to get very wet, but in fairness, I was rushing them as turnaround time was rapidly gaining on us.
After another small pitch came a bizarre crawl into a twatty series of small tubes. These were nasty. Their windy shapes made it such that approaching them down the crawl was best done feet first, as the windy tubes sloped downwards, and were quickly followed by a two-metre downclimb through yet another tiny opening. At least this downclimb had some nice footholds. After this, an enticing slot in the floor presents itself, complete with a seemingly obvious spike to rig a handline off of, but after traversing over the top of the rift a little further down the chamber, a wider section allowed us to get down more easily. A large sling was just enough to wrap around another spiky flake thing and get us down a 4m pitch. Pretty odd this didn't have bolts, there's probably a better way down here.
Finally, the moment we'd all been waiting for. The third and hardest squeeze: The Stripper. This starts as a regular rift, that after descending a few metres becomes too narrow to turn around in without finding that one specific nook, with fewer and fewer footholds until you reach the top of a slippery tube down into the depths below. At this point the way on is a horribly tight squeeze horizontally, with the caveat that there's so little space in the rift itself that you have to figure out a way to rotate your entire body by ninety degrees without sliding further down the rift into the region without footholds. Easily the most bonkers squeeze I've ever come across. This is what I'd been dreaming of at breakfast.
After finding just enough footholds, I managed to get low enough to insert my head into the squeeze, writhed myself into the horizontal tube without dislocating my hips or breaking any femurs, and wriggled for dear life through the constriction that was barely wide enough to fit my helmet. Elated, I popped out on the far side and called back to the others that I'd made it through. A short while later it became apparent that I'd have to come back to help with the rope bag, and so back I went, this time feet first and flailing desperately as I tried to find footholds before falling into the slippery, inescapable depths of the rift. After being passed the bags by Edwin I once again performed interpretive yoga as I disappeared into the wall, and from the far side I helped Edwin through after me.
Edwin managed to fold himself almost completely in half by removing his helmet, allowing his absurdly narrow skull to slide through the thinnest part of the upper rift, meaning he could load himself into the horizontal squeeze at disgusting speed. Soon he was through, after which it was Julien's turn. Although he made it into the horizontal part of the squeeze quite deftly, there was one lip of rock that he couldn't quite get past on the narrowest part of the horizontal squeeze. Naturally, this was impinging on his enormous hips. Edwin and I found this hilarious. After pulling him through from our end, he eventually popped out, meaning that we had managed to conquer all three of the legendary squeezes.
It was nearly turnaround time, but we just had long enough for me to rig the next pitch and see the top of Megatron pitch. I bombed down the next section, took an eternity to rig the rebelay in the middle after getting royally tangled, only to find that the entire pitch is directly beneath the loose pitch head and so had to wait even longer to call rope free as I then rigged the top of Megatron down to the ledge a few metres down.
The others soon joined, Soreen was enjoyed, and with Julien's non-melted light, we were able to see down to the floor of the pitch below us. It did look to be about the 30m described on the survey, but alas we could not see the large cave turd of extruded mud out of some side tube. Given my slow rigging we were comfortably past our turnaround time, and so we zoomed back up and braced ourselves to do all three squeezes, but backwards.
After catching up with the others after de-rigging, we found that just getting to the start of The Stripper was quite the ordeal. A large rifty ledge thing we had slid down was nearly impossible to get back up. Edwin had helped Julien up, I helped Edwin and then I did my best rift wedging to heave myself up last. Passing the bags through The Stripper was also quite an ordeal, with Julien first at the top of the vertical rift, Edwin on the other side of the horizontal squeeze and me half in the horizontal section, trying to blindly throw the bags through while not being able to turn my helmet.
Heading out was actually very rapid, and we scurried out of The Gripper with ease. Julien nobly took the giant red tackle sack, which caused him no end of grief on the various tight pitch heads. While de-rigging the scaffolding bar pitch, I managed to get myself between the rope and the wall, and then promptly stood up on my pantin, pinning my head to the wall with my entire body weight. To make matters worse this pitchhead was so small that I couldn't move my arms, and my Croll had captured all of my progress. As if that wasn't bad enough, I couldn't down prussik even if I had been able to move my arms because there was a full rope bag pulling my Croll down, meaning it was nearly impossible to lift it up.
Oh dear. This was actually very bad. Oh, and my face was in great pain while getting crushed against the wall. Oh and also this was at the bottom of that super dodgy FTSE choke, so if the others came to help me they'd probably knock small rocks down directly into my face. Not that they were there to help in the first place, because I was at the back de-rigging and only one person at a time can be in the choke. Hmmm. What to do. Eventually, I managed to wriggle my face to the side of the rope, fortunately without imploding my glasses, and from there I managed to wriggle just enough of my body around the rope so that I could move my legs, find a higher foothold and then make just enough space for my arms to get to my croll in order to down prusik. Hurrah. Anyway, enough brain-dumping about this. I survived.
The Ripper turned out to be far easier on the way out, and then we were back at the twatty entrance pitches, which fortunately we'd made easier by rigging both foam pitch and the entrance pitch on the same 45m rope because we hadn't brought enough small ropes on the trip. Pulling on these made escaping far more pleasant, I'd probably recommend just doing this next time as well.
Emerging out we found ourselves at the tail end of sunset and messaged our taxi driver who reported that he had already walked halfway up the hill. In fairness, we were just under an hour before callout, and it was a 40-minute walk up from the road.
As we bombed down the mountain we saw two familiar silhouettes of Remia and Laura, who had brought not only delicious hot tea but also an NPC mug to drink it from. Such luxury. It was however very windy so we continued bombing it back down the hill, followed by a much-appreciated stir fry back at the hut. Much Slov discussion was had given it is now less than a month away, and, as always, Davey managed to divert to conversation onto topics such as beer butt chugging, coffee enemas and other topics too scandalous to mention here. It was definitely time for bed.
Ben
Lost Johns' Cave: Ellie Pizey, Jan Kożuszek, Thurston Blount, Jackie Li, Hannes Reichle, Esther Mueller
They made it to the bottom, Jan did some epic rigging to get there.
Mayday Hole: David Wilson, Laura Temple, Aurelia Eberhard, Lamya Adam, Ollie Oddie
Apparently all had a good time in what turned out to be an easy cave than expected. Some funny photos of Laura were taken.
Sunday
Shuttleworth: Ellie Pizey, Jan Kożuszek, Julien Jean, Edwin Fernando, Jackie Li, Aurelia Eberhard
They made it to the straws. The sump rose a bit as well which is always fun.
Yordas: David Wilson, Ollie Oddie
David and Ollie went on a cheeky tart trip, apparently the water was very high and the inglesport sandwich afterwards very good.
Bull Pot: Ben Richards, Thurston Blount, Lamya Adam, Hannes Reichle, Esther Mueller
Bruised and battered I finally managed to extract myself from bed at about half past nine. To my disbelief, as I stumbled downstairs and burst into the kitchen, I was the first one there. This was without a doubt the first time in my entire caving career that this had happened on a weekend trip. For me, being woken up with a cowbell to the tympanic membrane is an integral part of both my Saturday morning and Sunday morning routines. Dazed at the overwhelming responsibility of actually cooking human-grade food, I stood in the middle of the room and wondered if perhaps the Germans had all died in their sleep.
This stupefaction was short-lived, however, as Thurston entered the kitchen thirty seconds later, and then bizarrely everybody else woke up within the next fifteen minutes. Even the Germans. Highly suspicious.
After trying my best to help Thurston cook eggy bread across 6 pans (sorry washing up team) I signed up to join Lamya's first rigging trip to Jingling, which would also be Thurston's first trip teaching someone to rig. After checking the club website I concluded that this was also my first time in Bull Pot, so many firsts all around. Esther and Hannes also liked the sound of it, as Shuttleworth sounded over-subscribed and the Davey Oli epic sounded far too high energy for them. The weather did look atrocious, and as we looked up out the window the heavens opened and we changed our plan from Jingling to Bull Pot instead. Despite my best attempts the others didn't want to sit on the new SRT wall sofa and drink tea while Lamya learnt to rig out of the rain, so we were all whisked away into the wet and miserable outside world in Davey's car.
Davey wasn't actually joining us, so weirdly he left us five with his car, with me having been transported in Oli's car, before Davey swapped with me and gave us the keys to his car as he zoomed off into the distance despite none of us being able to drive the vehicle we were now all sat in. Finally, we dragged ourselves out into the rain and wind, quickly changed and Thurston stomped off up the mountain to rig the entrance pitch, so the rest of us could at least wait out of the rain. I sat in my bothy bag while the others finished changing before we all stomped up the mountain, marvelled at the legendary trees by which DW can navigate the entirety of the known universe, and finally found the small stream that suddenly disappeared into the group at Bull Pot. Lamya shot into the entrance, bringing an end to an engaging discussion about surgical fluid taps to drain excess fluid from unexpected parts of the human body.
Bull Pot is very nice, with drapings of ferns and mosses in the sleek grey walls of the entrance pitch. I spent about an hour admiring them while having a lovely chat with Hannes and Esther about exams, their upcoming Scotland hike and how the Birkbeck library is the best spot during UCL exams. After this, we all headed into the cave, along a surprisingly difficult traverse and onto a lovely little pitch down to a roomy chamber. Lamya continued rigging with another twatty looking traverse to the next pitch head, but at this point, we had run out of time, so turned around and headed back to the car. There were some great fossils at the bottom, and the slot pitch into the floor also looked very appealing. A good stylolite was in the wall above this, and before long we were back at the fern-draped entrance, with the sun overhead and a fantastic view of the valley.
Davey was apparently finishing up a delicious sandwich, after which he came and picked us up, before promptly getting the most insane airtime on the Kingsdale road I've ever experienced by driving straight off into the verge and miraculously saving it as if nothing had ever happened. A quick round of noodles and toast and the various cars zoomed away. Remi and Laura left with my bag in the back (which at the time of writing moment is still at some unknown location in Sheffield), followed by Jan, Davey and finally Oli - but not before I could throw my belongings into Oli's car and get him to take me to the station. Time for a speedy recovery before Y6 in just a week!
