Voldemort – 6th July 2016

Darren M, Jason 

I was surprised that no-one else had signed up for this cave, whose location was a closely-guarded secret until fairly recently, and it was a pull-through, so ‘all downhill’ (almost).  Perhaps it was the “very snug” billing in the meets list?

Meeting Darren in the car park, we quickly set off up the fell – and quickly stopped when Darren suddenly remembered his SRT kit was still hanging up in the garage.  Doh! Fortunately, Emma was in, and agreed to bring it over in her car, which she did, still smiling!  What a star!

Now fully equipped, we parked, changed and went straight to the obscure trapdoor that marks the entrance.  We left the kit off for the entrance crawl, but it’s really not that tight, and you soon reach a perch before the short first pitch where you can kit up comfortably.  Having got to the bottom, we pulled the rope through but neither of us noticed the small overhand knot in the end of the rope.  Small – but not small enough to go through the hangar!  Double doh!

What to do?  Strangely, the option of leaving the rope there and using the longer rope (intended for pitch 4) for pitches 2 and 3 never occurred to us.  Instead, Darren very gently prussicks up – remember, the rope is held in place only by an overhand knot jammed in an anchor – while I stand at the bottom, arms outstretched to act as a crash mat.  Fortunately, I was not needed!  And we were soon on our way again. 

The Hay Wagon is off to one side at this point.  We had intended to have a good look at it, but as it’s necessary to de-kit to avoid damaging the formations we decided to give it a miss to save time.  I just had a quick peek from the start, and the straws did indeed look spectacular.

A bit of rifty passage leads before long to pitches 2 and 3.  The second needs a particularly bold step to get onto, but a modicum of safety is provided by an in-situ traverse line – it must have been hairy indeed before it was installed. After pitch 3, there’s a long, winding hands-and-knees crawl in water.  Today it was quite low, so not a problem, but you wouldn’t want to discover the airspace was restricted because of high water after having pulled-through 3 previous pitches; hence it’s not a wet-weather cave.

The relief at being able to stand up again is short-lived, as the next section is an awkward rift passage – this is the “very snug” bit.  It’s actually not that tight, but here’s a tip: don’t try and drag your tackle bag behind you – it gets stuck in the narrow section at the bottom, then you can’t turn round and free it… well, you can picture the scene.  Eventually, by dint of thrutching and strong language, I managed to get through to join Darren, who had been patiently waiting, unable to assist.

This brings you to final pitch, for which we had a 70m rope, knotted in the middle for the pull-through.  Darren said it should be long enough… hmmm.  In fact, the unweighted rope dangled about 6” above the ground, so it was exactly the right length!  A muddy walking passage soon leads to the familiar territory of the Notts II streamway.  I normally enjoy the romp out, but was finding the unaccustomed tackle sack a bit of a hindrance, so when Darren offered to take both bags for the final climb, I gratefully accepted.  Without it, I almost kept up… so that’s another pint I owe him!