Month: January 2017

By Jason Clements In Day Trips

Hay Time – 25th January 2017

Dave G, Jason

Before we went, I couldn’t find much information about Haytime online, and Northern Caves doesn’t give a lot away about where to find it. It turned out not to be too hard, even in the dark, but for future reference, you walk up the Pennine Way from the Crown in Horton for about 1km, where you come to a gate.  Carry on for another 100m, then go up an obvious dried-up streambed on your right.  After  maybe 150m, there’s a big shakehole with the entrance to the left.

The entrance crawl is very short, so short in fact that I ignored the unpromising hole in the floor of the first little chamber and continued crawling through an uncomfortable squeeze on the left.  This progresses to a squalid low passage before getting ridiculously tight.  Dave sensibly suggested seeing if the hole was the way on – it was, and I spent the next ten minutes inching out of the squeeze backwards, by now well covered in crap.

The hole on the right turned out to be generously P-hangered (a bit of a clue) but you really don’t need any aids, it’s a simple free climb.  Honestly – it’s a snug rift with plenty of holds, though warm work on the return.  This pitch and the following climbs do have some loose rocks, but we took it carefully and didn’t have any problems.  The last climb is probably the hardest, but there is a decent resident  handline, so there’s no real need to take any tackle.

From the survey, it appears that there’s a direct, wet route, and a longer drier route, both meeting shortly before Helm’s Deep, the final chamber.  The plan was to go down dry and come back up wet.  The actual layout is more complex than the survey suggests, but anyway we went on a long meandering rift – well decorated in parts – to reach a T-junction that was apparently not on the survey.  We turned left, expecting it to quickly choke, but it went on and on, feeling as though we were heading back to where we’d already been.  But abruptly, we found ourselves in the impressive chamber that was undoubtedly Helm’s Deep, whence a short crawl leads to the attractive sump.

Returning, we started up what ought to have been the short, wet route but seemed to be a different dry meandering rift leading to where the other had started.  Whatever.  It was a good fun romp (apart from the unnecessary squalid interlude at the start) in under two hours, and I’d happily return to try and figure out how the passage related to the survey and explore various side passages we left for another time.  My thanks to Dave for turning out and not moaning at my slow pace, I hope we’ll be seeing more of him!

On a less happy note, we were dismayed to find the Crown shut – I hope this isn’t permanent!

By Tom C In Day Trips

Dowbergill

Gareth and Darren, knowing that we had undertaken the traverse from Providence Pot to Dow Cave on 2 previous occasions, had asked if they could be included on a further trip. What further trip?!! Was my response. The first time had taken us 6 and a half hours and was replete with arguments caused by neither of us knowing at what point it was safe to descend, several wrong descent decisions, a very scarey traverse and feeling bloody cold. The second time had been faster (just over 4 hours) but this was more by luck than judgement. We didn’t find the scarey traverse and instead found a rigged line down to the streamway. We had ventured along to the swim under the boulder but, without having read up on how long a complete submersion was needed, we retreated and climbed up onto the Gypsum Traverse in a near hypothermic state. On the positive side, it was a sunny day and we warmed up considerably with the long walk back to Kettlewell.

This time, the date chosen followed the snowfall and coincided with the snowmelt. Andy and I checked out the possibility of leaving a car at the end, feeling sure Gareth had a 4 by 4. He doesn’t—so even the drive to Dow was quite eventful! We almost got the correct gear in correct cars. Gareth was left at the end without shoes (& I’d left home in wellies, so had none either) and the flask of hot drink was left in the car at Kettlewell. But beer and tea bread were ready for us on exit.

A beautiful walk through the snow was followed by a swift passage through the entrance series. I could remember it all—except the Blasted Crawl through muddy water—how could I forget that! About 1.5h into the trip saw us enjoying hot chocolate in the 800yd Chamber—the half way point in distance terms. I had managed to get very wet and so was beginning to feel cold but everyone else had successfully navigated the climbs, traverses and squeezes staying relatively dry.

‘Is this Brew Chamber?’ was the much asked question over the next 2.5hrs. We did several boulder choke climbs and several squeezes at stream level, but still nothing fell into place. And it was only a short distance on the survey. We knew when we had reached the choke though. A dodgy handline stretched 12m up the vertical rift and was navigated without (major) incident by Darren and Andy. Gareth and myself had considerably more difficulty. By the time Gareth had reached the top I had tried on 3 occasions to squeeze myself through the very awkward short cut (an upwards and leftwards squeeze that wouldn’t let me through) and I had lost functional use of all points of contact before it was my turn to climb. Needless to say, Andy and Darren did a fantastic job of hauling me up the difficult bits and soon (ish) we were all in Brew Chamber.

We found the line down to the stream again and so, 20 minutes later we were standing in water, in an impressive rift passage varying between sideways walking and thrutchy traversing just above the water level. The levels had risen in the time we’d spent in the cave and the final portion of the passage to the sumped boulder necessitated a helmets off, chin (just about) above water level approach. On arrival at the boulder, there was no going back—we were far too cold by this point. So, aided by Andy’s leg as a dive line, one by one we submerged and re-emerged, ecstatic at having survived the ordeal!

Dow Cave is an amazing passage and we did stop twice for Gareth’s photo shoots but, teeth chattering uncontrollably, we probably didn’t appreciate it’s full geological worth….well there was a beer and tea bread waiting!

By Tom C In Day Trips

Lancaster Hole

We all got to the bottom safely and off we went through into Fall pot, we went at a steady pace so Ali could take it all in, we eventually ended up taking some great photos at Bob’s Boss and the Painters Pallet then with a bit of memory searching for the way on we eventually made it to the Minarets without finding Diamond hall first, I took some backlit photos to try and do my best to copy the Northern Caves photo it wasn’t perfect but I thought it would do, we then stuck ourselves through the link into the way on to Retched rabbit etc.