Fun and Games in Voldemort

Sophie, Pete, Matt, Dave, Ami & Ray

It all started so well. OK, there was the usual random walk around the fell to find the entrance, but nothing to suggest the comedy sketch to come. But let’s start at the start…

There is a short ladder directly from the surface. At the bottom is a short bit of crawling. I’d forgotten how snug this crawl is, so had to re-orientate myself (and the tackle sack) to get through. No-one else seemed to struggle, so I’ll blame arthritis. Others may blame pies. Things then get a little bit less snug down a few climbs to the head of the 1st pitch. As last time, this was already rigged, so we were all soon down at the start of Haywagon. Everyone else went for a marvel at the pretties, after being good boys and girls and removing SRT kit. As I’d been before, I waited patiently for their return.

The 2nd & 3rd pitches follow soon after, again thankfully pre-rigged. The take-off for the 2nd is moderately interesting. Now the key to this trip is to leave the 2nd pitch at a traverse line halfway down, rather than following the rope all the way to the bottom. A short traverse then leads to the 3rd pitch, which is easy enough. The bottom of this pitch is where the fun really begins.

Immediately is a fairly tight downward sideways crawl, dumping you rather unceremoniously in a puddle at a T-junction. The way on is left, along a seemingly interminable crawl… nothing too bad to start with, but a few more tricky sections along the way turned the thoughts of some members of the party to religion and sex, at least judging from the language. The “pleasure” of this passage is only enhanced by the accompaniment of a tackle sack.

After what seemed like a long time, but was probably no more than 15 mins or so, we popped out at the head of Oliver Lloyd Aven. Phew! The ordeal was over. All we had to do was slide down a rope and stomp out of Notts II. The first part of this plan went well enough. Before long, most were down in Inlet 7 of Notts II, with Matt and I stopping on the big ledge near the bottom to pull the rope down. And that’s where it all went wrong…

We pulled, we tugged, we hung, we jumped, all to no avail. No way was the rope coming down. Perhaps a few more bodies would help. So we decided to abseil down to the bottom so that all 6 of us could try together. Just 1 problem, of course… we had managed to pull the rope down to some extent with our exertions, so was it now safe to use? The obvious solution was for Matt and I to abseil together on the 2 ends. Thankfully this worked.

Even with all 6 of us pulling, the rope wasn’t budging. There was nothing else for it – someone would have to prussic up and free things off, or at least see what the problem was. No sooner had such thoughts started to dawn on us than Dave was attaching his jammers and setting off. No need for any drawing of straws then. With Ami, Pete and I tied to the other end as ballast, Dave was soon up near the problem. Some comedy communication then followed, the gist appearing to be that the 2 ropes were rather twisted, although an equally plausible translation could have been that the pope was Father Ted. On Dave’s return, it turned out that the 1st translation was closer to the actual situation. He even remembered how many twists there were and in which direction. So a sketch looking rather like a typical Mayday dance around a maypole then ensued. Surely that must have freed things off… but no.

I then decided to go up and have a look, but couldn’t find my chest jammer. Meanwhile, Sophie had set off up, reporting that there were no twists, but that the pull-down krab was a good 5 or 6m from the top, rendering it impossible to actually reach the top to rerig. In the meantime, Matt had found my lost jammer on the big ledge about 7m up and dropped it to me. On Sophie’s return, I then set off up to view the problem, intending to prussic up beyond the pull-down krab and reach the top of the pitch to rerig, making sure that enough bodies were tied to the other end to prevent my early demise. On reaching the problem, it was clear that, while there were no twists in the ropes below the krab, they were very twisted indeed above. Ah, so that’s the problem then. Using ropes and walls for purchase, I was able to spin enough to remove all twists above the krab. The others were then able to take the twists out below me. Job done. All I had to do was descend and the ropes should feed freely. It became clear that this probably wasn’t going to work as soon as I started to descend. There was no way to prevent the ropes twisting again. Again we all tried to pull down from the bottom, but again there was no give whatsoever. Whether it is simply the twisted ropes or there is something more fundamentally wrong at the top, we couldn’t be sure. In any case, it was getting a bit late by this point and we were all getting a bit cold, so we decided to make our way out of Notts II and come back for the ropes another day. Ami had never been in Notts II before and was suitably impressed. It was a shame we weren’t more in the mood for an explore.

So, as I write this (the day after), my ropes are still on Oliver Lloyd Aven. Matt and I plan to go back tomorrow to retrieve them, presumably via Voldemort. Watch this space…

Photos by Sophie