January 2025 – Kendal Caving Club

29 January 2025

By Jason Clements In Day Trips

Shuttleworth Pot

Sophie, Darren, Scott, Maz, James, Jim, Jess, Jason

Shuttleworth had been the subject of a dire CNCC warning about rock moving from behind the shuttering on the entrance pitch. But fortuitously, only the day before, a repair crew had been out and fettled everything so you wouldn’t have known there had been anything wrong.

It was a fine, starlit night, and Darren eventually found the entranced (always further downhill than you expect) and commenced rigging. With the big party, (and a bit of challenging rigging 😊) it took a while to get to the bottom, and admire the diving gear left by braver mortals. Once down, we quickly set off to admire all the pretties and geological curiosities (it’s a treat for students of sediment stratigraphy, aka mud layers). Returning from the far end, James pointed out My Newt passage on the right (as you head back to the entrance).

I hadn’t been there before, so jumped in and found myself sliding down to the chamber in an exhilarating, if somewhat foolhardy, fashion. Landing safely, we found the newt skeleton, which is wonderfully preserved, but, well.., minute! (In the photo, you can see the finger ends of my glove for scale).

Getting back up My Newt passage was definitely type 2 fun, although Scott managed to make it look easy. While others begun the pull up back to the surface, Scott and I had a quick look at the sump, which was no more inviting than sumps usually are.

The long march uphill back to the cars on Leck Fell was a work-out that nicely capped the evening, but at least it kept us warm.

22 January 2025

By Tom C In Day Trips

Nettle Pot, Dentdale

Maz, Tom, Scott, Will, potential new members Jim and Jess. Report by Maz

My first acquaintance with Nettle Pot came 2 days before the proposed trip date. I felt, as leader, I should do some research and at least recce out the entrance, and hopefully a bit more.

The CNCC coordinates put me somewhere in the middle of the village and the description suggested 80 metres upstream of the bridge in Gawthorp.

Armed with these facts, Janice and I went exploring on a wet Monday morning. It transpires there are 4 bridges in Gawthorp and we got lucky after number 3. The entrance looked wet, low and clogged with debris. We didn’t go any further as we weren’t overly keen on entering this enticing portal.

Wednesday night saw 4 of us plus two potential new members- Jim and Jess head out into the unknown; this being a new cave for all of us. The plunge pool adjacent to the entrance looked a little deeper than it did on Monday. No one seemed overly keen to lead, so Jim, survey in hand, set off, closely followed by Jess and Will. The delicately constructed dam of rotting vegetation and plastic was no match for Will’s size 10s (?) and a mini tsunami was unleashed downstream as it was breached. Our new members were given a baptism, literally from KCC.

Various routes from the initial chamber were checked out, Will going furthest, head first into a rapidly narrowing passage. Jim had concluded his passage was blocked by debris and Tom’s went back to the entrance.

With nowhere to go other than out, it seemed the trip was over. Almost. Keen for more unpleasant action, it was suggested we try the resurgence and work backwards.
Fortunately I had recced this more successfully on Monday and chauffeured everyone in Maz’s taxi (the back of the van) to the said exit.

The resurgence consisted of a concrete tube going some distance underneath the road. For want of anything better to do we headed in, some on hands and knees, some stooping, all getting wet to some degree.

After a short while it became apparent the only thing to be had here was playing a lottery of catching some form of water borne virus. It wasn’t with heavy hearts that we decided we had had too much fun and we headed out.

And so ended our trip to Nettle Pot. Not a classic, not even sure if it’s got potential, but definitely one for the summer. Maybe.

15 January 2025

By Pete B In Day Trips

Aygill Caverns

Steve, James, Ami, Pete

Four intrepid(ish) explorers met up at Bull Pot Farm on a lovely clear night. A little stargazing before kitting up and setting off to find the entrance. We soon found ourselves heading up river, passing a hole on the way that had enough water going into it to suggest things might get on the damp side later.

The entrance located it seemed wise to just get on with it, not least because at least in there we’d warm up. The description on the CNCC site fails to mention how easy it is to crawl right past the first climb up, which we duly did. This mistake was soon noticed and rectified. There was just enough room at the top of the climb to get ourselves back in order and head off into more crawling. Before long we where down pitch number 1. Onwards and downwards we went, the crawling gave way to being able to stand up – albeit in a rather snug rift. I made a miscalculation here and was facing the wrong way which definitely made it tighter than I liked, One day I’ll remember which way I bend best I expect.

The second pitch lands next to the streamway and on some beautiful marble. James wasn’t wrong when he said it was like what you might find in a high end kitchen. The stream was flowing nicely and after a quick recce by Steve, and some admiration of the water whizzing past we decided that our best option was to head upstream a bit. This we did and stayed drier than I expected, although wellies were filled. All too soon we reached a point where the way on was going to involve a low wet crawl and it was time to turn around.

A brief photo stop on the way back and we headed for the surface. Thanks Steve for organising this one, which definitely merits a return trip (if you missed it this time you should come).

13 January 2025

By Helen Hooper In Day Trips

Providence Pot

Participants: Helen H and Ami S.
Not fancying the cold and wet, Jason cancelled this club trip on Sunday 12th January. (A wise decision I’d say!) But 2 of us were still keen to get out on the last day of the snow. So Ami and Helen made an early start (8.20am-ish), the snow becoming deeper as we drove eastwards to Kettlewell. In fact, the snow and ice on the ground at valley level meant that we had to fork out for the National Park’s £6.50 parking, rather than venturing into an extremely icy looking £3 option.
What is usually a 30-35 minute walk took us 1h40!! Snow was deep (over 2ft in the 2nd half) and very icy. There was only two other sets of old footprints, which we presumed were left by a farmer and dog heading down the valley. We tried to follow but our stride lengths meant that new holes had to be made with virtually every step (mostly by Ami as my knee was not coping well with having to lift my foot out of deep holes at every step). We were completely exhausted when we eventually completed the 1.25 mile ‘walk’ up the valley!
After a bit of sustenance, and ridding ourselves of all the extra clothing we had worn to protect against the cold, we decided to go for a 1h30 recce of the initial section. Having had such a laborious tramp up the valley we wanted to be returning in the light so that we could see the places where we had slipped and fallen on the way! (When I say ‘see’, we had both suffered minor snow blindness on the way to the cave as, although fully equipped with (much too) warm clothing, neither of us had packed snow goggles–and they would have been extremely useful.
Having done the full trip 3 x previously, I was still surprised to discover that the first section was thrutchy and wet! We ventured as far as the Blasted Canal and completed the 18m (very wet & muddy) crawl but, having expected the continuation to be just a few climbs and a bit of mud, were surprised to find that the following section also involved getting chest deep wet in low, wet, and muddy crawls–so we took this as our turn around point.
On surfacing, with a few hours of above zero temperatures, the snow had completely changed. We could confidently push through the snow, even most of the deeper sections and so returned to the car in about an hour.
Yes, it was a mad trip. But amazing to be out in such a lot of snaow at such a low level.

Here’s a google drive link to some photos, and a video of our return trip through the really wet bit: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-8-K7853hUSyysK_ZHLlvAfxLCS7nic_?usp=drive_link

8 January 2025

By Tom C In Day Trips

Sunset Hole

Ami, Jasmine, Scott, Steve, Tom – Report by Steve

With Rumbling Hole down on the meets list and pictures of the Bull Pot Farm road full of snow from the previous weekend, it was decided that the Leck Fell road was to be avoided and we changed to the main Ribblehead road and met at the Hill Inn. We opted for a longer walk to Sunset Hole rather than closer options to take full advantage of the snowy conditions on such a still, clear night. We were not disappointed as we were in the snow as soon as we left the road and the stars were certainly out.

We followed a surprisingly well trodden snowy path through Southerscales up to the final wall. Here the footprints split to go up Ingleborough or turn right and follow the wall towards the Black Shiver Moss area. With an unknown van arriving near the layby at a similar time to us we wondered if by chance we’d have to share the cave with another group. However, the footprints continued along the wall and we eventually had to start to make our own path across the snow field up towards Sunset. For some reason it seemed easier to find and after a bit of wading and sliding about we were soon at the entrance. At this point Tom was leaving us, he had only come out for the walk as his back was playing up. Its either full marks for his dedication to KCC or we’d just been used as an excuse to get out of some kind of new house type chores. Entering the cave was bliss, it seemed like a sauna in comparison to outside and we soon warmed up and progressed downstream.

Ami rigged the first two pitches with no issues, mainly because we could and it did help avoid what little water there was flowing in the streamway. The second two pitches were rigged with Steve’s shiny new rope on its first outing. These ropes proved to be very quick to descend and braking crabs were definatly needed. The magical combination of new rope and not new cams rendered Jasmines descender brake lever redundant and she had to revert back to two handed control of rope. I’ll take it on a muddy trip next time to wear it in properly and slow it down a bit.

A chat about the upper extensions and the bedding plane half way down the final pitch was as far as any extra exploration got. On reading the CNCC notes afterwards it seems they are looking for an update on a potential link to the upper series from a chamber before the 3rd pitch, so there’s more to be done on the next trip if we can remember.

The way out was OK, despite lugging 75 metres of wet rope in a single bag, a visit to Action Stash is required to add a couple of smaller rope bags to Steve’s new rope collection would help for next time they are deployed.

With the knowledge of what awaited us exiting the cave we’d all avoided as much water as possible and were probably dryer than a normal summer trip! We took full advantage of the shelter in the cave entrance to sort ourselves out with dry hats, gloves etc and emerged back into the winter wonderland for a very pleasant walk back to the vans. We were still quite warm enough after the walk despite my van suggesting the temperature was hovering around -8 / -9 degrees C all the way back to Ingleton. All in all a splendid way to spend a winters evening away from the fire side & TV.

3 January 2025

By Ray McGarry In Day Trips

Valley Entrance

Pete, Nat, Will

1 January 2025

By Tom C In Day Trips

Devis Hole Mine

Maz, Scott, Tom

There was no chance we were going anywhere near the planned Swinsto following some of the heaviest rain since Roman times the day before and overnight, and Maz suggested an adventure over in Swaledale that would make a change to our usual areas of operation.

We descended on Kirkby Stephen for midday and slung our gear into Maz’s van. The hour-long windy road over into, and along, Swaledale was the perfect storm for my travel sickness and I spent the hour with my head out the window counting down the endless little villages before I’d be able to get out.

Temperatures were ‘brisk to disconcerting’ when we arrived at the parking spot and we wrapped up in more layers than usual, but at least it was dry and sunny. The walk up past Grinton smelt mill was lovely and we were soon up at the sloping pipe entrance. We slithered down easily and into the main level, through a couple of crawly bits and an unavoidable shower before breaking into taller walking passage. Maz’s arse disappeared off into a couple of side passages looking for the maze cave but it was a little further on, where a tall rift had several crawls leading off at head height.

The survey we had hurt the eyes to look at, and we decided to head into the maze for what seemed to be a straightforward little round trip to get a feel for it, only to find things didn’t link back round at the end and backtracked. We took a different passage and began a bewildering journey of trying to remember each turn. With junctions every couple of metres, each passage offered a different shape and challenge. Scott had taken charge of remembering the turns we were taking so we all promptly spread out taking totally different parallel routes just to confuse matters.

A band of crazy fossilised coral followed us at roof height through most of the passages, with lots to look at when you zoomed into it. Eventually, Scott rang the alarm bell that his working memory of junctions we’d taken had reached capacity, and we began back-tracking. It’s quite disorientating how lost you can feel after covering only about 40-50 metres in there.

We headed back out of the maze to go explore a bit more of the mine levels. First we headed up the West Vein trying to find the Occidental Series. This level is an unusual place, with what looks like natural passage on one wall and mined wall on the other side – probably natural stuff that had been widened. We couldn’t find the way in to Occidental at all, only a collapsed section where we thought it was supposed to be.

Next we headed along Robinson’s Level. This was easy going, with an impressive dig up and over a large collapse as the only obstacle to walking, and on the far side of the drippy tube of the dig we came across Pearson’s Sump, a 15m shaft that we later learned is the route on to the farther reaches. We sadly hadn’t brought any SRT gear and vowed to return to descend it in the future.

Time was ticking on now after about 3.5 hours underground, and we knew that snow was forecast and we had a high road to get back over, so we made our way out with a quick stop to have a look along Pearson’s Level before the chore of the entrance pipe popped us back out into darkness, and light snowfall.

We made it back over the tops to Kirkby just in time, with the snow getting heavier as we passed over.

Month: January 2025