Oxlow Caverns

Ray and his non-KCC friend John Bown

Will had planned this as a day trip to the Peak, but no-one apart from me signed up. Not to worry – Will and I would still have a great trip. Until Will pulled out, that is. Now, I’m not so easily put off, especially since I was due to be down that way anyway. So I set about finding some other friends to go with. Only John answered the call. Still, that would be enough.

I packed all the tackle and set off south, via Vikki’s parents in Chinley, meeting John in the 5-Ways launderette cafe in Buxton (one of his favourites) bright and early on Saturday morning. What the cafe lacks in quality it makes up for in cheapness.

Suitably satisfied (in quantity at least), we moved on to the parking spot, where we both had issues trying to park on the same side of the road as the cave. The drop off from the tarmac is getting more extreme every time I go there. It’s now much better to park on the other side of the road, unless you have substantial clearance.

When we eventually got parked, I emptied all the tackle we would need out the back of the car… as did John. Hmmm, perhaps our communication could have been better. Interestingly, although we had packed ropes for the same trip, John somehow had a LOT less rope than me. Ah yes, he said, both the CCPC and the DCA rigging guides are overly generous. So we essentially took John’s tackle as he goes there more often than I do and presumably knows the rigging better. We didn’t take any rope for the West Swirl Ramp as it’s always rigged. We had a half-plan to look up into Pilgrims Way, which needs a bit more rope than the 5th pitch, so we swapped out John’s 15m for my 19m, which would do both pitches (not at the same time obviously). All ropes managed to fit easily into 2 bags. In fact, one of the bags was even quite empty! I liked this approach.

On arrival at the entrance, John informed me that, while he knew his rope lengths were sufficient, they would be a bit tight. Ahh. I started to like his approach a bit less… especially when I realised that he had brought 30m for the entrance pitch, whereas I had packed 45m. John set off rigging. On my way down the entrance shaft, I noted that I passed 2 anchors, presumably for deviations or rebelays to avoid rope rub. John had also passed these anchors. The rope did rub a bit, but to be fair it’s only really glancing off relatively flat rock. Certainly nothing worth worrying too much about. At the bottom of the entrance shaft is another y-hang for a short 4m drop. No need for the y-hang John informed me, rigging off a single anchor. I could soon see why when his rope literally just reached the bottom. A y-hang would have left us dangling. So, it turns out the entrance pitch can indeed be done with a 30m rope – whether it’s wise or not is another matter.

As we were going to make use of the fixed rope on West Swirl, we weren’t sure exactly how long a rope was need to get us there. In the end, we conservatively estimated that 60m should be enough for the 2nd, 3rd and the swing onto the ramp. John set off rigging the 2nd and I took over for the 3rd. The deviation on the 3rd was pre-equipped with tat and even a krab. The swing onto the ramp was easy enough and then a very short bit of descent down the ramp to reach the start of the fixed rope. As it turns out, 50m would have been enough. At this rate, John will be down to a single bag for his next trip!

I shot off down the ramp to get the pitch at the bottom rigged, only to find that it too was pre-rigged. The rigging wasn’t great, but it was preferable to rigging our own rope. The trip was going very well, and very quick so far.

We regrouped at the bottom of the pitch up into Pilgrims Way. Having made such good time to this point, there really weren’t any excuses for not popping up. So we tied our rope onto the polyprop cord and hauled it up through the ring at the top. There are 2 anchors for an inverted y-hang at the bottom. I was first up and was glad to see that there is a fixed traverse line at the top.

Neither John nor I had been up here before, so we were quite excited to get going. It starts as a low crawl, but soon enlarges to easy hands and knees crawling, a bit like the crawls from Bar Pot to GG main chamber. It does go on a bit though, passing many side crawls along the way. We didn’t poke up any of these.

Eventually, the going gets a bit more flat out for a very short distance, complete with puddle for maximum unpleasantness, before we entered the bottom of an aven (Mecca Aven?). The connection to Giants Hole, via the Chamber of Horrors, goes off to the left here. Fortunately John didn’t fancy looking up here on this occasion. I certainly didn’t! Thankfully, this marks the end of the crawling. From here it’s mostly walking in a passage that gets progressively bigger.

In North Chamber there was a rope heading up. We pondered on what may be up there, but left it at that. It turns out that this rope leads up to the Crusader Series, which seems well worth a visit at some point. We knew that just around the corner was North Pitch. We had decided not to bring a rope for this pitch, largely because we couldn’t be bothered carrying it through the Pilgrims Way crawl, but also because I suspected it would be pre-rigged. Rounding the corner, we were pleased to see that our gamble had paid off. It was rigged. As with most fixed ropes, however, it wasn’t easy to get on to.

I went down first and waited for John, excited to see what lay beyond. Sadly, my excitement wasn’t warranted. What lay a very short distance beyond was a miserable low, wet crawl. Neither of us could quite remember the description, but thought that this was a sign that the sump was close, with only a short wet crawl and some ducks between us and it. This didn’t seem appealing, so we decided to call it a day. In fact, this was the start of The Sewer, a 46m miserable wet crawl leading to some more big stuff, before 3 dams and then the sump. May be worth pushing on next time.

As we turned around, we felt quite a long way from home, especially with the prospect of the long Pilgrims Way crawl ahead of us. Dismounting North Pitch was as entertaining as we expected. Shortly after, there is a rather annoying little climb up, complete with stacked rocks to make it slightly easier… but not easy enough. We both struggled on this. Apart from that, the journey back to the top of our rope back down into West Chamber went surprisingly well. We were both surprised by how quickly we got back through Pilgrims Way, so much so that John crawled straight past the side passage leading to our rope.

The journey out from here went quickly, with me derigging and it was good to pop out into pleasant sunshine. The throngs of people on top of, and on their way up, Mam Tor across the valley were something to behold. A quick stop off at the Hanging Gate pub for a debrief completed the day nicely.

I would recommend this trip to anyone. There’s so much more to Oxlow if you go up the pitch into Pilgrims Way. I hope to go back at some point for a look into Crusader Series. Who’s up for it?