Gaping Gill – BPC winch meet

Team: Ami & Will

Route: Stream Passage to Bar Pot via Main Chamber

After a couple of last minute drop outs and a very rubbish morning weather wise, Ami and I met in Clapham in pretty high spirits ready for a good day out. We had no specific plan, Ami had been in once before when the winch meet wasn’t on and I’d been the previous May with Ray and Claire where Ray took us in Marilyn and out Small Mammal. Ray had recommended Stream Passage to us as one of his favourites, so we sort of had that lined up but thought we’d get up to the tent and see what was what and go from there. We had a dry walk in luckily and quickly found ourselves at the tent gearing up ready to go. With only a couple of teams on the board but headed different ways we were on for SP so quickly navigated our way across the fell to the entrance tube.

The first pitch only short but with an interesting squeeze before the final descent which Ami breezed through and I not so much! The following 3 pitches were continuous and we leapfrogged each other for the photo opportunities before finding ourselves quickly in Stream Chamber. From here we worked our way to the main chamber with a few stops along the way to check the route description, confidence certainly reinstalled when we met a couple of children that had come down the winch in Sand Cavern – we must be getting close! After arriving in the main chamber we sat and spent quite a bit of time chatting to others, taking pictures, having a snack or two, and just taking it all in!

Ready to leave, we thought we’d aim for Flood Entrance as neither of us had done that before but new we could get there fairly easily and quickly, and we didn’t fancy too much more navigating and crawling through the unknown! Before long, we were crawling through the unknown and out came the description to aid navigate. We somehow ended up in a maze of crawling passages thinking we’d truly made a cock up and we’re going to have to double back to the main chamber and then we ended up on the ledge at the bottom of Flood Entrance main pitch, exactly where we wanted to be! However, there was a party descending and informed us there were 4 behind the leader so we thought we’d keep heading along the passage to Bar Pot. Here, another party were mid ascent and so onward we went again to SE Aven where we found some peace and quiet and a free rope to ascend. Up I went first to get some good shots of Ami climbing and right as she was coming into shot another team of two had just worked their way through sideways slot travers that we had to come. After a brief hello and passing in the best place on the route we could have asked for, onward we went and worked our way one at a time through the slot and then up through the boulders to the first pitch of Bar Pot. Ami patiently waited for me to manoeuvre myself through the tight-ish pitch head before then showing me how it’s done. A few minutes more of scrambling and we surfaced, still in the dry to walk back to the tent and sign out before making our way leisurely back into Clapham. Another fantastic winch meet experience!

I must also add, having gone last year on a Saturday to the BPC event and seeing huge crowds and queues with waits of hours long, this year certainly seemed a lot less congested and public friendly. Well done and thank you again to the BPC.

Write up and pics by Will