Sell Gill Holes

Paddy, Jasmine, Tom, Sophie P, Sophie H, Ray

The rather hopeful plan had originally been for an exchange between the dry and wet entrances. As the day grew close, it was obvious this wasn’t going to happen due to the persistent and occasionally very heavy rain. As luck would have it though, Sophies H & P, both relatively new to SRT signed up, so the evening morphed seamlessly into a training trip. As even more luck would have it, on the drive over, Jasmine was spotted practicing knot tying on the back seat. Whether she was willing or not (I think she was), we also now had a trainee rigger!

A quick look at the wet entrance confirmed that it wasn’t an option. So Jasmine was attached to a tackle bag and prodded towards the dry entrance. To be fair, she barely flinched and set to rigging the surface pitch like a pro. The rigging couldn’t have been better, even the rebelay before the final drop was dispatched effortlessly and with the perfect rope length in the loop. Nice!

Pitched rigged, the 2 Sophies stepped up and both passed the rebelay with ease. Only at the bottom of the pitch did Sophie H announce that she had never done a rebelay before, although she had watched a few YouTube videos. Reminiscent of Dougle Dave – very impressive.

There had been a half plan to look up Calcite Way. However, as training trips tend to take a bit longer, we decided to leave this and see how we felt on the way out.

Jasmine could justifiably have stepped back and let someone else take over rigging for the 2nd pitch, but she was far from finished yet. A hop, skip & jump along the ledge and she had a beautiful traverse line rigged with a perfectly balanced y-hang. Meanwhile, Paddy had done a great job of rigging the alternative hang along the right hand wall. He did particularly well to reach the higher anchor for the far branch of his y-hang as he was forbidden to use the much more convenient lower one due to it being required for Jasmine to rig a deviation. I don’t actually know who derigged the RH wall. I can only presume it was Paddy as I don’t think anyone else could have reached the awkward anchor.

Paddy reached the bottom of the 2nd pitch first and used Tom’s mega-torch to illuminate the others descending. I think Tom got some great shots. Both Sophies used Jasmine’s LH route and both managed the traverse and deviation with no trouble at all.

Having got us this far, Jasmine carried on rigging the final pitch. She was unhappy with the length of her y-hang above the final drop. It seemed ok to me, but it’s a sign of her attention to detail. Mathematicians!!

From the top of the final pitch, it was clear that the waterfall pouring down Goblin Shaft was pretty spicy. This certainly turned out to be the case when we reached the bottom. The noise was almost deafening and the wind was so strong that it was almost impossible to look up the shaft. I think we made the right decision not to try an exchange!

We had a brief look around the main chamber before making our way out. Tom & Paddy had a look at the outlet crawl from the main chamber. Apparently it wasn’t as wet as they had expected. I still wouldn’t have wanted to push it.

The journey out seemed to go smoothly enough. Sophie P even decided to take the harder RH route back up the 2nd pitch. She smashed the technical dismount from the pitch head, but there was a bit of a comedy sketch at the end of the traverse line, which was much too high for her.

We didn’t bother with Calcite Way as time was getting on. Lots to go back for on the next trip.

Jasmine certainly has a great future as a rigger. Hopefully both Sophies will have long SRT careers. I look forward to seeing them progress and doing some great trips with them. What a great evening. Thanks all!

Photos by Paddy, Tom & Ray