A Flushing through Short Drop

Tom, Maz, Chris G, Sophie P, Sophie H, Billy, Vikki, Ray

With incredible foresight, Paddy declared himself unable to lead this one weeks in advance, so I took the reins for what should have been a nice relaxed wander through Short Drop and, hopefully, an extension to see the pretties of Glasfurd’s Chamber in Gavel Pot. Tom even volunteered to rig the Gavel entrance and the 2 pitches down to Glasfurd’s.

All such hopes were in doubt as the heavens opened while we were getting changed, soaking everyone before we even set foot underground. For a while it was really pleasant to be in the cave. Until we started the crawl that is. Water levels in this were unpleasantly high and were a definite sign of things to come. Water was thundering through the narrow rift passage after the crawl, which was quite fun, but every short downclimb seemed to end in a deep pool. Some of these pools seemed almost bottomless. Poor Sophie P managed an almost complete submerging in one.

As the passage got bigger, so it became more pleasant. But how wet was the pitch going to be? As it neared, the sound seemed to suggest it would be very wet indeed. Last time I was in SD, there was a fixed rope, but no such convenience this evening. The pitch was quickly rigged and Sophie P offered as a sacrificial rope dummy. Would she disappear into the waterfall never to be seen again? Thankfully no. The rope hung largely free of the falling water. However, there was little avoiding the deep pool below. Most people got a bit of a dunking here until they were able to scrabble back onto dry land.

After everyone else had descended, I thought about leaving the pitch hard rigged and just coming back for the rope on a drier day, but opted for a quick rerig as a pull-through. Thankfully the rope pulled down easily enough and we were on our way again. Most people were really starting to feel the cold by now after waiting at either the top or the bottom of the pitch for quite a while. The prospect of visiting Glasfurd’s was definitely starting to lose its appeal.

A short distance downstream we saw Tom’s light at the end of the traverse from Gavel. A very welcome sight indeed. So began the long process of getting everyone up the initial climb, across the traverse and up the Gavel entrance pitch. While awaiting my own turn, I took the chance to derig the pitches down to Glasfurd’s. I was glad to see that Tom had only rigged the first of these, so that I didn’t have to go far down.

Thankfully the weather was much more pleasant on the walk back from Gavel, although there were grumblings in the ranks about it being quite uphill… and a long way. Clearly we had descended quite a long way through Short Drop. It felt quite late and I wondered if we may be in danger of missing our callout time, but it was only 10pm as we stragglers got back to the cars.

I’d never been to Short Drop in such wet conditions before, but looking back at it now from a nice warm house, it was sort of fun. I’m hoping the trip has whetted the appetites of some of our newer members to go back and have an explore up some of the numerous inlets.