Not Peak Cavern

Jasmine, Scott

Quick write up for this one. Despite early promise, the weather deteriorated badly in the run up to the trip, so once again Peak Cavern was abandoned. Jasmine and I were still keen to cave, so we had a little foray into Suicide Cave to do some rigging practice for a couple of hours, had lunch, and then headed to Eldon Hole. We rigged the straight hang down the West Side and got dangling. A couple of rebelays later and we were at the base of the Main Shaft. From here you can climb down into an adjacent big chamber, and use the in situ tracer cord to rig your own rope through an anchor high up on the far wall. This leads into the Damocles Rift pitches, which are quite spectacular and are well worth taking a rope to access.
The next day we had a quick trip to Knotlow Caverns. Once again, I managed to take the wrong, very narrow lane from Monyash, and walk past the hatch entrance. I did at least remember a ‘Derbyshire Key’ though, and Jasmine was soon rigging down the Climbing Shaft.

Knotlow is an interesting mixture of cave and mine, and after a couple of pitches we reached the balcony overlooking the Waterfall Chamber. Predictably this was wet at the bottom, precluding a full descent, but Jasmine was keen to crack the aid traverse and descend a few metres at least. She did a great job, getting soaked in the process by a persistent dribble of icy water from above. To finish off we decided to find the window to the Chapel Dale Engine Shaft, and used that to descend to the other side of Waterfall Chamber, stopping just above the water before reascending, and then derigging our way back out to daylight.
So, once more Peak Cavern was foiled by the capricious Pennine weather, but thanks to Jasmine I had a great weekend of dangling on ropes in Derbyshire. Will be back in the Spring for another try at Peak!