Little Hull Pot

Team: Will, Connor, Scott, James, Archie

Earlier in the year I was supposed to lead a LHP trip but unfortunately couldn’t make it and no replacement leader/team was available at the time. So I was keen to reorganise this trip before the end of the year.

The five of us met in Horton-in-Ribblesdale ready for our ‘slightly longer than usual’ walk in up the Pennine Way towards Pen-y-Ghent, accompanied by my four-legged companion Lenny. Although it was a cold day around 4-5 degrees surface temp, the sun was shining and there was little to no wind to contend with, so spirits were high and we were soon at the shake hole donning SRT kits.

I was raring to go, so quickly set about navigating the initial cobbled entrance crawl to meet the streamway where it was possible to stand again. A short romp downstream in this familiar passageway soon found us at the first pitch, which I quickly set about rigging with some new rope I picked up from Inglesport the day prior (100m of Edelrid Performance Static for £100!!! Can’t get bargains like that anymore!) Connor was hot on my tail through the re-belays and traverse and we were soon on the ground once again watching the others work their way through the pitch. To keep things moving, we headed off downstream yet again towards the second pitch. Although the levels were pretty low, none of us fancied getting any wetter than we had to, and so the high option with a squeeze through to the ledge was our direction of travel for the second pitch. To be honest, water or not, I think I prefer this way as you get a slightly bigger abseil and some more complex rigging to play with. As I’d finished rigging the pitch head, I heard the others catching back up, so wasted no time in getting down the pitch and keeping the pace going. Again Connor was chasing me down, and whilst the others were working their way through the second pitch, Connor and I pressed on to find the crux. Your faced with the option of either going through a 5-6m low tube/crawl half filled with the coldest water I’ve ever encountered in the Dales, or you must negotiate a ‘bypass’ consisting of a narrow rift with a couple of squeeze pinch points. As I said earlier, some of us (excluding James!) had zero intentions of getting any wetter than necessary, so needless to say we stripped our SRT kits and began working our way through the squeezes. I emerged from the other side just in time to catch James making his way through the low wet tube towards me. Behind his wake, I could just about make out Archie and Scott stripping their SRT kits in preparation for the squeezes, time to push on and keep the momentum I think! After some more rift-y streamway negotiated at water level and then also traversing high in places, we came to the final pitch. Nothing to complex here, just careful of where your placing your feet as everything around you feels very loose and ready to fall. With all five of us to the bottom, we took it in turns to explore around briefly before beginning the journey back to the surface.

Luckily, as self nominated team rigger, my work here was done and so I set off up the ropes first with camera in hand ready to catch make up for the lack of pictures and video I’d taken on the way in due to rigging. The chaps decided between them and took a pitch each to de-rig on the way out and so off we went. It wasn’t long before we were all up the final pitch and working our way back through the crux squeeze, again emerging from the other side in time to watch Scott this time take on the low wet tube of horror, before James also. Naturally, we all reconvened at the second pitch with it being the biggest and taking the longest to ascend, however this gave us plenty of time to get some good pictures and play about with lighting. Once we were through this, the re-filled tackle sacks began moving forward to us front runners and we were soon back moving towards the exit. Like a well oiled machine, we worked our way back up through the first pitch and into the cobbled entrance crawl. Emerging into daylight was quite a welcome, as was the sun when we came out of the shake hole ready for our trod back to Horton.

Pics & write up by Will