Rowten Pot

Long Dave & Ray

For a long time now, I’ve been trying to arrange an exchange trip in Rowten. I think it would be a very jolly experience, with people passing close to each other all over the place. But numbers or weather have always conspired to thwart my plans. This time it was both! In the end, only Dave and I signed up on a particularly bleak early spring morning with a forecast for rain all day.

Having just returned from Tasmania a couple of days before, I was feeling particularly jet-lagged and lethargic, so was very happy when Dave said he didn’t mind not getting to the bottom on this occasion. This meant that we only had 2 bags to carry up the hill, rather than 3. Phew.

It was a pretty quick and efficient trip to the bottom of the Main Chamber. I rigged the entrance pitch down the Eyehole and Dave took over to rig the big pitch, which he hadn’t rigged before. He made short work of it too.

This was only Dave’s 2nd trip to Rowten. On the 1st occasion, I had rigged the big pitch, using my trademark hybrid route of descending from the 1st y-hang in the bottomless rift and swinging over onto the far wall halfway down to join the Big Gully route at the descending line of rebelays. Dave must have enjoyed this on his previous visit as he chose to take the same route this time, despite my suggestion that he may want to take the more traditional route to the end of the bottomless rift.

In no time at all, we were both down in Main Chamber, looking down the Flyover, wishing we had brought the other bag of rope. However, this did give us a chance to explore as far as we could (tackle-free) on the Direct route. I hadn’t actually been down that way for many, many years, so was quite surprised by how far it’s possible to get. There are a few short climbs to get down, which looked like they may be interesting on the way back up, but we forged on. Eventually we ended up about level with and reasonably close to the 2nd rebelay of Flyover route, reinforcing my opinion that an exchange would be a very sociable affair indeed.

On the way back up to Main Chamber, Dave spotted Calcite Inlet. We didn’t attempt to squeeze into this, but it does look very nice. The 2 interesting climbs weren’t too bad to get back up. Combined tactics worked nicely on the lower one. For the upper one, Dave had left a convenient length of 6mm string attached to a handy anchor, which I was very pleased to see.

I set off up the big pitch first, with Dave derigging. One of the advantages of my hybrid route is that it breaks the big pitch up, so that 2 people can be ascending at the same time. Despite the extra rigging, I think this actually speeds things up. At the top of the big pitch, I offered to take over derigging, but Dave was in his element, so I took his bag off him and set off out. Dave appeared on the surface before I’d even had a chance to catch my breath.

This was a great, quick trip and Rowten delivered as it always does. Just to round things off, Dave produced a couple of slices of the cake he made himself for his recent wedding. Move over OG Sophie, there’s a new cake king in town!

No photos of the trip, but check the cake out…