Middle Scar

Damian, Maz, Tim, Gareth, Helen, Jason

I hadn’t realised that this cave was open (surprisingly, a thirty year-old copy of Northern Caves 2 isn’t totally reliable), so thanks to Damian for spotting it.  As we were just starting the long trek (c. 200m) from the cars to the cave, a motorist pulled up and asked where we were heading.  It turned out to be Andrew Hinde, who is not only a great luminary of northern caving, but was responsible for opening up Middle Scar during lockdown, repairing the entrance which had been collapsed for decades!

We quickly found the entrance – a few feet above a stream resurgence at the northern end of the shakehole – and descended.  Almost immediately, we were in deep water, but fortunately a traverse line allows progress without actually swimming.  Neoprene is definitely needed, though, as chest-deep wading continues for a while after the traverse line finishes.

The going got easier in a nice rifty passage until the “13-foot climb” is reached.  NC describes this as an easy climb, which it probably is, technically, but the material is so crumbly and loose that it’s much better to use the in-situ rope with SRT.  As well as being dubious from a safety viewpoint, climbing up would almost certainly damage the ‘rock’ so would be terrible in conservation terms.

The cave continued as mixed walking and crawling, still wet, but not difficult, until we came to a junction.  We turned left, into some interesting passage with unusual formations including fragile flakes of black material that need extreme care to pass by.  We reached Parba aven, a waterfall, which is as far as we could go, not having any means of ascent.

Returning to the junction, Damian took the straight-on (now left) fork into a low, very wet crawl.  I followed, but if he hadn’t gone first, I would probably have concluded that it didn’t go – the roof  was often intimidatingly low over the water!  Eventually this leads to a short section of pleasanter passage with some nice formations, before properly sumping.

This trip was a lot of fun, with nothing too hard, but definitely not one for novices, or if the weather is at all unsettled!

PS – Gareth produced one of his cracking short videos from this trip.  This did entail a certain amount of squatting in cold water while lighting was perfected, but hey! who doesn’t want to suffer in the name of art?