County Pot

Scott, James, Dave + (almost, but not quite) Ray

Report from Dave:

Link Pot Another “Not What We Aimed For” Trip Report – County Pot

James, Ray, Scott & Dave headed off for Link Pot, to be thwarted by a rather swiftly flowing, Dave-waist-deep Leck Beck.

We headed on up the valley towards the higher up parts of the system, again thwarted by the beck which was higher than the footpath and up to the wall, in favour of caving another day rather than chancing his knee Ray headed on back to the warmth of BPF. This left the three of us heading to the entrance to County Pot without using the submerged path, with Scott finding it as though he had a built in nav.

Warmed up from the hike and ready to be underground, we made swift work of the entrance series and its squeezes, with Scott quickly rigging the pitch for an abseil. Slithering gracefully down onto Broadway in no time.

From here we explored various areas, Battle of Britain chamber, Spout hall to name a couple (forgive my naivety I was aMAZEd by the complexity of the passages and options), linked with lovely boulder crawls and nicely polished squeezes. The water fall was in full flow and the noise was tremendous as was the airflow as a result. Scott slid though to recce the a potential route but there was too much water so we opted to slide blindly backward onto the scaffold and explore the maze of passages and see some of the formations, sadly my camera was tucked safely and dryly in the boot of Ray’s car! A fixed rope descent took us to the bottom of White Line chamber for a view up the waterfall.

Deprived of a round trip by the removal of another fixed rope, we turned tail and began the return leg and the interesting climbs up the scaffold bar and the dangling sling out of Broadway, working our way up the tight squeezes that didn’t seem that small on the way down, with our SRT kit giving us some nice sounds effects. Before long we were back in the clear night air and heading back towards BPF across the fell, nothing to report here other than the disturbance of numerous Grouse.

A short but sweet back-up trip, underground at 8 and back at the farm by 10, with kudos to Scott for his navigation and a big thanks to Ray for waiting to take James and Dave home. We were certainly in a better state than the 3 Red Rose members who passed us returning from a dig in “not a nice place”. Hopefully we manage to achieve a planned Wednesday trip soon!