Author: Tom C

By Tom C In Day Trips

Boundary Pot, Easegill

Jason Clements, Darren Mackenzie, Tom Calpin, Yolanda Aze

None of us had done full Boundary before, with Jason itching to get it over with after several failed meets list appointments over the years. Him and Darren had tried it once in damp weather, only to be turned back by a section of ‘washing machine’ passage in the entrance series.

We slogged over the fell to the second highest entrance to the system, and slid through the entrance bedding. Down a climb, down another, right, left, down another climb, through some flat-out and acute corners, I lost track a bit to be honest. But eventually we popped out at the top of an airy traverse round a pot in a chamber and a free-climb down. Through a cross-rift into Fusion Cavern and into bigger stuff. We made our way past some fantastic crystal false floors and into Hiroshima.

We found the Manhattan connection without much difficulty up on the ledge, and popped down into upper Easegill. Made our way up to Nagasaki but ended up going upstream from here trying to find the route onwards, eventually getting to Limerick Junction before realising our mistake. We headed back in the right direction out Nagasaki and through the little canyon for a quick visit to Easter Grotto, Yolanda’s first visit there.

We’d have loved to go back out of Wretched at this point, but sadly due to the blockage it’d have to be County. This took longer than I remembered and by time we popped out of the entrance flap we were all knackered.

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May be an image of 3 people, people standing and outdoors

By Tom C In Day Trips

Heron Pot – 29th May 2019

Darren M, Scott, Tom C, Jason

Darren kindly offered to lead this trip, opting for the high-level route in case of wet conditions.  It had rained most of the day, but water levels in the becks were reassuringly low.  We were soon at the pitch, where I dangled for a while for Darren to get some photos (not necessarily of my best side!) from below.  Scott had the job of lighting me from above while balancing on the tiny ledges at the pitch head, not easy when you’re trying not to look down!  Tom later mentioned the traverse to the pitch had got his heart racing – I assured him his was not the only one.

I recalled the guidebook mentioning a high-level Phreatic Inlet, so we decided to find it.  At the first right-hand turn, I sent Darren up a fruitless climb in the roof, but there was another turn soon after, at which we managed to climb up to a promising passage – except Tom, who was exploring downstream.  The passage went some way to a nicely-decorated chamber with another awkward climb out of it.  Scott conquered this and slithered along a narrow rifty passage above for a little way before returning.  It might be worth returning to pursue this to the end, but the guidebook doesn’t hold much hope of ‘marvellous things’.

Returning to the pitch bottom, we realised we hadn’t made a plan with Tom – which way had he headed?  In the end, Scott nobly volunteered to get wet going out the downstream entrance in case Tom was waiting there, while Darren and I ascended the pitch.  We found Tom waiting for us at the entrance – had he gone up the rope first?  No – he had pushed on out of the wet exit on his own and come back to meet us.  Good effort!  As we walked down the hill, we met a dripping Scott and returned to the cars in what passed for daylight, low cloud having descended as we walked back.  Still, a good trip, and nice to find a ‘new’ section of a familiar cave.

 

 

By Tom C In Day Trips

Hardrawkin Pot

It was a beautiful evening to be on Inglebrough. Gareth, Darren, Andy J., James and Sophie headed for Hardrawkin Pot in the sunshine. A little climb down led to some interesting passage, decorated in places with milky coloured glittering rock. This quickly led to the head of the first pitch. Trip reports online suggested that this was going to be an abseil down a booming great waterfall. Due to the dry weather this summer however, the decent looked pretty dry. A second pitch led to a sump. Then it was back up and to the Marton Arms (they apparently have a better gin selection than the Hill Inn *rolls eyes*) before heading home – Will this do Darren?! 

By Tom C In Day Trips

Lost John’s to Notts II

Bob C, Tony B, Jason

A few months back, I read an online report of a pull-through trip from Lost John’s, exiting from Notts II (Iron Kiln Pot, if you want to be pedantic), I thought “Really?  That sounds fun!”.  Having got the new Northern Caves book for Christmas, there seemed to be enough information to find the way.

The quiet period between Christmas and New Year looked to be an ideal opportunity for a proper trip, but only Bob and Tony took the bait.  We discussed doing a pull-through, but in the end caution prevailed, and we rigged normally following the Centipede route. 

At the bottom of Centipede, well near the bottom, I was surprised to find – the end of the rope.  Odd, the topo called for a 60m rope, and I had brought a – oh! – a 50m rope from the tackle store.  Well, that 5 on the label looked awfully like a 6 without my glasses.  A good shelf allowed us off the rope, but the final 3m is sheer.  What to do? Sacrifice the rope allocated to the final pitch and abandon the through trip?  In the end, we tied on a piece of cord I carry ‘just in case’ and that was just enough to get to the ground after Bob had taken all the slack out of the rope from Mud to Centipede.

Not long afterwards, we were at Groundsheet Junction, where we stopped for a welcome cup of tea and bourbons (thanks, Tony!).  I’ll describe the route from here in case anybody fancies the trip.

Turning left upstream, the next landmark is Lyle Cavern, which none of us knew (apart from Bob, who had been there 40 years ago!).  It’s about 200m upstream – look for a small roped climb on the left. (You’ll see a rope on the left over a big calcite buttress about half-way there – ignore this). 

Follow this rope about half-way and turn upslope to the right – this is the bottom of Lyle Cavern (we went to the top of the rope and spent some time fruitlessly looking for the way on – there’s plenty of passage there, but not the one we wanted – I was keeping an eye on the time and voted to head back out Lost John’s, but fortunately Bob spotted the way on as we were retracing our steps).

Going up the boulder slope, there’s a calcite slope on the right, described as an “exposed 3.5m climb” but there was a rope, so we used it.  Further up, a rope hangs down from a high aven.  This is supposedly a 19m pitch, but it seemed quite a long 19m.

At the top, go straight on up a rift, with some lovely helictites – called Helictite Rift (!).  This involves some steepish climbs, but nothing too challenging. As it levels out at the top, you reach a prominent T-junction.  Left leads into Boxhead, but straight on is West Passage, tall, decorated, easy, although there are big holes in the floor.

At the end is a boulder choke.  It looks unpromising, but if you stay on the right-hand wall and crawl upwards, you come to a small chamber.  Then go up again, over where you came in, to reach a second chamberette.  You now look for a slot down against the left-hand wall, but it’s not the first obvious slot (I confidently went down here and was dismayed to find the way blocked by rubble – had the choke collapsed?  Would we have turn back? No…).  You go a little further and find a tight calcite slot.  Now is the time to take off your SRT kit, as this is the start of engineered route through the choke to Notts II.

This goes on for quite a long time (apparently 140m, but that doesn’t sound long enough!).  It’s often awkward and squirmy, never spacious, but never desperately tight either and there’s never any doubt about where to go.  The amount of scaffolding is quite awe-inspiring.  Quite a bit of time was spent passing the tangled web of SRT kit between us – a small tackle bag to put it in would have saved a lot of effort.

Eventually, the choke ends and there’s a short crawl through muddy puddles which emerges into big passage.  This is (at least I think) Bruno Kranski’s, where the pitch from Voldemort comes in, and running water can be heard.  We felt elated to be on, or near, familiar territory. Very soon we were in Sir Digby Spode’s Inlet, and a knotted rope handline took us down into the Notts II streamway.

From there, it was a familiar meander downstream, up the rifty inlet on the left to get to the engineered climb emerging into a frosty night.

It had taken us 7 hours.  This was a bit disappointing given that the guys who had written the original report had (so they claimed!) taken only 3, but had we followed the way unerringly it would have been an hour or so less.  Possibly more importantly, if Bob and I were 30 years younger, we might have been a bit quicker!

By Tom C In Day Trips

Boundary Pot – At LAST!

Helen H, Andy J, Tony B, Jason

Boundary Pot and I have a history of failed attempts due to high water and quailing spirits, so I was not over-optimistic when we gathered on Sunday.  There had been plenty of dry weather in the past few weeks, but more recent rain.  However, the walk up the bed of the beck was encouraging, in fact the pool at Pool Sink was completely empty, which I hadn’t seen before. 

Entering the second chamber in the entrance series, I was delighted to hear – nothing!  Normally some water either babbles or thunders down the next climb, but it was completely dry – so the trip was on!

We quickly passed the bone-dry ‘Tacklesack passage’, as I think of it, on via Savage’s bypass and into a chamber where at last we heard the sound of water – a bold step over the top of an inlet waterfall is required.  This was as far as I’d been before, so from here on, guides (3 of them!) were consulted at every turn, although navigation is actually straightforward at this point.

Passing through Fusion Chamber, with its impressive pitch that we’d bypassed, we soon came to the area round Boxing Day Aven.  This was a lovely section of cave – as well as lots of clean stal formations, there were abundant brown crystalline deposits that I was unfamiliar with.  At one point, a shelf of this stuff looked like the Grand Canyon in (extreme) miniature.  Further on, the passage was divided horizontally by a false floor of crystals.  To avoid walking on this, we crawled through the canal beneath it, including a brief complete ducking at the end.  Looking back, it was plain that most folk had stayed dry and gone over the top.  However our dampness was soon dispelled by a warm glow of self-satisfaction at our top cave conservation conduct!

Before long, the character of the cave changed as we arrived at the large rubble-strewn Hiroshima chamber.  There were warnings about unstable boulders here, but we passed without incident, down the scaffolded shaft, traversing upstream in the roof of a rift and following a boulder slope up into Nagasaki chamber, another huge bouldery void. (I imagined having Superman’s height and X-ray vision – the land under Easegill must look like an enormous Swiss cheese!)

At this point, there was some doubt about which way to go on.  Eventually Andy’s compass settled the argument and we followed him downslope.  A series of climbs, up, down and traversing led to the Assembly Hall, with increasing confidence about the route (though not on my part – had I been leading, I would probably still be there!).  Some of the climbs were not without interest, but some in-situ knotted ropes helped out.

From there, we (apparently) followed the White Way to Holbeck junction.  At a subsequent climb up, Andy demonstrated the wisdom of not standing beneath a climber when a large flake he was using as a foothold parted company from the wall and narrowly missed Helen.  Soon afterwards, we came to a pile of stones beneath a climb and I suddenly, and for the first time, recognised our location: we were at the end of Spiral Staircase passage.  From here, it was the familiar meanders and the final gymnastics of the Big Rift to the Wretched Rabbit exit.

Exiting in warm sunshine, I was immensely chuffed to have finally made this trip, found that it more than lived up to my expectations, and it took well under 3 hours underground. And that included a number of photo stops – thanks to Tony for taking the trouble to document the trip.

By Tom C In Day Trips

Smallcleugh Mine

We all made the long drive in a timely fashion and by 11.30am, we were heading up through the old mine buildings towards the Smallcleugh mine entrance leaving Emma, who had sustained a double ankle injury in a fight with the bottom stair of a spiral staircase, to her own devices in the car park. On the way, Andy managed to persuade some unsuspecting visitors to join one of the mine society’s Open Day trips and we took the opportunity to introduce ourselves to the volunteers from the Mine Conservation Society and to bag our cake choices for our return. We were also advised to avoid Luke Hall’s sump as the metalwork had collapsed and the walls were in danger of joining the metalwork.

Smallcleugh horse level was followed through to Smallcleugh Flats. (I thought we were Wheel Flats & promptly turned everyone westward along a passage that led directly to Luke Hall’s Sump!) Phil continued along the main passage and discovered a sign hailing entry to Wheel Flats and so we continued without further ado to the infamous Ballroom Flats. The main mineral in evidence was galena—as you would suspect in a lead mine. The arched passages, handcrafted by mine workers, were quite spectacular and large enough to only require limited stooping (except in areas of collapse), and the water was rarely over ankle deep—so a comfortable start to our journey.

After Ballroom Flats and a Darren photo shoot, the size of passage decreased to a belly wriggle where crawling in the roofs of arched passages was necessitated due to infill. Once more we encountered Luke Hall’s sump and thereafter we peered expectantly into each sump looking for the ‘only rigged sump on that level’. A 17m descent down a tube brought you out on the edge of Proud’s Flats where a slight swing was needed to reach secure ground. We all investigated the Flats and the 3 obvious passages, discovering wheels, shovels, an almost entire carriage and an ammunitions box.

A ladder had been installed the previous week to replace the final rope pitch and henceforth the water was followed over a good kilometre of passage in Rampgill mine to exit in the car park. The formations and mineralisation on this long section of passage were magnificent and put the Painters Palette to shame. (The collection of bottles at Whiskey Bottle Junction was something to be admired as well). The final wow factor was the Brewery Shaft, just over 100m deep.

A trip taking around 3h20 was ended splendidly with homemade cake and a cup of tea for the whole team (including Emma) with the Mine Society. Andy found a contact who was willing to open the Brewery Shaft for a future KCC trip and, lured by cake, we started to plan a 2 day excursion to coincide with a future Open Day….the potential agenda comprising a longer through trip on the Saturday and a descent of the 105m pitch, ascent to Rampgill and exit via Smallcleugh on the Sunday. Unfortunately, it does seem that bunkhouse accommodation at the mines is not available on the Open Day weekends so we will have to rethink potential dates. If interested in this possible excursion, please get in touch.

It would seem useful to remind club members that mine artefacts (as with natural formations in caves) should be treated with respect. They definitely cannot be replaced once damaged/destroyed and we are very fortunate to be able to go underground to see implements in positions where they were once used.

By Tom C In Day Trips

County to Lancaster

Jason reports:

A County/Lancaster exchange on a Wednesday night?  We wondered if we were being over-ambitious.  But a splinter group kindly volunteered to rig Lancs, have a shorter trip and come out the same way, so the rest of us set off remarkably promptly at 6pm.  We had a close encounter with a barn owl on the way, probably having disturbed his tea.  Oddly enough, a dead vole lay on the lid of County – we put it to one side in case the owl was still hungry.

I utterly failed to trace our route on the survey afterwards, but I can reveal that we went via Battle of Britain Chamber, the Trident series, dropping into Lower Pierce’s Passage (a nice free climb, though some faint-hearts called for a rope!), thence to Eureka junction where we stopped to rest and pose for some photos.  The water was still fairly low; the dry spell had broken a few days earlier, but there had not been much rain that day.

From there to Stop Pot posed the only navigational challenge – the dry route through the boulder choke seemed no longer to exist.  In the end, we just had to follow the water and get wet (the horror!).  Onwards through the high-level caverns (Monster, Snail, Corne’s and Oake’s – at least the survey told me that much), admiring the many stalactites, including the Halberdiers.  Apparently the French say that it’s raining halberds instead of cats and dogs, which arguably makes more sense…

John showed us the Minarets bypass, whereupon we all followed him rather than enjoy the usual delights of those passages.  Soon we reached Oxbow Corner, and having decide to take the wet route out, John announced that the next bit through the boulder choke was a bit complex, so keep together.  If I’d have said that, it would be the prelude to getting thoroughly lost, but he led us unerringly through.  A splendid romp through down the Main Drain followed. 

There was plenty of foam on the walls at the downstream sump, so water levels had been higher.  I scooped up some foam and applied it to my chin, trying for a Santa look, but it didn’t really work.

Up Fall Pot and to the entrance pitch, it was good to see that it was still rigged!  But looking up, what was that?  Blimey, daylight!  It seemed like we had been underground for ages, but it was not much after 9:30. The good time was less due to our rapid pace than to the expert route-finding – an excellent trip.

Photos courtesy of Darren.

By Tom C In Day Trips

Illusion Pot

Wednesday night saw us taking advantage of the dry spell for a bit of caving in Illusion Pot, Kingsdale. After exploiting a variety of parking options – mine as usual seeming to be the furthest away from the actual cave – we met up, walked and began the search for the covered entrance in a shakehole.  In this crack team of speleo-explorers were Darren, Ali, Jason, Tony and myself; Tony and Ali had the excuse of never having been down Illusion before, and I mumbled something about it ‘being all snowy the last time I was here’, leaving Jason and Darren to put us on the right track.  After some determined searching they found the way in, and we all descended the fixed ladders into the underworld.

Muddy passages led to a bailable duck, but today the water levels were low enough to get through without any difficulty. Refreshingly moistened, we continued into the impressive chamber of the Missile Silo, and then Ali led the way up into The Pretties…  Here are some beautiful straws, curtains and even helictites, which we were careful not to sully with our muddy hands.

We had a look at a dig in the floor that led to a flat out crawl, then retraced our steps into the Missile Silo.  At the far end, passing some fine orange speleothems, is the way down to the sump.  Jason, Ali and Darren went along the roped traverse while Tony and I waited and marvelled at the cobbles which were stuck to the chamber walls by only a thin calcite cement – the remains, we supposed, of a past floor at a higher level in the chamber.

The three returned with reports of a final squeeze (which Jason had explored), and we then made our way back out to the surface, emerging to a cloudless evening.  We bum-slid back down the steep hill to Darren’s car (which was great fun, so much that Tony went back up again!).
All said, Illusion is a good and varied trip, and definitely worth a look if you haven’t been before.  Thanks for an entertaining evening fellas!

By Tom C In Day Trips

Dowbergill

Gareth and Darren, knowing that we had undertaken the traverse from Providence Pot to Dow Cave on 2 previous occasions, had asked if they could be included on a further trip. What further trip?!! Was my response. The first time had taken us 6 and a half hours and was replete with arguments caused by neither of us knowing at what point it was safe to descend, several wrong descent decisions, a very scarey traverse and feeling bloody cold. The second time had been faster (just over 4 hours) but this was more by luck than judgement. We didn’t find the scarey traverse and instead found a rigged line down to the streamway. We had ventured along to the swim under the boulder but, without having read up on how long a complete submersion was needed, we retreated and climbed up onto the Gypsum Traverse in a near hypothermic state. On the positive side, it was a sunny day and we warmed up considerably with the long walk back to Kettlewell.

This time, the date chosen followed the snowfall and coincided with the snowmelt. Andy and I checked out the possibility of leaving a car at the end, feeling sure Gareth had a 4 by 4. He doesn’t—so even the drive to Dow was quite eventful! We almost got the correct gear in correct cars. Gareth was left at the end without shoes (& I’d left home in wellies, so had none either) and the flask of hot drink was left in the car at Kettlewell. But beer and tea bread were ready for us on exit.

A beautiful walk through the snow was followed by a swift passage through the entrance series. I could remember it all—except the Blasted Crawl through muddy water—how could I forget that! About 1.5h into the trip saw us enjoying hot chocolate in the 800yd Chamber—the half way point in distance terms. I had managed to get very wet and so was beginning to feel cold but everyone else had successfully navigated the climbs, traverses and squeezes staying relatively dry.

‘Is this Brew Chamber?’ was the much asked question over the next 2.5hrs. We did several boulder choke climbs and several squeezes at stream level, but still nothing fell into place. And it was only a short distance on the survey. We knew when we had reached the choke though. A dodgy handline stretched 12m up the vertical rift and was navigated without (major) incident by Darren and Andy. Gareth and myself had considerably more difficulty. By the time Gareth had reached the top I had tried on 3 occasions to squeeze myself through the very awkward short cut (an upwards and leftwards squeeze that wouldn’t let me through) and I had lost functional use of all points of contact before it was my turn to climb. Needless to say, Andy and Darren did a fantastic job of hauling me up the difficult bits and soon (ish) we were all in Brew Chamber.

We found the line down to the stream again and so, 20 minutes later we were standing in water, in an impressive rift passage varying between sideways walking and thrutchy traversing just above the water level. The levels had risen in the time we’d spent in the cave and the final portion of the passage to the sumped boulder necessitated a helmets off, chin (just about) above water level approach. On arrival at the boulder, there was no going back—we were far too cold by this point. So, aided by Andy’s leg as a dive line, one by one we submerged and re-emerged, ecstatic at having survived the ordeal!

Dow Cave is an amazing passage and we did stop twice for Gareth’s photo shoots but, teeth chattering uncontrollably, we probably didn’t appreciate it’s full geological worth….well there was a beer and tea bread waiting!