Tag: Dales

By Ray McGarry In Day Trips

A Flushing through Short Drop

Tom, Maz, Chris G, Sophie P, Sophie H, Billy, Vikki, Ray

With incredible foresight, Paddy declared himself unable to lead this one weeks in advance, so I took the reins for what should have been a nice relaxed wander through Short Drop and, hopefully, an extension to see the pretties of Glasfurd’s Chamber in Gavel Pot. Tom even volunteered to rig the Gavel entrance and the 2 pitches down to Glasfurd’s.

All such hopes were in doubt as the heavens opened while we were getting changed, soaking everyone before we even set foot underground. For a while it was really pleasant to be in the cave. Until we started the crawl that is. Water levels in this were unpleasantly high and were a definite sign of things to come. Water was thundering through the narrow rift passage after the crawl, which was quite fun, but every short downclimb seemed to end in a deep pool. Some of these pools seemed almost bottomless. Poor Sophie P managed an almost complete submerging in one.

As the passage got bigger, so it became more pleasant. But how wet was the pitch going to be? As it neared, the sound seemed to suggest it would be very wet indeed. Last time I was in SD, there was a fixed rope, but no such convenience this evening. The pitch was quickly rigged and Sophie P offered as a sacrificial rope dummy. Would she disappear into the waterfall never to be seen again? Thankfully no. The rope hung largely free of the falling water. However, there was little avoiding the deep pool below. Most people got a bit of a dunking here until they were able to scrabble back onto dry land.

After everyone else had descended, I thought about leaving the pitch hard rigged and just coming back for the rope on a drier day, but opted for a quick rerig as a pull-through. Thankfully the rope pulled down easily enough and we were on our way again. Most people were really starting to feel the cold by now after waiting at either the top or the bottom of the pitch for quite a while. The prospect of visiting Glasfurd’s was definitely starting to lose its appeal.

A short distance downstream we saw Tom’s light at the end of the traverse from Gavel. A very welcome sight indeed. So began the long process of getting everyone up the initial climb, across the traverse and up the Gavel entrance pitch. While awaiting my own turn, I took the chance to derig the pitches down to Glasfurd’s. I was glad to see that Tom had only rigged the first of these, so that I didn’t have to go far down.

Thankfully the weather was much more pleasant on the walk back from Gavel, although there were grumblings in the ranks about it being quite uphill… and a long way. Clearly we had descended quite a long way through Short Drop. It felt quite late and I wondered if we may be in danger of missing our callout time, but it was only 10pm as we stragglers got back to the cars.

I’d never been to Short Drop in such wet conditions before, but looking back at it now from a nice warm house, it was sort of fun. I’m hoping the trip has whetted the appetites of some of our newer members to go back and have an explore up some of the numerous inlets.

By Ray McGarry In Day Trips

Sell Gill Holes

Paddy, Jasmine, Tom, Sophie P, Sophie H, Ray

The rather hopeful plan had originally been for an exchange between the dry and wet entrances. As the day grew close, it was obvious this wasn’t going to happen due to the persistent and occasionally very heavy rain. As luck would have it though, Sophies H & P, both relatively new to SRT signed up, so the evening morphed seamlessly into a training trip. As even more luck would have it, on the drive over, Jasmine was spotted practicing knot tying on the back seat. Whether she was willing or not (I think she was), we also now had a trainee rigger!

A quick look at the wet entrance confirmed that it wasn’t an option. So Jasmine was attached to a tackle bag and prodded towards the dry entrance. To be fair, she barely flinched and set to rigging the surface pitch like a pro. The rigging couldn’t have been better, even the rebelay before the final drop was dispatched effortlessly and with the perfect rope length in the loop. Nice!

Pitched rigged, the 2 Sophies stepped up and both passed the rebelay with ease. Only at the bottom of the pitch did Sophie H announce that she had never done a rebelay before, although she had watched a few YouTube videos. Reminiscent of Dougle Dave – very impressive.

There had been a half plan to look up Calcite Way. However, as training trips tend to take a bit longer, we decided to leave this and see how we felt on the way out.

Jasmine could justifiably have stepped back and let someone else take over rigging for the 2nd pitch, but she was far from finished yet. A hop, skip & jump along the ledge and she had a beautiful traverse line rigged with a perfectly balanced y-hang. Meanwhile, Paddy had done a great job of rigging the alternative hang along the right hand wall. He did particularly well to reach the higher anchor for the far branch of his y-hang as he was forbidden to use the much more convenient lower one due to it being required for Jasmine to rig a deviation. I don’t actually know who derigged the RH wall. I can only presume it was Paddy as I don’t think anyone else could have reached the awkward anchor.

Paddy reached the bottom of the 2nd pitch first and used Tom’s mega-torch to illuminate the others descending. I think Tom got some great shots. Both Sophies used Jasmine’s LH route and both managed the traverse and deviation with no trouble at all.

Having got us this far, Jasmine carried on rigging the final pitch. She was unhappy with the length of her y-hang above the final drop. It seemed ok to me, but it’s a sign of her attention to detail. Mathematicians!!

From the top of the final pitch, it was clear that the waterfall pouring down Goblin Shaft was pretty spicy. This certainly turned out to be the case when we reached the bottom. The noise was almost deafening and the wind was so strong that it was almost impossible to look up the shaft. I think we made the right decision not to try an exchange!

We had a brief look around the main chamber before making our way out. Tom & Paddy had a look at the outlet crawl from the main chamber. Apparently it wasn’t as wet as they had expected. I still wouldn’t have wanted to push it.

The journey out seemed to go smoothly enough. Sophie P even decided to take the harder RH route back up the 2nd pitch. She smashed the technical dismount from the pitch head, but there was a bit of a comedy sketch at the end of the traverse line, which was much too high for her.

We didn’t bother with Calcite Way as time was getting on. Lots to go back for on the next trip.

Jasmine certainly has a great future as a rigger. Hopefully both Sophies will have long SRT careers. I look forward to seeing them progress and doing some great trips with them. What a great evening. Thanks all!

Photos by Paddy, Tom & Ray

By Ami S In Day Trips

Long Kin West

Long Kin West, or Bolty McBolt face.

Team: Toby, John, Big Dave & (report by) Ami

Up the side of Ingleborough to a whole set of exciting looking entrances. John had been before and helped us quickly locate the correct entrance off a rock bridge. Having noted the description did not match the topo, Dave set off rigging first, expecting a roughly 50m pitch with one rebelay, then a rock bridge where the route continued. However, as I descended after him, I heard the call for the others to pause, as navigational challenges were to be found below.

I landed by Dave, on a rock bridge, but here, the walls were more bolt than cave, meaning an overwhelming glut of ways on. The obvious route was right in front of us, but the description indicated swinging around a corner, of which there were at least two, both with Y hang bolts. We debated for a while, and Dave continued down one option, which would have been another 50 metres, with a rebelay and a “essential” deviation.

In the meantime, John and Toby had joined me on the rock bridge. By now, Dave was shouting up that there were no further signs of life. We asked if he could pass under the bridge we were on, thus rejoining another of the route options without coming back up. Alas, he could walk under us, but found only some unfortunate ex-sheep, rather than any route. Poor Dave – back up he came.

Now we were four gathered on a small rock bridge, which despite every other wall in the place being bolted, had no real good safety point. We wonder if the description has one of those helpful bits about a feature that you actually want nothing to do with? So some strange rigging was achieved between us all to pass a line back the other way, meaning Toby – once at the back – was now on to rigging!

This route was more successful (for future parties – just keep going straight down) although we’re not sure what’s so essential about that deviation. Despite Dave’s shelf of dead sheep, the pitch is spectacular, with light filtering through from the many holes above. Another small pitch at the bottom leads to a really full sheep’s graveyard – watch your step!

I took the rigging from here over a fun traverse and down another wonderful pitch through some rock features. Tricky to get the Y hangs right to avoid rope rub, but with Dave’s help we made it to the bottom. A quick snack prepared for the long ascent back up. I’m really pleased we got to this one – it’s an awesome cave and wouldn’t take too long next time we know which bolts to aim for!

Pics by Dave

By Ray McGarry In Day Trips

Meregill Hole… or Whose Rope is it Anyway?

Darren, Original Sophie, Jasmine, Connor, Ray

The official club trip was supposed to be Vesper, but I decided to move it to Meregill for 2 reasons: (i) I’d done Vesper a few weeks ago, and (ii) it was dry enough for Meregill to be pleasant. Both caves were already rigged (by CPC) for a 3 Peaks, 3 Pots challenge – seems they managed it in 13 hours, the 3 pots being Vesper, Meregill and Little Hull. Very impressive. The deal was that we could use the CPC ropes in whichever cave we chose as long as we derigged. Sounded like too good a deal to miss.

The walk-in was unusually pleasant, in the sunshine and with no tackle to carry. Both the mere and Aven Entrance were rigged, so we all entered via the mere. I set off first, followed by Connor, Jasmine, Darren, then Sophie. The descent went pretty smoothly on reasonable rigging, the biggest issue being that there was more than 1 set of rigging on various sections. How were we supposed to know which gear to derig?

CPC had taken the highest level option for all traverses, which added to the fun a bit. I don’t think I’d reached the 3rd pitch at such a high level before. The only other thing of note on the descent was an orange tackle bag and some krabs at the bottom of the pool on the halfway ledge on the final pitch. Connor decided he could reach it, but the pool was deceptively deep. We decided to leave it for the way out.

Having reached the bottom in good time, we set off to explore the extensive passage. The biggest hurdle here is crossing the very deep pool directly at the bottom of the last pitch. Various traversing techniques were employed. I decided on the low route, which essentially meant I was chest deep in the pool. Even then, I was teetering on a submerged ledge. God only knows how deep the pool actually is.

The young tigers, Connor and Jasmine, led the way along the streamway. The going was mostly easy walking or stooping with the occasional crawling section or cascade. Connor found cave fish at 2 locations and also pointed out a few interesting fossils along the way. He was clearly in his element. Before we knew it, we were at the terminal static sump, which seemed like a good point to turn around. Darren found a worm here, which he seemed determined to rescue, presumably not wanting to be outdone by the team involved in the rescue of Beryl the sheep a few weeks ago. I’m not sure he’ll get the same publicity – if only he’d given the worm a name!

A quick group selfie and we were on our way out. Surprisingly, the more “experienced” members of the group left the young tigers behind, despite having struggled to keep up on the way in. I can only put this down to us being more desperate to get out. Unfortunately, this meant that I for one was absolutely knackered before even starting to prussic.

I derigged the bottom 2 pitches. By the time I got to the halfway ledge on the bottom pitch, Connor had indeed retrieved the sunken sack and krabs. His suit even got a good cleaning in the process. Thankfully there was only 1 set of rigging on the bottom 2 pitches, so no dilemmas about what to derig and what to leave. Connor derigged the big 3rd pitch, where there was a dilemma. I don’t know if he simply derigged everything or decided to leave one set of ropes.

At the top of the 3rd pitch, I met Jasmine and Sophie. Sophie decided to wait for the others, while Jasmine and I set off out. At the bottom of the 2nd pitch, we could see lights from another party at the top. Jasmine went up first and caught the other group, who informed her that it wasn’t just CPC who had the cave rigged. Todd from Inglesport also had an ongoing project, so left various bits rigged… or so he thought!

There were 2 ropes hanging down from Aven Entrance, so we at least now knew which was the CPC one. Jasmine waited for the others to tell them which one to derig, while I set off out via the mere with my full tackle bag.

Sophie emerged next and we waited for the others… and waited. When nobody appeared, I took the decision to derig the (hopefully) CPC rope from the entrance shaft, assuming the others would all come out Aven Entrance. Sophie wasn’t convinced. Thankfully they did indeed all appear from AE. Phew!  Let’s be honest, though – they had no other choice. Apparently it was “a bit wriggly”.

We seemed to have rather a lot of kit to carry back down the hill – most of us had 2 bags. Given that there were 5 of us, this seems like a lot of rope, even for Meregill, so I can only suppose that we did indeed derig some of Todd’s ropes. Sorry! We’ll let CPC take what’s theirs and get the rest back to Todd. I’m sure he’ll relish the opportunity to rig it all again.

Photos by Darren and Connor.

By Will Burnett In Day Trips

New Rift Pot (Beryl’s rescue!)

New Rift Pot

Team: Will, Chris Arthur, Ami

Before I begin, go and grab yourself your favourite beverage and get ready for a good one!

Our intentions were to head down New Rift Pot to Coates Cavern via Route 66 for a good old explore and poke about, potentially head through to Necropolis and scout out for a future mission to the Eastern Front. None of us were really excited to walk in with the current conditions being pretty wet, but soon enough we were hopping the wall and heading across the fell path looking for our shake hole. I’d done this trip once before with Scott at the start of the year so fairly confident I knew the way, neither Ami or Chris had been before but both were raring to go after my promises of a grands days caving with plenty to look at.

Chris was up first to rig and quickly got to work scrambling down the entrance climb to the pitch head, closely followed by me and Ami bringing up the rear. It wasn’t long at all before Chris stopped dead in his tracks and was staring down at something below. Low and behold the rough shape of a sheep’s back could be spotted at the bottom of the pitch, it must have taken a tumble from above the entrance into the rift and then at least one other to get to where it was. Clearly Chris and I both quickly concluded we were going to do something, although at this stage we weren’t too sure what! We observed a little more and then noticed that it was still moving around, alive! That changed everything as previously I’ve only dealt with deceased extractions, and immediately all three of our minds started running wild with what if’s, and it was evident we felt this was going to be a rather difficult task. Ami made for the surface to get some phone signal with the instructions to try and gather more club members for some extra hands and see if anyone knows which farmer it’ll belong to so we can notify them. Whilst she was on with that, Chris and I pondered some more from the pitch head trying to come up with a plan of action. The worry was that the more we moved towards the sheep, it would get more scared and potentially hop down the last 2-3m drop to the flat out bedding crawl beneath the pitch. Whilst the 2-3m drop certainly wasn’t serious, especially in comparison to the roughly 30m already descended, it would have been further to extract from and with a lot less room than we currently had if we could make it work. We were envisioning some sort of grab, lash, and haul but knew we’d have to be slick with it. For every move and noise we made it looked almost certain we were going to loose the sheep further into the system as she was teetering on the edge of the drop. Chris was left on suicide watch (although I’m not sure there’s much he could have done had she jumped!) whilst I quickly set about rigging a tensioned line we could use to haul all the way up and out over the fence, trying to make our lives as easy as possible. By the time I was done, Ami had put a shout out to other club members for assistance, informed North Yorks Police agricultural department to try and locate farmer, and got CRO on standby should we have struggled or failed with extraction.

One by one, we slowly and carefully abseiled down to join the sheep, trying our hardest not to spook or scare her at all. Once on a level, there was quite a bit of eye balling between the 4 of us, and I think it was here where Ami had decided she was called Beryl. Margaret and Barbara were also contenders I believe, but Beryl certainly felt more fitting! I slid myself over the drop beneath Beryl to stop her fall, while Chris and Ami coaxed her back away from the edge, and over into the other side of the chamber where we were able to pick her with a human barrier. I say that, there wasn’t much force required as she was ear deep in a pool of water, clearly dehydrated. Whilst having her fill, we took the opportunity to fashion up a harness for her out of a couple of slings crossed with an ‘X’ underneath. With a somewhat equalised central attachment point, we were pretty set to whip her out of there. Ami and I climbed back up to the pitch head and began prepping for the arrival of Beryl, with a view to smoothly transition her up the pitch and up out of the entrance rift. Haul system all set, Chris hopped on the in situ rope to ascend alongside Beryl, just in case she need any in flight attendance. Beryl just sat in her ‘harness’ completely un phased with the most chilled out expression on her face. Perhaps it was the 4 litres of water she’d just downed after 2 weeks of dehydration! I’m glad Chris was below and not me! Everything felt like it went smoothly and to plan whilst between the 3 of us we negotiated the package that was Beryl back to daylight. On the surface, Beryl had a new lease of life and kicked up a fight whilst Chris was taking off her harness, perhaps she wasn’t done with New Rift Pot just yet! Ami to the rescue with some extra hands to hold her down and she was soon skipping up the side of the shake hole on her merry little way, with nothing more than a mere limp for her troubles! She gave us all a look back, as if to acknowledge what had just happened, and then proceeded to head exactly in the direction of where she must have fell down in the first place. We all ran at her to chase her up and out of the shake hole, and just as we did, our back up arrived in the form of a solo CRO volunteer to check what all the fuss was about. I bet he was having a hard time to believe that this little lamb that was skipping across the fell with a grin on her face had just caused so much hassle!

We’d intended to continue with our trip, but after a very hasty 10 minutes of de-rigging and stuffing everything back into tackle sacks, some of which being left behind now so we could move faster The , it just seemed the right shout to call it a day and quit while we were ahead.

In an additional attempt to locate the farmer, I put a couple of social media posts out into local Ingleton groups, which then got spread wider afield and now Beryl is becoming a superstar, with various local news platforms reaching out to cover the story.

Whilst there is absolutely an element of comical value to this situation, I would absolutely like to highlight the teamwork and communication enabling us to achieve this, and a big thank you to CRO and everyone else who were ready if we needed them.

#Berylthecaver

Write up by Will, pics by Will & Ami

By Ray McGarry In Day Trips

Vesper Pot

Will, Ami, Ray

Not fancying the official KCC trip of Dowbergill Passage, I had resigned myself to doing something else for the day… until Ami mentioned that Vesper was rigged and that she and Will were thinking of going there. I didn’t need any more encouragement than that!

Arriving at the usual parking spot by Braida Garth, Ami and I were surprised not to see Will already there. He’s never late. Still, it gave us an opportunity to catch up with Dalek, who was about to do a Swinsto pull-through with a couple of Southern cavers.

Will still hadn’t arrived by the time Dalek and party set off. However, there did appear to be someone (possibly) dressed like a caver waving at us from quite some distance further up the road. Could that be him? He was walking toward us, so we set off walking toward him. Eventually it was clear that it was indeed Will, so we indicated that we would drive up to meet him at his completely random parking spot.

All reunited and changed, we (plus Will’s dog Lenny) set off on a route I’d never taken to Vesper before. While I don’t think it was any shorter than the usual route, it did seem a bit less steep, which suits me just fine these days. On arrival at the entrance, I was fascinated to see what Lenny was going to do. Would he turn out to be an expert in SRT? Would Will tie him to a stake? No, he would just sit and wait patiently by the entrance for us to return. What a well-trained dog.

The entrance is a rather committing head-first dive down a slot, leading to a short very narrow sideways crawl. This was one of only 2 bits of the cave I could remember from the last time I did it, many years ago. For some reason there was an old pair of underpants in this section. Was it so tight that someone had to strip down to that level to get through??

Soon enough you break out into a low streamway where more conventional flat out crawling is possible. Luxury. The passage slowly enlarges so that walking/stooping is possible. At a step down on a LH bend, Ami chose to go low, ending up grovelling and squeezing at stream level. Not being Mendip cavers, Will and I stayed high for a bit of easy traversing. There were even some reasonably nice formations at roof level. Eventually we had to drop down too, shortly before the 1st pitch.

Having done the cave so far carrying our SRT kits, we each found a not-quite-big-enough spot to kit up. The first pitch is a bit awkward at the top and could really do with an extra anchor a bit further back to protect a bottomless traverse to the actual pitch head. At the bottom, the awkward passage continues to the 2nd pitch, again with a slightly awkward head. Once on the 2nd pitch, we remained on rope to the bottom.

The character of the cave changes completely from this point. No more constrictions and the pitches just get better and longer. That’s not to say that the challenge decreases at all – it just changes to a different challenge. For us, the challenge on the 3rd pitch was entirely man-made. None of us could quite fathom the rigging. It wasn’t exactly difficult to pass the pitch head, and we all managed in our own way, but I really couldn’t understand the thinking of the rigger.

The 4th pitch has an interesting traverse. The other bit of the cave I remember from years ago is the lean out to the anchors at the head of the 5th pitch. It used to be real fun to rig back in the old days of spits – hanging over the rather large drop for too long with spanner in hand. These days it’s just fun, especially when pre-rigged. The 5th pitch lands on the Great Rubble Heap, where Spectacle also drops in. There is another short pitch, but like everyone else, we decided to forego the pleasure. It wouldn’t take much movement of the rubble heap at all to make it your last ever pitch.

After a brief chat at the bottom, we made our way out without any real drama. It was absolute luxury to not have to derig and drag tackle back through the awkward entrance series. Definitely the way to go! Will and Ami totally breezed out. I thought even I was doing well, right up until daylight was in view. I approached the last section facing the wrong way and couldn’t quite get my leg up a very small step. I had to reverse slightly to a point where I could rotate the other way. No big problem, except that the act of rotating put my face rather closer to the discarded pants than I would have liked. Back on the surface, Lenny was still waiting… and very excited to see us back.

Vesper is definitely a trip of 2 distinct halves. I did kind of miss the rigging on this trip, but that’s a very small price to pay for not having to carry tackle. My hope is that this will kickstart of few more KCC trips on East Kingsdale. King Pot anyone??

Photos by Will

By Ray McGarry In Day Trips

Heron Pot

Helen, Paddy, Pete, James, Maz, Short Dave, Dougal Dave, Ami, Sophie P, Ray

Report by Helen

A huge KCC turnout for Heron Pot. I’d packed all necessary ropes etc but realised I’d left my mobile (an integral part of my new diabetes monitoring system) on my desk at work. Should I cave?? Decision made I loaded with carbs and led one group to the cave. The other group (taking a different route), got there quicker—but I suspect that was fitness…sorry, my bad knee!
 
Only issue I had with blood sugar was on trying to drag the tackle sack through the beginning of the cave—thankfully help was on hand—and I passed the bag to Dave. My knee meant I had insufficient confidence in spreadeagling across the traverse, so Paddy rigged the High Level route while I rigged the trad route followed by new Sophie who had only just learned to SRT the day before (at a wall). She did amazingly well, and we all congregated in the main chamber in a timely manner.
 
Concerned that new Sophie may have a few issues on ascent (her first in a cave, & with a couple of awkward pitch heads), we had a quick wander downstream as far as the very wet section and returned to start our ascent.
 
Several members exited via the bottom wet entrance, leaving just enough cavers to de-rig both routes.
 
Sophie (with her new-found SRT skills & general climbing/ropework experience), made quick work of both pitches. Whereas Maz had set up his SRT kit incorrectly and had a mare with the lower pitch – a mistake I’m sure won’t be repeated! Ami de-rigged for us and carried the kit out as well. So I got off lightly all round. The only downside to the trip being the hungry swarms of midges while changing. Thanks everyone.
By Ray McGarry In Day Trips

Notts II (Gour Inlet)

Ami, Pete, Maz, Ray

I’d had my eye on Gour Inlet for a while. It looks substantial on the survey and includes all sorts of climbs, traverses, pitches and even a (hopefully) drained sump. What’s not to like? Having finally decided to put it on the meets list, I wasn’t sure if anyone else would share my enthusiasm. I needn’t have worried. At one point we had 9 people signed up for the trip, although some of those preferred the more traditional Notts II tourist trip. In the end, only 4 hardy souls turned up. This was particularly unfortunate for Maz as he was one of those who preferred the tourist trip, but found himself unexpectedly on the Gour Inlet team. To be fair, he didn’t take too much convincing.

As mentioned previously, the inlet includes various traverses and pitches, so we found ourselves unusually descending the entrance climb in SRT kit and carrying tackle sacks. I had a feeling that most, if not all, sections requiring tackle would be pre-rigged, but we couldn’t be sure.

Once down at the main drain, we set off downstream. The 1st hurdle to overcome was finding the right place to climb up into the inlet. We passed Inlet 14 (with it’s particularly ropey ladder hanging down). About the same distance further downstream, the passage is bridged by some clacited boulders. Gour Inlet is above these.

The next hurdle is the climb up to reach it. Looking at both the upstream and downstream approaches, it seemed that the best place to start climbing was a short way downstream of the boulder bridge. The climb looks intimidating, but turned out to be easy enough. It starts with some bridging between the walls, before transferring onto the true left hand wall and finishing up a flowstone cascade. I climbed up first, but stupidly forgot to bring the rope with me, so Ami then climbed up with the rope. While I was tying it around a convenient boulder, Pete had climbed up. Poor Maz was virtually forced to use the rope to at least get some use out of it, even though he was presumably quite capable of climbing without it.

We then set off into the unknown. According to the NC3 description, the inlet starts with 180m of stooping passage. This is a bit generous. I have no reason to doubt the 180m, but I found myself crawling a substantial amount of it.

Eventually we came to a climb down. A short distance further is the sump. Again according to NC3, there is engineering designed to keep this drained. Would the engineering still be working? None of us (with the possible exception of Ami) would have been going any further if there was less than a foot of airspace. Luckily(?), the engineering was still working, indicated by the occasional belching sound coming from the pipework.

While the “sump” had plenty of airspace, it wasn’t exactly pleasant – a sign of things to come. From this point it all becomes a bit of a mudfest. Before long, we reached the 1st traverse (over Pit Pot). As I had almost expected, this was equipped with a fixed rope. There was some debate about the state of the hangers, maillons and rope, but apart from that it all looked good enough to use. So we decided to leave our tackle there, deciding that the rest of the passage would also be rigged.

The traverse over Pit Pot would have been easy enough if we weren’t all so covered in mud. The 18m drop focused the mind somewhat, but we all made it over. The passage continued, never big, but always muddy. Eventually we came to a 2nd traverse, again pre-rigged. This one was even worse, largely because we were covered in even more mud by this point.

Not far beyond the 2nd traverse are some upward climbs. The longest of these (maybe 3m or so) was equipped with an electron ladder. I found this the most terrifying bit of the whole trip as I have seen enough of these break over the years. Thankfully this one managed to hold itself together long enough for us all to get up (and eventually back down) it.

At the top of the ladder is a small muddy alcove with another short climb up into a crawling passage. Maz decided he had had enough at this point and suggested I come past him. Past him?? I couldn’t even get to him. I don’t know if the soles of my wellies are particularly slick, but I couldn’t make any forward progress at all. In fact, I was in serious danger of falling back down the ladder. Eventually, I did manage to pass Maz, but really struggled to get up the next short climb.

Ami and Pete were still within earshot up ahead, but what they were going through didn’t sound pleasant, so I decided to stop with Maz. You can have too much of a good thing. The brave heroes at the front went on for a bit. The description is really confusing, but they think they reached Intimate Chamber. At this point, it was unclear whether they were supposed to climb up or down, so wisely did neither.

Maz and I set off out and were soon caught by the others. The traverses were even more “interesting” with our additional layers of mud. I was particularly keen to see if the “sump” was still drained, fearing that we may have knocked the pipework sufficiently on our way in to stop it working. Thankfully, reassuring belching could be heard as we approached. The “sump” at least washed us off a bit.

It was a relief to eventually hear the sound of the main drain as we approached the top of the climb back down. As we had a rope (well, quite a few actually), it seemed foolish not to use it. Fearing that an attempt at a pull through type arrangement would result in a stuck rope, the last person had to down climb unaided. This actually turned out to be even easier than climbing up. So I would suggest that a rope probably isn’t necessary at all, unless your party includes a particularly unconfident climber.

Ami chose to have a bath while the rest of us made our way out. The exit climb was made even more interesting than usual due to the pointless tackle getting stuck just about everywhere possible.

Would I recommend Gour Inlet to other parties? Absolutely. It was a fun trip. It may even get better further on. There are some reasonably-sized pitches. I would like to get to those at some point, maybe after a bit more research on the route. Would I go back anytime soon? Absolutely not. The memories of all that mud will fade, but it will take time.

By Will Burnett In Day Trips

Gaping Gill – BPC winch meet

Team: Ami & Will

Route: Stream Passage to Bar Pot via Main Chamber

After a couple of last minute drop outs and a very rubbish morning weather wise, Ami and I met in Clapham in pretty high spirits ready for a good day out. We had no specific plan, Ami had been in once before when the winch meet wasn’t on and I’d been the previous May with Ray and Claire where Ray took us in Marilyn and out Small Mammal. Ray had recommended Stream Passage to us as one of his favourites, so we sort of had that lined up but thought we’d get up to the tent and see what was what and go from there. We had a dry walk in luckily and quickly found ourselves at the tent gearing up ready to go. With only a couple of teams on the board but headed different ways we were on for SP so quickly navigated our way across the fell to the entrance tube.

The first pitch only short but with an interesting squeeze before the final descent which Ami breezed through and I not so much! The following 3 pitches were continuous and we leapfrogged each other for the photo opportunities before finding ourselves quickly in Stream Chamber. From here we worked our way to the main chamber with a few stops along the way to check the route description, confidence certainly reinstalled when we met a couple of children that had come down the winch in Sand Cavern – we must be getting close! After arriving in the main chamber we sat and spent quite a bit of time chatting to others, taking pictures, having a snack or two, and just taking it all in!

Ready to leave, we thought we’d aim for Flood Entrance as neither of us had done that before but new we could get there fairly easily and quickly, and we didn’t fancy too much more navigating and crawling through the unknown! Before long, we were crawling through the unknown and out came the description to aid navigate. We somehow ended up in a maze of crawling passages thinking we’d truly made a cock up and we’re going to have to double back to the main chamber and then we ended up on the ledge at the bottom of Flood Entrance main pitch, exactly where we wanted to be! However, there was a party descending and informed us there were 4 behind the leader so we thought we’d keep heading along the passage to Bar Pot. Here, another party were mid ascent and so onward we went again to SE Aven where we found some peace and quiet and a free rope to ascend. Up I went first to get some good shots of Ami climbing and right as she was coming into shot another team of two had just worked their way through sideways slot travers that we had to come. After a brief hello and passing in the best place on the route we could have asked for, onward we went and worked our way one at a time through the slot and then up through the boulders to the first pitch of Bar Pot. Ami patiently waited for me to manoeuvre myself through the tight-ish pitch head before then showing me how it’s done. A few minutes more of scrambling and we surfaced, still in the dry to walk back to the tent and sign out before making our way leisurely back into Clapham. Another fantastic winch meet experience!

I must also add, having gone last year on a Saturday to the BPC event and seeing huge crowds and queues with waits of hours long, this year certainly seemed a lot less congested and public friendly. Well done and thank you again to the BPC.

Write up and pics by Will