Tag: Peak District

Connor, Jasmine, Scott (narrator)

Sunday saw the weekend’s second excursion into Titan for KCC, with the aim of having a bit of a look around at the bottom before derigging all of those nasty heavy ropes.
Jasmine, Connor and I met in Castleton at 11 before liftsharing up to Rowter Farm. The impressively engineered entrance tube was located and descended quickly. A careful walk through a big puddle – don’t get your feet wet at this early stage – led to a window with a familiar looking rope rigged to the left. I clipped on and climbed up onto a flowstone ledge, then squinted down into the darkness. I could just about make out the Event Horizon, about 70m below me.
Horizontally, the chamber extends maybe 40m into the distance before narrowing down a little. An atmospheric place indeed! While I can appreciate the grandeur of such pitches, I find them difficult to process in some way. Jasmine caught me up, and it dawned on me that I was actually going to have to abseil out into that void. Hmm.
I got on the rope and descended about a foot, but thought better of it and came back up. I actually felt fairly happy with that decision as I watched Jasmine and Connor spiral away from me into the gloom. It’s not so much the abseiling that gets me, more the sense of growing exposure during a slow ascent in free space… so I wasn’t particularly scared standing on the edge, but the expectation of fear later was giving me a mental block. Should have organised a through trip, and exited through Peak Cavern!
No matter. I have quite a good record of turning away from scary pitches and then going back and knocking them off at a later date. No doubt I’ll be back one day before too long… so ran my thoughts as I waited on the ledge, listening to Jasmine and Connor’s voices as they receded into eventual silence.
After a while I moved to a drier bit of passage and turned off my torch.
Drip… drip… An hour went by.
The sound of water from the Event Horizon seemed to be growing in prominence, and I wondered if it had rained heavily on the surface? The others had obviously gone for a bit of an explore at the bottom.
My Mars Bar long since dispatched, I decided to nip back up the first pitch to warm up. This did the trick nicely. I went back down, and before too long I could see Jasmine’s torch as she made her way up the bottom pitch.
It took a while for the pair of them to ascend – it being a really long way, and Connor was derigging as he went. Eventually we were all reunited at the window. The others had been for a romp along a roped traverse deeper in the system; apparently the water level had remained low throughout their ascent, so nothing to worry about there, just some trick of cave acoustics.
Getting the bags up and out of the two remaining pitches was good, warming work, even with a 3:1 haul going on. It might be worth improvising some kind of tripod for the surface pitch next time, or at least clearing away some of the copious sheep poo from around the entrance.
Back to Rowter Farm for a change of clothes, and then we jumped in Connor’s luxury work van for a lift back down to Castleton before going our separate ways. In a final comic twist, I forgot that I had to return the key to the TSG, and didn’t remember until I was about seven miles away. Much swearing ensued.
On reflection, I’m quite happy to have at least had a good look at Titan. Jasmine really knocked the ball out of the park with this one – not bad for someone still in their first year of SRT. And always good to cave with Connor, even if he accidentally sent four krabs to their forever home whilst derigging 🙂 Hope I’ll see you both underground again sometime soon!

Ray and his non-KCC friend John Bown

Will had planned this as a day trip to the Peak, but no-one apart from me signed up. Not to worry – Will and I would still have a great trip. Until Will pulled out, that is. Now, I’m not so easily put off, especially since I was due to be down that way anyway. So I set about finding some other friends to go with. Only John answered the call. Still, that would be enough.

I packed all the tackle and set off south, via Vikki’s parents in Chinley, meeting John in the 5-Ways launderette cafe in Buxton (one of his favourites) bright and early on Saturday morning. What the cafe lacks in quality it makes up for in cheapness.

Suitably satisfied (in quantity at least), we moved on to the parking spot, where we both had issues trying to park on the same side of the road as the cave. The drop off from the tarmac is getting more extreme every time I go there. It’s now much better to park on the other side of the road, unless you have substantial clearance.

When we eventually got parked, I emptied all the tackle we would need out the back of the car… as did John. Hmmm, perhaps our communication could have been better. Interestingly, although we had packed ropes for the same trip, John somehow had a LOT less rope than me. Ah yes, he said, both the CCPC and the DCA rigging guides are overly generous. So we essentially took John’s tackle as he goes there more often than I do and presumably knows the rigging better. We didn’t take any rope for the West Swirl Ramp as it’s always rigged. We had a half-plan to look up into Pilgrims Way, which needs a bit more rope than the 5th pitch, so we swapped out John’s 15m for my 19m, which would do both pitches (not at the same time obviously). All ropes managed to fit easily into 2 bags. In fact, one of the bags was even quite empty! I liked this approach.

On arrival at the entrance, John informed me that, while he knew his rope lengths were sufficient, they would be a bit tight. Ahh. I started to like his approach a bit less… especially when I realised that he had brought 30m for the entrance pitch, whereas I had packed 45m. John set off rigging. On my way down the entrance shaft, I noted that I passed 2 anchors, presumably for deviations or rebelays to avoid rope rub. John had also passed these anchors. The rope did rub a bit, but to be fair it’s only really glancing off relatively flat rock. Certainly nothing worth worrying too much about. At the bottom of the entrance shaft is another y-hang for a short 4m drop. No need for the y-hang John informed me, rigging off a single anchor. I could soon see why when his rope literally just reached the bottom. A y-hang would have left us dangling. So, it turns out the entrance pitch can indeed be done with a 30m rope – whether it’s wise or not is another matter.

As we were going to make use of the fixed rope on West Swirl, we weren’t sure exactly how long a rope was need to get us there. In the end, we conservatively estimated that 60m should be enough for the 2nd, 3rd and the swing onto the ramp. John set off rigging the 2nd and I took over for the 3rd. The deviation on the 3rd was pre-equipped with tat and even a krab. The swing onto the ramp was easy enough and then a very short bit of descent down the ramp to reach the start of the fixed rope. As it turns out, 50m would have been enough. At this rate, John will be down to a single bag for his next trip!

I shot off down the ramp to get the pitch at the bottom rigged, only to find that it too was pre-rigged. The rigging wasn’t great, but it was preferable to rigging our own rope. The trip was going very well, and very quick so far.

We regrouped at the bottom of the pitch up into Pilgrims Way. Having made such good time to this point, there really weren’t any excuses for not popping up. So we tied our rope onto the polyprop cord and hauled it up through the ring at the top. There are 2 anchors for an inverted y-hang at the bottom. I was first up and was glad to see that there is a fixed traverse line at the top.

Neither John nor I had been up here before, so we were quite excited to get going. It starts as a low crawl, but soon enlarges to easy hands and knees crawling, a bit like the crawls from Bar Pot to GG main chamber. It does go on a bit though, passing many side crawls along the way. We didn’t poke up any of these.

Eventually, the going gets a bit more flat out for a very short distance, complete with puddle for maximum unpleasantness, before we entered the bottom of an aven (Mecca Aven?). The connection to Giants Hole, via the Chamber of Horrors, goes off to the left here. Fortunately John didn’t fancy looking up here on this occasion. I certainly didn’t! Thankfully, this marks the end of the crawling. From here it’s mostly walking in a passage that gets progressively bigger.

In North Chamber there was a rope heading up. We pondered on what may be up there, but left it at that. It turns out that this rope leads up to the Crusader Series, which seems well worth a visit at some point. We knew that just around the corner was North Pitch. We had decided not to bring a rope for this pitch, largely because we couldn’t be bothered carrying it through the Pilgrims Way crawl, but also because I suspected it would be pre-rigged. Rounding the corner, we were pleased to see that our gamble had paid off. It was rigged. As with most fixed ropes, however, it wasn’t easy to get on to.

I went down first and waited for John, excited to see what lay beyond. Sadly, my excitement wasn’t warranted. What lay a very short distance beyond was a miserable low, wet crawl. Neither of us could quite remember the description, but thought that this was a sign that the sump was close, with only a short wet crawl and some ducks between us and it. This didn’t seem appealing, so we decided to call it a day. In fact, this was the start of The Sewer, a 46m miserable wet crawl leading to some more big stuff, before 3 dams and then the sump. May be worth pushing on next time.

As we turned around, we felt quite a long way from home, especially with the prospect of the long Pilgrims Way crawl ahead of us. Dismounting North Pitch was as entertaining as we expected. Shortly after, there is a rather annoying little climb up, complete with stacked rocks to make it slightly easier… but not easy enough. We both struggled on this. Apart from that, the journey back to the top of our rope back down into West Chamber went surprisingly well. We were both surprised by how quickly we got back through Pilgrims Way, so much so that John crawled straight past the side passage leading to our rope.

The journey out from here went quickly, with me derigging and it was good to pop out into pleasant sunshine. The throngs of people on top of, and on their way up, Mam Tor across the valley were something to behold. A quick stop off at the Hanging Gate pub for a debrief completed the day nicely.

I would recommend this trip to anyone. There’s so much more to Oxlow if you go up the pitch into Pilgrims Way. I hope to go back at some point for a look into Crusader Series. Who’s up for it?

Scott, Will – Report by Will

A last minute day off meant we sadly had low numbers on this trip to the Peak District, however with two caves on our radar, both of which requiring SRT and relatively new territory to us both meant we were suitably occupied throughout.

An early start meant we avoided most of the South-bound M6 congestion and found ourselves at Peakshill Farm just after 9am ready for a quick snack and kitting up. One other caver was awaiting his team for the day and their plan was to tackle Snelslow Swallet (one of the two we were there for!) in the morning and be out by dinner, which worked perfectly as we knew that even if they were a novice team moving slowly, they would certainly be out or well on the way out by the time we were going in. Giants Hole was the first on our list then, and we now knew we’d beaten everyone and had the place to ourselves. Both of us had been in previously, however Scott just the once to complete the through/round trip that’s available in there and myself for a couple of cave leader courses. This meant that neither of us had really had the opportunity to ‘explore’ and so that was the plan for the morning. Water levels were relatively high compared to what we’d previously encountered here, but at this stage not enough for us to be worried and we adopted a dynamic risk assessment approach fully expecting to be turned around at some point. I think it’s safe to say that before we got underground, we’d both decided that as dry a day as possible was on the cards! We didn’t mind a bit of wading, and waterfalls that couldn’t be avoided, but neither of us fancied any flat out wet crawls and both deliberately left our wetsuits behind!

In we went, firstly up into the Upper West Passage which quickly turned into a crawl until its end. We avoided the Upper East Passage as the description hinted more of a crawl and wetter than the West so we dropped back down into the main streamway and headed to the First Stream Sump. Although everything was very visibly wet at the sump, it was evident that the levels had recently been higher and had dropped and so this gave us a little more hope we may get the trip we’d hoped for! After a somewhat leisurely stroll plus a bit of stooping down Giants Highway, with the odd stop for a bit of admiration, a well decorated chamber worthy of a picture or two, we soon arrived at Base Camp chamber where the sound of water rang in our ears again. Here there’s an incredible stream flowing along a bedding plane and out of the wall, with an interest climb up to explore (we left this for the way back). With Garland’s Pot next up, we quickly moved through the passageway to where it opens back out and the floor steps and falls away revealing the 6 metre hole that is Garland’s Pot. We quickly had the pitch rigged and deviation in place to keep us as far out of the waterfall as possible (that was rather loud and active!) and onwards into the narrowing passages to keep us out of the cold water spray. After a short meander through some awkward passageway we popped out at Chert Hall, evident by its incredible flow stone formations. We quickly pushed on, again saving this section for our return. After another 10/15 minutes of passageway we found ourselves at the Crabwalk traverse, and quickly set about preparing ourselves for SRT mode again.

A quick flashback to give context – I’ve been in here twice in the last couple of months, I haven’t done the Crabwalk yet but had been to the start of it. My training was looking at cave leader rigging and ropework plus rescue training. I remember coming away from Giants Hole thinking they do like a thread down there in the Peaks and so promptly set out on my return home to equip my already pretty well equipped caving kit with some shortened lengths of cord (I already had/have a HUGE selection of slings).

So there we were at the start of the Crabwalk, I rigged Garland’s so it was Scott’s turn and before passing him the topo we had a quick check. S**T!!! Forgot my bloody threads didn’t I! Brought them all the way back to the Peaks and left them in the van! The Crabwalk has 15 anchor points, 6 being bolted, 8 as drilled threads and 1 as a natural thread. I think it’s fair to say at this point Scott and I called challenge accepted and after a few minutes of interesting rigging and improvisational tactics, we were across the Crabwalk. We had an explore down every available passageway, although most of these attempts quickly were abandoned when our first rule of the day (no wet crawling) soon kicked in and one of us would say to the other “you can if you want, but I ain’t going in that!” I think our success on the Crabwalk gave us a false sense of security somewhat, as the sketchy tactics continued. After peering into a very narrow aven from the top through a small 30cm triangular shaped hole which we couldn’t see the bottom of and it meandered around out of view, Scott and I decided the only suitable option was to connect cows tails and I (being the heavier lump) act as anchor and lower him in. Amazingly Scott got in the opening but sadly to no avail and I promptly pulled him out like hook a duck. A couple more passageways to poke which either choked up or we abandoned within a few metres and we decided to make our way back to explore the things we’d saved for our way out. First being the Chert Hall flow stone climb, at the top of which there’s a small crawl onwards that eventually turns you back and Scott did the honours as the rigging baton was back to me. The Chert Hall traverse starts with a natural and a short ab down the previously scrambled flow stone before traversing off to your left (or right as ab-ing) back towards Garland’s Pot. A series of bolted anchors and drilled threads (let’s not talk about it) take you along an easy traverse with some large ledges on either side, before a narrower ledge takes you up to a main ledge on the opposite side of Garland’s Pot to the way we originally came in. A small 4 metre ab into Garland’s Pot pretty much rounded up the lower section of the cave for us and we were now getting wet and cold from the waterfall coming down Garland’s. With speed in mind now, Scott headed back up the rope end we had just descended and I quickly headed down the stream passage crawl back to Chert Hall to climb the flow stone and de-rig from the start of the traverse, Scott de-rigging from the opposite end, with the plan to meet in the middle, scramble back down into the lower passageway and get out of Garland’s pronto. This went as planned and we were soon back in Base Camp chamber scrambling up the calcite formations to explore the passageways which soon became impassable but were well worth the extra time taken! I think it was evident at this point that we were both ready for a sandwich and so we headed straight for the surface, which luckily didn’t take too long. On our way out we still hadn’t seen a soul, so we really did have the place to ourselves!

Upon surfacing, the cold wind soon kicked in and we both had hoods up and buffs on but the walk in/out for Giants is only a few hundred metres so we were quickly back at the van huddled in the back opening eating sandwiches as though we were setting records. We also spotted that the other party were heading back across the field, and no other vehicle had arrived so we had a clear shot at Snelslow, you couldn’t have asked for better timings! This time, we had packed everything we needed and off we went across the field at a very fast pace in an attempt to warm up. Caving temperatures were perfect, if a touch too warm at times, but on the surface the wind just ruined everything, and had the second walk in/out been any longer I think we may have called it a day after Giants!

After a little descent into the gulley where the entrance to Snelslow Swallet can be found, we climbed down the entrance ladder to instant relief from the wind lifting our spirits again. I handed Scott the ropes along with the topo as the baton was back to him (plus I’d also recently rigged this on another trip and really enjoyed it so wanted Scott to experience that too). Initially some narrow, walkable passageway leads to the first pitch down a well secured boulder wall that ends in a lower roofed space with signs of a potential dig of to the right. The second pitch starts immediately and the way on is down through a narrow slot onto a ledge where a re-belay to the left can be found. A short 4/5 metre abseil to another ledge with a window into a large aven and then there’s a few rigging options to continue but my personal favourite is to go for a ‘Y’ hang with 2 bolts above the window, into a re-belay using a bolt either side of the aven roughly 5 metres below the window, and then your straight down the remaining 25-30 metres below descent. There’s a lot to look at in the bottom of this seemingly small and uninteresting cave. The fossils and the size of them are some of the best and biggest I’ve seen (granted I’ve not seen much outside of the Dales and I still have a lot of the Dales to see! But even Scott joined me in awe at some of them!) mainly crinoids. The passageway does continue on with a low crawl off to the left which we didn’t opt for, and then a passageway to the right leading to another pitch head which isn’t on the topo and so we didn’t have any more ropes with us and neither of us fancied climbing out to cross the windy fields to get more rope from the van and return. Perhaps I should organise a KCC follow up trip? What is at the bottom of that pit?!