Tag: Through trip

By Dave In Day Trips

Extended Coniston Through Trip

Dougle Dave, James, Jasmine, Chris G, OG Sophie, guests Sam & Nic 

For a change of speleological scenery, this weekends trip was the Coniston through trip, taking in the extra pitches of the Levers Water Mine to Paddy End top level extension. 

After some toe curling emails describing the joys and dangers, the hardy undeterred team met at Walna Scar car park, which was doing its best to emulate Leck Fell. The seven of us set off on the 1.5 mile trek to Levers Water, a good pre trip warm up, some folks choosing to throw snow balls. 

Once rested and kitted up we slid down to the funnel to the lovely adit mouth built by CATMHS on the Levers Water level. Some gardening unleashed a fair amount of water into the adjacent stope. I had promised a dry trip… the team quickly but gingerly filed down the level, admiring the blue lagoon and wonderfully coloured pitches working our way to Brow Stope. 

From here we explored the Top Level extension, taking in earthquake and cobalt passage, not lingering in earthquake given the recent movement, we went the 300m right to the dead end, because why not. 

Heading back towards the standard through trip route over MAGS catwalk, we realised we were missing two, these determined mine explorers attempting to leave no working unseen were quickly rounded up and shuffled over the stemples of MAGS. We made quick progress down the large top-middle pitches, and here another side mission to view the wonderful wheelbarrow and candles was made while the trip leader had a pasty. A 30m pitch rigged down from open winze. It’s a great sight, but once is enough.

with time getting on the group made short work in getting down the final traverses and pitches to hospital level and so out back to a lovely rainy day. 5 hours underground and 8 pitches  

https://www.flickr.com/gp/199763228@N07/37159g626S

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 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


By Ray McGarry In Day Trips

Fun and Games in Voldemort

Sophie, Pete, Matt, Dave, Ami & Ray

It all started so well. OK, there was the usual random walk around the fell to find the entrance, but nothing to suggest the comedy sketch to come. But let’s start at the start…

There is a short ladder directly from the surface. At the bottom is a short bit of crawling. I’d forgotten how snug this crawl is, so had to re-orientate myself (and the tackle sack) to get through. No-one else seemed to struggle, so I’ll blame arthritis. Others may blame pies. Things then get a little bit less snug down a few climbs to the head of the 1st pitch. As last time, this was already rigged, so we were all soon down at the start of Haywagon. Everyone else went for a marvel at the pretties, after being good boys and girls and removing SRT kit. As I’d been before, I waited patiently for their return.

The 2nd & 3rd pitches follow soon after, again thankfully pre-rigged. The take-off for the 2nd is moderately interesting. Now the key to this trip is to leave the 2nd pitch at a traverse line halfway down, rather than following the rope all the way to the bottom. A short traverse then leads to the 3rd pitch, which is easy enough. The bottom of this pitch is where the fun really begins.

Immediately is a fairly tight downward sideways crawl, dumping you rather unceremoniously in a puddle at a T-junction. The way on is left, along a seemingly interminable crawl… nothing too bad to start with, but a few more tricky sections along the way turned the thoughts of some members of the party to religion and sex, at least judging from the language. The “pleasure” of this passage is only enhanced by the accompaniment of a tackle sack.

After what seemed like a long time, but was probably no more than 15 mins or so, we popped out at the head of Oliver Lloyd Aven. Phew! The ordeal was over. All we had to do was slide down a rope and stomp out of Notts II. The first part of this plan went well enough. Before long, most were down in Inlet 7 of Notts II, with Matt and I stopping on the big ledge near the bottom to pull the rope down. And that’s where it all went wrong…

We pulled, we tugged, we hung, we jumped, all to no avail. No way was the rope coming down. Perhaps a few more bodies would help. So we decided to abseil down to the bottom so that all 6 of us could try together. Just 1 problem, of course… we had managed to pull the rope down to some extent with our exertions, so was it now safe to use? The obvious solution was for Matt and I to abseil together on the 2 ends. Thankfully this worked.

Even with all 6 of us pulling, the rope wasn’t budging. There was nothing else for it – someone would have to prussic up and free things off, or at least see what the problem was. No sooner had such thoughts started to dawn on us than Dave was attaching his jammers and setting off. No need for any drawing of straws then. With Ami, Pete and I tied to the other end as ballast, Dave was soon up near the problem. Some comedy communication then followed, the gist appearing to be that the 2 ropes were rather twisted, although an equally plausible translation could have been that the pope was Father Ted. On Dave’s return, it turned out that the 1st translation was closer to the actual situation. He even remembered how many twists there were and in which direction. So a sketch looking rather like a typical Mayday dance around a maypole then ensued. Surely that must have freed things off… but no.

I then decided to go up and have a look, but couldn’t find my chest jammer. Meanwhile, Sophie had set off up, reporting that there were no twists, but that the pull-down krab was a good 5 or 6m from the top, rendering it impossible to actually reach the top to rerig. In the meantime, Matt had found my lost jammer on the big ledge about 7m up and dropped it to me. On Sophie’s return, I then set off up to view the problem, intending to prussic up beyond the pull-down krab and reach the top of the pitch to rerig, making sure that enough bodies were tied to the other end to prevent my early demise. On reaching the problem, it was clear that, while there were no twists in the ropes below the krab, they were very twisted indeed above. Ah, so that’s the problem then. Using ropes and walls for purchase, I was able to spin enough to remove all twists above the krab. The others were then able to take the twists out below me. Job done. All I had to do was descend and the ropes should feed freely. It became clear that this probably wasn’t going to work as soon as I started to descend. There was no way to prevent the ropes twisting again. Again we all tried to pull down from the bottom, but again there was no give whatsoever. Whether it is simply the twisted ropes or there is something more fundamentally wrong at the top, we couldn’t be sure. In any case, it was getting a bit late by this point and we were all getting a bit cold, so we decided to make our way out of Notts II and come back for the ropes another day. Ami had never been in Notts II before and was suitably impressed. It was a shame we weren’t more in the mood for an explore.

So, as I write this (the day after), my ropes are still on Oliver Lloyd Aven. Matt and I plan to go back tomorrow to retrieve them, presumably via Voldemort. Watch this space…

Photos by Sophie

By Ray McGarry In Day Trips

Swinsto Pot

Tom, Darren, Tim K, Pete, Steve, Rhod, Ray

A classic pull-through in dry conditions with Darren rigging. All went smoothly. No hang-ups or jammed ropes. Photos by Ray.

By Jason Clements In Day Trips

Cupcake to Committee Pot – 28th October 2012

The Cupcake – Committee Pot: Richard M, Tim D, Jason

I’d been looking forward to this trip: the combination of one of the newer discoveries in the Three Counties system, some nice pretties and a through trip was enticing.  But I knew my companions would take some keeping up with, they being well-known members of the species Homo Ferrous Troglodytes.

According to Richard’s informant, all ropes were in place except for the short entrance pitch, which was a bonus, so we were quickly at the bottom and able to see The Cupcake in all its glory

– along with many other pristine stal formations and a host of long straws.  Care has to be taken to avoid these on the next little pitch, and more fine formations follow.  The following pitch is aptly named “Mud” and is a portent of things to come, but the going is still easy although a generous coating of mud does nothing for one’s SRT kit.  Then there’s an upward pitch, short but made longer by having to wipe gobs of gloop off the rope at each prussik step.  The next section of passageway is reasonably roomy but requires great care to avoid breaking or clarting-up some more nice formations.  It’s hard not to see this section deteriorating with more visitors.

From here the trip showed its less agreeable side; crawls in sharp hardcore, then mud, then some tight bits before we came to Bendall’s Dilemma.  We had understood this to be a hard squeeze, but we passed it with only a little thrutching and cursing.  We were rewarded by emerging into the fine large chamber of Hubert Carstairs II.  Following on into Hubert Carstairs I,we were presented by a choice of ascending ropes.  Richard took the right-hand one and after some doubtful mutterings, Tim investigated that on the left.  I thought it important for someone to stay in the middle to relay messages (and avoid unnecessary climbing).  After a while, Richard located a third rope, much shorter than the other two, which was the way on.  There swiftly followed another short ascent in a rift.  Short, but tight and awkward, bloody awkward – at least to me.  Richard cheerfully said “you got your money’s worth out of that one!”

Not long afterwards is the “Inverse Superman”squeeze, a U-bend followed by a constriction with a lump of rock cunningly sited at chest level.  A curious balletic episode ensued.  Richard goes first, passing through like an eel.  Jason makes a feeble and unsuccessful attempt to remove his SRT kit, attempts the squeeze, jams his croll against the lump, retreats, advances, jams and retreats again.  Tim reaches over and manages to divest Jason of his harness.  Jason advances – and passes!  Two sets of SRT kit and a helmet are passed forward. Tim advances, jams and retreats twice, then calls for Richard to push from behind.  Jason lies down, Richard crawls back over him.  Somehow his mere presence encourages Tim to a final, successful push. Then Richard crawls over Tim and back through the squeeze to retrieve Tim’s descender which had parted company from him in the fun.

After that, I’d like to say it was all plain sailing.  I’d like to, but it was actually a long grim crawl.  Not without variety though; sideways thrutching, flat-out crawling in mud, flat-out crawling in water.  And all the way pushing a ball of tangled straps and mud that was the SRT kit.  Eventually – eventually – we reached the top of the pitches at the top of Count Lazlo Stroganoff’s Aven.  At least one could sit up, just, though I found untangling my kit and putting it on in that position took so long that by the time I got to the bottom Tim was considering mounting a rescue.  On the last couple of pitch sections, the noise of rushing water became more noticeable.  Could this be the Notts II streamway ?  It could – it was.  Hallelujah!

Richard had already headed out to derig, so we were faced with the quandary of which way to go.  Knowing the inlet (Sir Digby Spode’s) was between the exit and Curry Inlet, it should have been obvious to head downstream.  But by this time, I was beyond rational thought, so we headed upstream for a bit against quite a sporting current (which cleaned up the gear a bit at least) before Tim decided we’d gone wrong.  After rather more streamway than we’d been expecting, we found the familiar passage and headed out for the jumble of scaffolding, ladders and breeze blocks – and daylight.

I was quite surprised, having felt the trip to have gone so long I was expecting darkness, but it was only 4:15.

So, a trip I’d thoroughly recommend to anyone – as long as I don’t have to come with them!

PS – If, like me, you’ve wondered at the origins of the colourful names of the various inlets and chambers of Notts II, you can find some clues here: http://loveandliberty.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/rogue-male-in-trap.html