Someone called Matt had contacted Karen by email asking about joining the Orpheus CC and he was suggested to come along to the club cottage today and somebody would take him caving. Karen wasn't well and I arrived at the cottage as a visiting group were preparing breakfast while Ken was getting his digging stuff ready for another trip down Owl Hole. Waggy knew about Matt and was prepared to take him on a caving trip but would have rathered go digging with Ken so I offered to do it. Phil W arrived and was looking for a trip so when Matt turned up we decided on a trip to Knotlow Cavern as it was nearby and Matt had only been in Carlswark before. He is a Grampian SG member who had recently moved to Chapel-en-le-Frith and was looking for a local caving club to join. He had been caving in Yorkshire (and had also been in the Vercors while we were there.
I grabbed the ropes and we drove over to Knotlow Triangle. There was a car already parked there but they must have been in Hillocks Mine or Whalf Pipe Mine as there was no sign of them at Knotlow. First we opened the lid to the 210 feet Knotlow Engine Shaft and after tying the 80 metre rope on, I fed it all down the shaft. We moved to the Climbing Shaft and after opening the lid and tying the rope on, I dropped down the entrance shaft and I had a quick look in the log book and some cavers had been in the cave in recent weeks with no reports of bad air. I continued on along the traverse above Pearl Chamber and reached the end of the rope! I had grabbed the 30 metre red rope from the tackle store instead of the 50 metre red rope as I had intended. As I knew you need at least 45 metres of rope to get down this pitch I realised I would have to use the second rope on this pitch and we would not be able to descend the pitch into Waterfall Chamber. So I explained to the others that we would have to just have a look at Waterfall Chamber and then return to the surface and then if they wanted to, they could drop down the Engine Shaft, have a look around and then come back up the same way. I sent them out to do this while I followed out de-rigging.
When I got to the surface I met Matt who decided not to bother going down the Engine Shaft. We went over to the Engine Shaft and shouted down to Phil "You come up". He shouted "Rope free!". We did this several times as Phil could not hear us due to the noise of the water. Eventually he realised nobody was following down so he started back up.
After changing we headed back to the club cottage for tea.
2 comments:
Don't ya hate when that happens? Did you have a knot in the end of the rope?
Of course - I always do! In this case I discovered that the rope was too short while standing on a ledge so it was OK anyway.
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