Paul Lydon: Trou Mile

Overnight there was a storm with quite a lot of rain and wind and today was fresher than yesterday but sunny all day.
Again Elaine went for a walk and the five of us drove up to the car park at Le Fontaine de L'Ours. The route to the Trou Mile follows the same as the Gouffre Raymonde but on reaching the open grassy area where people had burnt camp fires, you follow the dry stream upstream for 100 metres or so.
The entrance is next to the stream bed and is a short drop of 3 or 4 metres between boulders. The guide book claims it is free-climable but climbing up would be very awkward. Keith rigged the SRT rope from a small tree by the entrance and then placed a rebelay using a spit on a boulder. When he was standing at the bottom, his head was level with the rebelay loop! Still, it did make getting back out a bit easier.
The other four of us: myself, Karen, Pete Collins and Boyd followed. This led to a short slippery climb down into a steeply descending chamber reminiscent of the caves of Assynt in Scotland.
At the bottom of the chamber was a short pitch of 5 metres which again, the guide book claimed was free-climable but it as difficult to see below a steepening section and as there were a number of spit anchors and we had brought a rope, Keith rigged it and as he descended, he said he thought it was free-climable. On the way out Boyd did climb it without difficulty and I followed.
Shortly after this pitch was another of 6 metres. Keith rigged and dropped down this and shouted "rope free" so I followed down. As I came down he said there was another short drop of 2 metres and I may as well drop down that as well. I did this and dropped down a further drop of a metre and a half or so.
Soon we came to the fourth pitch, this time 8 metres long and already equipped with two spit anchors and hangers plus a loop of rope joining them together and a piece of thinnish rope rigged in-situ. Keith dropped a short way then put in two spit hangers for a re-belay and shouted up to be careful with the second spit as it wasn't very good. In fact this hanger pulled out as I passed it when coming up later as I was moving past with my cowstail clipped to the loop of rope which was attached to it!
After following a twisty descending and narrow streamway we came to another drop covered in a knobbly form of calcite. Keith thought it was a tricky looking climb down and as there were three spit anchors nearby plus a spare rope which Karen had of about 12 metres, he decided to rig the drop using this rope and still having the last rope for the final 10 metre pitch further into the cave. Luckily the calcite was very rough and provided a lot of friction so Pete was able to clamber down without the rope.
Beyond this climb the streamway continued with short climbs ans still narrow with short sections of traversing needed. Bearingi n mind that the return journey would be uphill and we were going pretty slowly as well, I suggested to Karen that maybe we should consider turning around and start heading out as this would speed things up for the others a bit. She agreed and Boyd decided to also head out with us.
On the way out we paused while Boyd had a look at a climb which we thought might be the connection with the near by Gouffre Rayond. It turned out to lead to just an alcove so he came back down again.
At the pitch where the bolt came out on the rebelay, I tied an Alpine Butterfly Knot at the anchor above (the one with the in-situ hangers and rope) so that if the remaining bolt came out, there wouldn't be a shock load.
Soon we were back at the second pitch and then the entrance pitch. We were back on the surface at around 14:50 after entering a bit after Noon.
Boyd headed back to the car park while I took Karen the short distance to the Gouffre Raymone entrance.
After we had seen the entrance to the Gouffre Raymonde. we returned to my car and got changed, had a quick look at La Fontaine de L'Ours (”Spring of the Bear”) which was an uninspiring spring nearby in the woods, then back to the Gite La Paloumiere.