Kinder Scout

Karen continued to have a rest day as here shoulder was still injured. I drove to the layby at Upper Booth and parked up just before 10:00.
After getting my boots on I set off along the road and track to Jacob's Ladder, the Pennine Way route, and followed the long set of rough stone steps up to the plateau. On the way, I was passed by a group of middle-aged men who seemed to be going quite quickly, but not long afterwards I passed one of them who ended up trailing a long way behind the other three and then again passed the rest of them as they were resting up at Edale Rocks.
The forecast was for a mostly cloudy day with possible showers but luckily it remained dry.
I decided to stay on the southern edge and because of the strong westerly wind (which was why I had started by following the Jacob's Ladder path so that I would have the strong wind behind me most of the day).
From Edale Rocks I headed towards Kinder Low and not very far from the Trig Point, I set off across the pathless section of moor towards the large rocky tor known as The Pagoda in the distance, which is on the southern edge.
As I was well away from the usual routes taken by walkers, I saw a mountain hare as it bounded away. I also had heard the cry of the curlew quite a lot, even just after leaving the layby below.
Soon I was following the mixture of well-worn path and slabbed sections which follows near the southern edge.
I continued onwards and when I reached the junction of the paths formed by the path continuing to Grindsbrook Clough along with the path which veered off to the right in the direction of Grindslow Knoll, I followed the route to the top of Grindslow Knoll.
The top of the Knoll was by far the windiest section of Kinder I experienced today and I quickly dropped off the top following the path leading southwards and soon was following the remaining path which dropped very steeply down to the lower Crowden river valley and then the path leading across the fields from Grindsbrook Booth to Upper Town Farm.
I followed the path back through the farm and then along the road to the layby which was my starting point.
As I was getting my car keys out of my rucksack, I left my walking poles on the car roof and then forgot that I had done so. So of course they fell off somewhere after I drove off. Rats.

BCRC Event

I spent the day helping out at the British Cave Rescue Council event held at the DCRO base in Buxton. There were sessions on BCRC issues, a look at the latest version of the Nicola System replacement for the Heyphone, stretchers and also various hauling and rigging setups.

Orpheus CC AGM

Yet another Annual General Meeting, this time the Orpheus Caving Club. It was the DCRO AGM on Tuesday.

Whalf Pipe Mine

While Karen joined Keith to help set up a tarpaulin over the dig site at the bottom of the Elevator in Water Icicle Close Cavern, I joined Boyd and Chris Jackson on a trip to the Whalf Pipe / Hillocks system to bring two aspirant Orpheus members on a caving trip called Alice and Gerry, who I believe are from Leicester.

Crack Pot Cave

Today was to be a short trip as we planned a visit to Crack Pot Cave. After driving along a mostly single track road to Summer Lodge Farm, we followed the farmer's request and parked Waggy's car and my X-Trail just beyond the gate on the grass next to the drystone-wall. Brian was allowed to park on any empty space in front of the farm buildings.

The nearby river was running quite high presumably from the recent snow melt and we walked along the squelchy ground to the small side valley where the water from Crack Pot Cave resurgence was flowing down to join the main river below.

We scrambled over small rocks to reach the obvious main entrance to the cave but found that it was blocked due to a rock fall.

This meant we had to use the alternative small entrance leading to Knee Wrecker crawl which was very close to the main entrance.

My knees were painful from yesterday's trip and after finding the crawl slow-going and not making my knees feel any better, I stopped to let Waggy and Brian past ad they were behind me. I then turned around and after having a quick look at the end of a short passage at a junction, which was obviously near the surface as there were small plat roots, dead insects and a spider there, I headed back to the entrance.

I followed a narrow path which led past the entrance to the ground higher up and above the cave entrances just to see what was there (not a lot as it turned out) and then returned to the car.

It was new raining and I was glad that the tailgate of the car provided good shelter and fortuitously, the rain was being blow from the front of the car towards the back.

After getting changed, I waited in the car for about 20 minutes and Karen and Keith arrived after having seen most of the cave,

They also got changed and I then tried to drive off the grass and back onto the track but the ground was too soft to drive up the incline as the ground was sloping back down towards the gate. So I waited for the others so that I could reverse back down and then onto the track.

Not long after, the rest arrived and again, once they had got changed, Waggy tried to drive off the grass onto the track, Driving forward was not surprisingly found to be not on, but when he tried to reverse, as the car was tight up against the wall, there wasn't enough room to swing the rear of the car away to get onto the track and Waggy found that the right-hand rear corner of his car was now up against the wall. So he could now neither move forwards or backwards!

Phil and I tried to push Waggy's car from the rear as he tried again to get off the grass but this was hopeless. We tried putting a sheet of corrugated iron and then one of his car mats under the front wheels, but this did nothing to help.

Finally we tied a piece of rope from Waggy's car onto my car's rear tow point so that I could help drag his car back onto the track but I thought this would probably fail as even on the trick, conditions were quite slippery. But it was worth a go anyway.

Luckily it worked and we soon had both cars back onto the track and we were able to reverse back down through the gate and turn around using the space in front of the farm buildings.

We all reunited at the layby on the main road where we had left the remaining cars in our party and headed for home.

Devis Hole Mine

Last night we drove up to Swaledale and after dropping our stuff off at the Low Row Bunk House, where we were staying for the weekend, we joined Brian Potts and Pete Wagstaff in the Buck Hotel at Reeth just as local caver and mine explorer and also Orpheus member, Pete Roe, arrived.

In the morning, the remainder of our group for the day, Keith and Phil Walker, also arrived just as we finished breakfast not long after 09:00.

Once Pete Roe had also returned, we drove the short distance to a track where we parked up and got changed into caving gear while Pete Roe tried out a deck chair he had brought in his land rover!

The walk to Devis Hole Mine's entrance was quite short and we all carried short lengths of wood to bring into the mine for Pete as they would be needed to shore up his dig.

The entrance was a square excavated shaft near the stream bed with a cover and about 3 meters deep. We clambered down the shaft which was a bit slippery with remaining traces of the recent snow. It was an early start, for the Orpheus, as it was only 10:45!

This led to a short wet and muddy crawl and then walking passage with sections of stooping height passage with a few junctions.

There were odd remnants of old mining artefacts here and there and we eventually arrived at a large shaft (or “sump” in mining terminology which had a few bolts on the adjoining wall as belay anchor and an old iron rail laid across the top to which a sling could be attached to provide a rebelay immediately over the shaft.

Keith dropped down first and went second.

We dropped down about 15 metres to a passage which led from the shaft. The shaft continued but was below but was flooded and there were two crossed old iron rails arranged level with the passageway to assist in getting off the rope and into the passage.

There were actually two adjacent passages here, and once everyone was down the pitch, we followed the left-hand passage which had an in-situ rail track for ore tubs. There was sign placed here requesting that you walk on the rails in order to preserve the clog prints left behind long ago gy the miners who worked down there but Pete told us that the sign had been ignore and the clog prints had been obliterated a long time ago.

Pete pointed out various features and the names of other passages as we passed them.

We arrived at a section of natural limestone cave which the miners had broken into. This area was a literal maze of passage (which Phil had called “an amazing maze”, to coin a phrase!) and had sparkling sections of gypsum crystals, various type of fossils including the best fossil coral I have ever seen and pieces of chert.

After making our way through the maze, we arrived in another mine which adjoined the natural cave.

We continued on through this mine and eventually arrived at a short section with unstable rocks and a gap through which you had to pass and drop a short way down. Pete had warned us to take care here and it looked like I would be able to get through with no problems but I may have problems coming back and might thrash about a bit which was a bad idea. So I opted to wait here while the others continued on to Graffiti Corner, which was only 10 minutes away there were back after 20 minutes.

We had a short rest here and then began the return journey to the surface.

We returned to the maze section and took a slightly different route through and then basically reversed our route back to the entrance after an excellent and interesting trip, reaching the surface at around 16:45 after around 6 hours underground.

We said our “good-byes” to Pete as he had something arranged for the evening and later we all returned to the Buck Inn in Reeth for an evening meal along with Mike Child who had arrived in the evening.

Eldon Hole

Karen was still on the Isle of Man visiting an old friend and Keith planned to come up to Derbyshire for the day as there was an Orpheus Caving Club committee meeting in the afternoon.

So, we decided on a trip down Eldon Hole to see how much snow was down there remaining from the winter and from a fortnight ago.

We met in the café in Monyash and then drove to the farm near Eldon Hole and got changed into caving gear. Between the remaining snow outside the farm and the muddy ground, we managed to find a space to park in.

After walking up to the open shaft of Eldon Hole, we found quite a lot of snow hanging on the eastern edge and there was a large lump nearly the size of an old Mini with a large crack threatening to fall down near our intended route: the North Gully.

We tied one of our ropes to some of the fence posts surrounding the hole, and Keith attached his descender to the rope and tried to get the lump to detach itself and fall down. The chunk of snow refused to budge and so we set off down.

At the point where the gully ends and the shaft proper begins on the north side, Keith was just setting off down when I arrived. While I waited for Keith to shout up “rope free” so that I could follow down, the sun made an appearance and soon there were small bits of snow and ice dropping down from above as the sun warmed the top of the east wall.

I shouted down to Keith that it looked like things were getting dodgy and to come straight back up once he reached the bottom and not hang around, and I would wait where I was for him.

Soon we were back on the surface after an interesting trip. We had even needed our lights!

After walking back to the car and getting changed again out of caving gear, we returned to the Old Smithy café in Monyash for a brew and some cake before attending the meeting at the Orpheus CC cottage.

Kinder Downfall

I had the day to myself as Karen was away for the weekend on the Isle of Man visiting an old friend from Rugby.

It was clear and sunny, had been frosty overnight and was going to stay cool. Ideal conditions for a walk across Kinder Scout when the boggy sections should be frozen!

So I walked from Upper Booth along Crowden Clough and up the nice, but sadly too short, scramble to get on the plateau. I was so warm while making my way up to the plateau and while crossing it, I was only wearing a Power Dry shirt.

I followed the original route of the Pennine Way across to towards the River Kinder with quite a few snow drifts partially filling some of the groughs. On a day like today all you have to do is leave the top of Crowden Clough to follow the stream northwards and then make sure you keep going in a north-west direction until you can see the pair of gritstone buttresses in the distance marking the River Kinder.

I followed the river sometimes on the bankside, sometimes on the snow laying in the riverbed, until I arrived at Kinder Downfall.

I sat on a flat-topped boulder to eat lunch while looking at the views as the air was so clear.

Afterwards I followed the current Pennine Way route back towards Edale Rocks and then down the bridleway of Jacobs Ladder and back to Barber Booth. You can tell Spring is now winning the battle with the end of winter: not only with the lovely weather but with the plaintive cries of the curlews which I heard quite a lot.

Looking across to the Great Ridge

Walking up Crowden CLough

Waterfall at top of Crowden Clough

Scramble on left of waterfall, top of Crowden Clough

Look back along Crowden Clough from top

Snow drifts filling groughs

Kinder Gates and snow drifts

Top of Kinder Downfall with Kinder Reservoir in distance

Lost Lad, Derwent Edge

Yesterday we had a day doing nothing but watching a DVD of the latest James Bond film, “Skyfall”. What a difference it was today though with temperatures around freezing to begin with and a cloudy sky.

We started at Fairholmes car park and walk past the Derwent dam and ten after carefully making our way up snow and ice covered stone steps, we walked along the cycle path along the reservoir as far as the footpath turning off into the Abbey Brook valley.

We followed a very snow footpath along the valley side and one point Karen spotted a shrew which was busy digging in the little bits of grass poking through the snow and as we stood watching, it was making its way towards us until Karen moved and it shot off into the longer grass.

We were now feeling the very cold wind blowing along the valley and this was to accompany us as we continued on rising ground to eventually end up at the top of Lost Lad, which is a small hill on Derwent Edge with a viewpoint and topograph.

We dropped down to the south-western side of Lost Lad to try and get out of the wind and have some lunch. We found a flat-topped boulder poking out of the snow which we sat on and quickly put on warmer jackets as we ate our lunch.

From here we retraced our route a short way and then followed a path dropping down past a line of grouse shooting butts. We saw several mountain hares out on the snow a few hundred metres away as we followed the footpath down through sections of steep snow slopes and drifts until we reached a gate in Walkers Clough which brought us back to the cycle track running along Derwent Reservoir.

We were not very far from Derwent dam and also our starting point. A very nice walk, but it was very cold!

Start of path along Abbey Brook valley

Mr Shrew hunting for his lunch

Summit of Lost Lad

The topograph

View of Derwent Reservoir

Another view of the Derwent reservoir

Snow drifts below Derwent Edge