Yordas Pot

The morning was lovely with clear, blue skies and snow-covered hills and fields and cold. We had some breakfast and headed for Bernies as usual. While having more breakfast(!), others arrived who had traveled up in the morning including Boyd, Nikki and Matt Adlam Styles and Dave Phillips. The plan was for Notts Pot on Leck Fell and Boyd handed over the permit saying that he was only up for the day and was going walking. We were waiting for Robert and Phil to arrive but there was no sign of them. Realising that they had probably headed for the car park on the way to Leck Fell we all headed off for the same place. The car park had quite a lot of ice and we were wondering if we would make it the few miles up the narrow lane to the fell with all the snow and ice. We left some of the cars in the bottom car park near the main road and headed up the lane.
We had got past the farms and houses and although the road was fairly clear and the snow around it wasn't very deep, Mark's car came to and icy stretch and he couldn't continue. we parked up behind and tried pushing but didn't get very far. In the meantime I ran a quarter of a mile or so up the road to see if it was getting worse and found that it was. I headed back and found that Mark had managed to turn around via a gate into a field and we all headed back to the lower car park to talk about Plan "B".
I suggested Kingsdale as it would probably prove more accessible in the icy conditions and there are plenty of caves to choose from - we had plenty of rope which would have been needed for Notts Pot as well. Pete suggested the Yordas Pot Roof Traverse which we had done a few weeks ago: others suggested Jingling Pot. Since we had plenty of rope and time we decided to do both. Mark, Phil, Robert, Dave, Matt and I headed for Yordas Pot, Pete, Jess and Jim headed for Jingling Pot while Karen and Nikki decided to have a short walk nearby.
We headed into one of the middle entrances to Yordas Pot finding the water levels fairly low. Mark headed in doing the rigging and I followed close behind then the others. At the start of the Roof Traverse, I swung about on the rope a bit and tried traversing around and realised that my shoulder was still fairly week and I would probably not be able to cope with the more strenuous bits towards the end so I let the others pass and then headed back out via the middle entrance and found Karen in the spacious Main Chamber of Yordas Cave which is large and fairly flat with a large walk-in entrance. She had been wandering about with the small LED light on her keyring. We walked across the chamber to the Chapter House Waterfall to watch the others making their away along the Roof Traverse thirty feet or so above. The last of them seemed to have a lot of trouble getting past the deviation right at the end.
Dave had been last and had unclipped the deviation and could re-clip it so just abseiled down without getting too wet, unlike Matt! Once they were all down, they headed out via the Main Chamber and I thought I might prusik up and try and re-clip the deviation but I realised I would have ended up mostly in the waterfall to begin with and would have got very wet, so I gave up and followed the others out.
Matt had got pretty wet and headed back to his car while I followed Mark towards Jingling Pot followed by the others. It was difficult to work out where the Turbary Road track was due to the snow and the sun shining directly at us, but after wandering along we found it. I found Mark when near the Pot and he had found it very quiet with no answer to his calls - it is basically a blind shaft with a smaller side continuation and they should have heard him calling. He thought that the others must have resurfaced and we missed each other as they headed for Yordas Pot. Karen had Jim's car keys so she headed back to the cars in case he was looking for them and soon afterwards we heard the others who were still below in the Pot. Jess arrived at the surface after Mark, Phil and Robert had abseiled down followed some time later by Jim. By now Dave and I were still at the surface and getting pretty cold, so I headed back to the car with Jim and Jess to get changed. Once changed we headed back to Bernies leaving Pete and Dave to do the Yordas traverse and de-rig while Mark, Phil and Robert de0rigged Jingling Pot. Later most of us met in Bernies but only Matt and Nikki had got their before the kitchen had closed and managed to get the last order for chip butties in!