Calf Holes to Browgill Cave, Yorkshire

Boyd headed off to the Lakes after breakfast while Waggy, Dave, Chris, Dawn, Karen and I decided on an easy, short trip was in order and we chose a trip to Calf Holes which only myself, Karen and Waggy had been in before. Waggy rigged and I followed him down followed by the others. We toook our SRT kit off and had a look at the upstream section until it got quite low and then headed back to the pitch. I put my harness back on and and the rest of my SRT kit into a small bag and headed downstream. The others followed and I eventually reached the short flat-out section leading to The Contortion and the connection with Browngill Cave. Karen and the others soon followed and we were off downstream again. We then headed for the flat-out waterfall bypass and was soon at the narrow "staircase" of rock leading down to a short, handline-assisted clamber down to the rift leading in a short distance to the chamber at the foot of the waterfall. We all had a look around the chamber and noticed the lovely fossils in the blocks on the floor.
Karen headed back up the short climb and "staircase" to retrace the route back to Calf Holes and the pitch back to the surface, while the rest of us headed downstream. After a short distance Dawn was asking "What's that light ahead?" and I replied "The Sun!". We were at the entrance to Browgill Cave. We clambered up the river bank and headed back along the lane to Calf Holes. Just as I got to the head of the pitch, I saw the rope moving and after a "Coooeee!" down the pitch, I heard Karen "coooeee!" back. She was just getting ready to prusik back up and was soon back up at the top of the pitch. After Karen had de-rigged the rope we headed back to the parked cars and Pete and Dave decided to have a look for Old Ing Cave, while the rest of us got changed and then headed to Pen-y-Ghent cafe in Horton-in-Ribblesdale for some tea and cake before the trip back home to Derbyshire.

Stream Passage Pot, Yorkshire

After stopping off at the Orpheus tackle store to collect some ropes for today's trip into Stream Passage Pot, Karen and I headed off for The Northern Pennine Club's hut at Greenclose. We arrived around 9:30pm to find only Clive Westlake (an NPC member amongst other clubs) there. He told us that besides our Orpheus party, a group from Imperial College CC were expected as well as another lot which turned out to be Doug Jackson and a few others from Lost World CC. After dropping off our gear and nabbing a bunk, we headed off to the New Inn in Clapham. Not long afterwards Chris Jackson and Dawn Brocklesby arrived and a short while later, surprisingly, Pete Wagstaff and Dave Phillips also arrived as they had travelled together in Pete's car. Karen and I had gone on this trip and missed the DCA AGM but Boyd had gone to that and was expected later in the evening. One surprise was that since our last visit several months ago, central heating had been installed!
We were up before 8 AM and after a bit of cereal, etc. we set off for Bernie's for breakfast, which was annoying as we were so near to Clapham and there wasn't a good cafe for breakfast there. After breakfast we parked up at Clapham and got changed into caving gear and while Karen and I packed the four ropes into a tackle bag each we wondered where the others had go tot but it turned out that they had parked on the other side of the river.
Anyway, we headed off for the Gaping Gill area and Waggy and I arrived first and we searched around for the correct shakehole for Stream Passage Pot and soon found it. We all got our SRT kit on and Waggy headed down the oil drums to begin rigging. Chris followed and I came next. At the bottom of the oil drums was a small chamber and a narrow short and low meander to the first pitch. Chris tried following this going legs first and soon got stuck! I pulled he personal small tackle bag out of his way and he got himself unjammed. He turned around and was soon through head first. I popped through and found a keyhole-shaped short passage and tried to keep in the large part at the top but there was nowhere to push upward against and you ended up about 2 meters off the floor of another smaller chamber with a hole in the floor and a view of Pete at the bottom. I could see Chris trying to get the rope out of the way of his helmet and spare light and I popped back into the first chamber to find Karen arriving. She had a look at the next bit and decided she didn't like the look of it either. Meanwhile, Dawn had arrived and she popped through and I pushed through my tackle bag of rope for the next pitch and she took it. I told her to tell the others to go on and if Karen and I came through we would catch them up. If we didn't appear, then they could assume that we had headed out. I had now got a lot further through the keyhole and could see that the top of the next pitch was in that small chamber. again, I didn't want to risk injuring my weak shoulder so I backed out again. Karen headed back up the barrels and I followed. We stripped off our SRT kit and headed back down to Clapham and got changed out of caving gear. We then returned to Ingleton for a coffee and cake in Inglesport cafe and then had a walk around Ingleton after I weakened and bought a Rab Vapour Rise jacket which was on the sale rail!
We the returned to Greenclose and found it locked up so headed for Clapham at around 5:00 PM to see if there was any sign of the others. We found Chris's Jeep and Waggy's Golf parked at the end of Long Lane and no sign of them. We went for a walk around Clapham and after checking back at Greenclose, it was still locked up. We waited around twenty minutes and the Lost World arrived luckily with a key. After a sit around and some tea, Boyd arrived and we went to the New Inn for some food. Karen and myself decided on a starter as we had eaten in Bernie's while we were in Ingleton earlier. We checked on Waggy and Chris's cars but there was no sign of them at around 7:30 PM so we went to the New Inn as planned. Food was being served up until 8:30 PM and were were laughing about Dave having missed the food slot while we had been in Yorkshire last year after a trip into Corky's Pot and they walked in at 8:30 PM and luckily were able to order food.

Carlswark Cavern

Keith Slatcher and Pete Collins were travelling up to the Peak District for the weekend so Karen and I drove over to the Orpheus CC Cottage to meet them in the morning. When we got to the track leading to the Cottage, we found there was still a fair amount of snow and, at the gate part way along the track, there were three vehicles, including Ken's van, parked up. This was because there was a drifting of snow across the track by the gate and the vehicle owners had obviously arrived last night and could not get any further.
So I phoned Keith and told hime to meet us at home instead. We picked up one of my ropes and headed for the cafe at "Outside" at Calver Crossroads for breakfast, as we planned a trip into Carlswark Cavern and Pete and Keith were planning to do a through trip via the Dynamite Series and out via the newly-repaired Flower Pot entrance. They has attempted this before but found the exit in a state of partial collapse and so came back through the Dynamite Series. After breakfast we parked in the layby just outside the village, which was pretty full already, and got changed into our caving gear on the snow. We walked up the main road and then part way up the road in Eyam Dale and then clambered up the slope to Eyam Dale Shaft. Karen attached the rope to the anchors with assistance from Keith and we all abseiled down the short shaft. At the bottom we stripped off our SRT kit and headed into the cave.
We were soon at the start of the Dynamite Series and found the pool of water at the initial squeeze was quite deep. Karen suggested bailing it but most of our helmets had large ventilation holes. Then she suggested using wellies, which was a brilliant idea, so Keith pulled his off and we formed a small "chain-gang" passing the wellies full of water to me at the rear where I emptied them back through the low pasage sloping downwards we had all come through. Aftee not too long a period, we emptied about thrity welly-fulls and Pete managed to get through alright soon followed by Keith. As Karen and I had no chance of making it through the tighter onward squeezes, we headed back towards Eyam Dale Shaft passing another party of three cavers on the way.
We donned our SRT kit and prusiked back up to the surface. We had planned to hang around for Keith and Pete to find us as Flower Pot is only a short distance up the road and not far from the road. A family of cavers arrived shortly afterwards and we decided to remove our rope so that it wasn't in their way as they had electron ladder and lifeline. There was no sign of the other two so we walked a few hundred yards up the road and soon found Flower Pot. This shaft had been repaired recently and had nice, solid, thick blue plastic tubes lining the six or so metres of shaft. We then realised a slight miscalculation in our plans: Pete and Keith would have found it very difficult to climb up the plastic tubing without a rope or ladder!
We tried shouting down but received no relpy - not really surprising as Pete and Keith must have been at the foot of the shaft long before we had re-surfaced. So, we expected they would either head for Eyam Dale Shaft (not good as we had de-rigged and had their SRT kit but they could climb the other party's ladder) or exit via the Gin Entrance. We first returned to the car in case they had already exited via the Gin Entrance and were back at the cars getting changed. There was no sign of them, so we dropped off the rope and their SRT kits and headed for the Gin Entrance, all the while keeping an eye on the roadside footpath below in case they were heading back to the cars. At the Gin Entrance we had a good view of the path and main road below so Karen waited there while I headed back along the high-level path towards Eyam Dale. I had only gone a short way when I heard a shout from Karen : she had seen the two of them passing below and shouted to them. So we also headed back to the cars and got changed, and returned to the cafe for a second visit.
Here we found from Pete that the woman in the family group whose ladder they had climbed had noticed that Keith had his wellies on the wrong feet! He had put them back on after the bailng session and had not noticed that they were on the wrong feet. Not surprising as he had spent most of the time crawling!

Snowdon Via The Watkin Path

This weekend was the annual Orpheus CC trip to North Wales. In previous years, we stayed at the Oread Mountaineering Club's hut in Rhyd Ddu but this was unavailable due to some sort of building work so as an alternative we stayed at the Clogwyn Mountaineering Club's hut at Croesor where some Orpheus members had stayed on previous occasions.
Karen and I set off from home at around six in the evening following a cross-country route via Hartington, Stoke and Corwen. It had been snowing in most parts of the country recently but the roads were clear. We were nearing the end of the journey and following the road to Bala when it started to snow again. After a short time it began to settle and became two or three inches deep and as there was only one set of tyre tracks from a car which had passed us coming from the opposite direction, we appeared to be the only car to pass since it started snowing. For about 8 or 9 miles we drove at twenty miles and hour or less which meant that we had a longer journey then expected. Anyway, we arrived at our destination at about nine forty-five to find Jenny and Boyd, Trish and Frank, John Pratt and his niece Helen plus Steve Tucker already there. We were the last to arrive and some had arrived on Thursday night and been walking on the Glyders earlier in the day.
We were about just after half-past seven and as we had left our sausages and cheese in the fridge at home, we just had cereal for breakfast. Karen had planned to spend the day bird-watching with
Jenny and I set off to park near Pont Bethania, Nant Gwynant to walk up the Watkin Path, possibly up onto the Lliwedd ridge and then back down Snowdon's South Ridge and back down the Watkin Path. There was still plenty of snow cover as I started up the Watkin Path with very few others around, probably because it was only a quarter past nine in the morning. I continued past old quarry or mine buildings and started up a steepening in the path with stone steps and passed a group of walkers. Later on I passed a second group and found that the path was covered in snow from last night and there were no boot prints from others, so I was the first to pass that way today.
Soon the rocks were partly covered in ice and the snow was becoming frozen, so I stopped at a flat area at Bwlch y Saethau to put on my crampons and swap walking poles for an ice axe. I wandered over to the other side of the Bwlch giving views across to Crib Goch, the Pyg Track and far below, the Miners Track and the lake, Llyn Glaslyn. I could see quite a lot of walkers making their way up the diagonal Pyg Track with even more on the lower and flatter Miners Track.
I continued up a steepening with frozen snow and found it difficult to make out the Path as the snow and rock all looked the same. But as I approached the end of the Watkin Path where it joins the Rhyd Ddu Path at a large finger of stone, I decided to return back the same way, back down the Watkin Path as I could see
dark clouds blowing in and thought it would be easier to retrace my steps rather than try and follow another route which I had only ascended before (the South Ridge) if the weather turned nasty.
So I turned around and started making my way back down. I met others now coming up the same way many with pretty new looking crampons and ice axes - probably the first time they needed them in recent years! I was asked by several people what it was like higher up and I told then it was icy alright and they should have a look and decide for themselves. Soon I was making my way down the stone steps back past the old quarry workings with light snow falling and gusts of wind. I reached the road and made my way back to the car park and after changing out of my boots, drove to Capel Curig to have a snack in the cafe and but the sausages, cheese and margarine to replace those which we had left at home!

Walk from Hartington via Wolfescote and Biggin Dales

We had planned on a trip into Giants Hole with Boyd and some newcomers to the Orpheus CC but I had pulled a muscle in my back while in Hillocks Mine so Karen drove in her car and I in mine back to the Orpheus Cottage along with Keith who had spent the night at our place. Here we found Dick Marley and Boo, who had not been seen for many moths. Anyway, while Boyd, Keith, Karen and the two newcomers headed off to Giants Hole, I drove around to Hartington and parked near the Duck Pond. I had decided to repeat the walk I had done back in November which had been a wet day unlike today which was dry but very cold. Still, it's a very pleasant, if short, walk - especially along the River Dove.