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.
No comments:
Post a Comment