Whalf Pipe Climbing Shaft, Monyash

After tea or coffee for all of us (Keith and Pete had stayed overnight with us) and cereal or porridge for me and Karen, we drove to the Orpheus cottage as we had arranged to meet two prospective members: Jonathan Reeves and Helen Jenkins, for a caving trip. Jonathan had been caving before but had a seven year break after moving to London and back to Belper and had no real SRT experience. Helen was a SWCC member and had done some SRT. So we decided to give Jonathan a session on the cottage gable end to practice passing rebelays and changing from prusik to abseil and vice versa. Of course we also had to have breakfast at Monyash Cafe and had decided on a trip in Whalf Pipe Mine as that was local and had several straight-forward rebelays.
After breakfast, Pete, Keith, Boyd, Karen and I took Jonathan and Helen down Whalf Pipe Climbing Shaft with Keith rigging and Karen following Boyd with Jonathan behind Karen and me bringing up the rear. Jonathan was a bit slow, as expected, but we were soon all collected near the bottom of the Engine Shaft. Keith had earlier dropped a rope down this as he and Pete planned to exit via that route. After giving Jonathan a quick tour of the local parts of the mine while Boyd did the same with Helen, we headed back to the surface with Karen going last as she wanted to de-rig. Again it took quite a while for Jonathan to prusik up and pass the rebelays but we were back on the surface by 5:00pm - not too bad as we had very late start! After washing ropes etc. back at the cottage (Keith and Pete had already headed home) we chatted to Jenny, Eileen and Dick Marley, etc then headed for home at around 7:00pm.