Karen and I drove up to the Dales last night and found we had Greenclose, the Northern Pennine Club's hostel, to ourselves. Phil Wall arrived later after we had gone to bed.
In the morning, we met Keith Slatcher, Boyd Potts, Pete Wagstaff, Jo White and Simon Wynne at Bernies while we were having breakfast.
The two of us had planned a trip into Bull Pot in Kingsdale and we headed that way after breakfast. The rest were planning a trip in the Easegill system after going in via Top Sink. In the end they did this and exited via Wretched Rabbit.
After parking in a layby and getting changed, we walked in the warm spring sunshine up to the entrance of Bull Pot. As I was about to descend the entrance pitch a second group of four cavers arrived and asked if it was OK if they followed us down, rigging their gear beneath ours. We offered to let them go in first so we could take our time but they insisted we continue saying that they would be slow. After chatting, they realised we were from OCC and told us that they had taken Waggy and others into Upper Flood in Mendip recently. It turned out that they were from Mendip Caving Group.
Anyway, we reached the bottom of the third pitch by following the Slot alternative and I had started rigging the traverse to the head of the fourth pitch and could hear the other lot approaching. I didn't fancy having them breathing down my neck and as we only planned to descend the fourth pitch and just look at the fifth – we hadn't even brought a rope for it as I knew it was quite a thrutch from previous experience – I suggested that the other lot rig the fourth pitch first to avoid having two ropes getting tangled on the traverse. Then Karen and I could drop down the fourth pitch as planned using their rope and we could re-ascend while they dropped down the fifth pitch. They were happy with this.
We discovered as we were waiting on the traverse that they hadn't a rope long enough for the fifth pitch after all, so they also would only go as far as the top of the fifth pitch as well!
We decided therefore to just head out instead of joining a queue at the bottom of the fourth pitch (one of their party was on his second SRT trip and had looked at the traverse and decided to stay at the bottom of the third pitch and wait for them).
So, we headed back to the surface de-rigging as we went. As Karen reached the top of the second pitch I heard another voice belonging to yet another party on their way down. The cave was getting busy!
When I reached the top of the second pitch, I heard a voice I recognised belonging to the third party on the way in. It was Simon Brooks! He was with a group from Grampian Speleological Group making their way down the cave.
We reached the surface at just after 14:00 after being underground two and a half hours to find the sun still out on a glorious day in the Yorkshire Dales.
We returned to Bernies for tea and a snack while Karen picked up her Meander Criou suit which she had ordered and paid for by phone on Friday as Meander were having problems with supplies of the PVC material the suits are made from and the supplies of the oversuits were running out. I had bought the last remaining one from Hitch 'n' Hike last week.
Then we returned to Greenclose for a while before heading for the New Inn in Clapham for a meal just as Keith arrived back from his caving trip. The others arrived also not long afterwards.
No comments:
Post a Comment