Saturday, 20 October 2012

Short Drop Cave

It was an Orpheus Caving Club trip to the Yorkshire Dales this weekend and we joined come others on a trip in Short Drop cave and Gavel Pot. What a coincidence as we were at Gavel Pot last weekend during the British Cave Rescue Council Conference.
Anyway, we were joined by Keith and Boyd Potts at Bernies for breakfast along with Brian Potts, Phil Wall and Jo White.
After meeting up afterwards at the Cowan Bridge car park we decanted into three cars and made our way to the Leck Fell car park where we parked up and changed into caving gear.
Boyd, Karen and myself made our way to Short Drop Cave while the others headed for Gavel Pot. The plan was for Pete to rig the pitch and traverse in Gavel Pot linking with Short Drop Cave so we could exit that way, while they then had a look at Gavel Pot and then exit via Short Drop Cave.
We made our way through Short Drop, pausing to rig the short pitch and soon reached the traverse at Gavel Pot which had been rigged as planned by Pete. I saw Brian Potts there and assumed that he was coming down, so I waited until he could pass by but he disappeared again.
So the three of us passed the traverse and I headed up the entrance pitch to arrive in the large impressive open depression of Gavel Pot almost exactly an hour after entering Short Drop Cave. Not a very long caving trip then!
Pete had found that you could get into Gavel Pot via a muddy slope at the foot of the entrance pitch and he and the others had dropped down the rest of the pot.
Karen, Boyd and I walked back to the cars and got changed out of our caving gear and then sat in our car or Boyd's van to await the others.
After 4 hours (!), Pete returned followed by Brian some distance behind. They had re-ascended Gavel Pot's entrance pitch and joined us at the car park while the rest planned on exiting via Short Drop Cave. There was no sign of them, which was unexpected, so Pete headed off to find them as they had obviously not found their way out yet.
By now Karen and I had reached the time we planned to head for home so we left Keith's gear (which he had left in our car) with Boyd and we headed for home.

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