29th-31st October 2010
Technically we stayed the YSS hut in Helwith Bridge this weekend. In reality we probably spent more time in the pub next door.
- Caves attempted:
County Pot Wretched Rabbit
- Date:
- 30/10/10
- Estimated time underground:
- 6hrs
- Present:
- Kathryn
- Matt
- Emma
- Xinhui
- Theeba
- Paul
Organising twenty hungover cavers and into groups to go caving is no mean feat, but in a fit of efficiency, we managed to do this on Friday night (I say we - I had nothing to do with it). Things continued on Saturday morning in a similar vein as we sorted all the new cavers out with cowstails and safety cords in a swift operation that was run with military precision. To eliminate the possibility of anything going wrong, I made sure our group had checked through their gearsets to ensure they had: a lamp, wellies, kneepads, over/undersuit and SRT gear. We pulled up at Bull Pot Farm well before 11am, generally feeling a bit smug that things were going so well. Twenty minutes later we were back in Ingleton hiring a helmet...
Faffing over, we eventually went caving. We managed to find our way from County to Wretched Rabbit without any major difficulties, via the standard route. Xinhui, Theeba and Paul were new to caving so we rigged the pitches properly, before pulling through. After a brief look at the high level stuff above Stop Pot, we headed out via Four Ways Chamber (although I can still only count two ways) and rigged the climbs in Wretched Rabbit as pitches so that Xinhui, Theeba and Paul could get some SRT practice. With some rather tired cavers in tow, we were welcomed back to the surface by clag and sleet on Casterton Fell. There was some slight drama later involving a missed call out for some of the cavers who'd headed down Gaping Gill. Somewhat predictably, they turned up about 5 minutes after CRO had been called!
Short Drop - Gavel Pot Exchange
- Date:
- 31/10/10
- Estimated time underground:
- 3hrs
- Present:
This was an exchange trip with Wookey, Emma and some novices, who dropped into Gavel and out Short Drop. The entrances are a few hundred metres apart, so both teams headed underground at about the same time. The short climb down into Short Drop Cave led to a mixture of crawling and stopping in a stream passage. But this passage was just an inlet into the main streamway, which was far larger and very impressive in places; clean washed, well decorated, splashy and generally great fun. We left some rather tenuous cairns in a couple of places to point the way out to Wookey's group, who could then dismantle them, but it turned out that they were so tenuous that they didn't even notice them! After a good amount of stomping downstream we arrived at the ~10m pitch which Kathryn rigged. A few minutes downstream of this, Wookey was spotted emerging from the ceiling, having just finished rigging the traverse line in from Gavel. Somewhat awkwardly our two groups passed each other half way along the traverse rather than in the nice large streamway below, but it seemed to work moreorless! The traverse itself was great fun - the stream drops away down some waterfalls (and eventually to a sump), but the traverse stays at about the same level, with daylight filtering down from some holes in the roof above, before the entrance pitch is reached. Very dramatic. We got back to the surface only a few minutes after Wookey and Emma's group.
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