Present: Dunks ‘n’ Dour
Our 4th Welsh classic in four days. It was grand. And circular. Credit to Dunks for exemplary route finding yet again. Civilised entrance series leads to a nice friendly boulder choke. Bit of scrambling over boulders in Main Passage then down into Main Streamway, shortly leading to the mildly rubbish 2nd choke. Pleasant stomp downstream for a long way until it starts getting a bit deep and threatening to become a sump for a tediously long way – a bit of unnecessary swimming occurred at one point. The low section was definitely a duck involving neck deep immersion. More deep stuff leading to the fairly rubbish 3rd choke, then the utterly rubbish 4th choke. It is a bag of crap, squirming up through big loose rocks with not a solid wall in sight. A bit of fossil passage then drops back into the stream, which had gained a fair bit of water since we’d last seen it. Big and impressive, but the wrong side of sporting. Fairly slow progress (it was bloody slippy) until it starts getting deep, with oppressive mud covered walls on the approach to sump 1, where we turned off and went up Southern Stream Passage, which was nice for a bit, then boring for a long way (esp. in orange kneepads which never wear out because they’re never anywhere near your knees.) Some time after we’d had enough, we popped up into Main Passage, stomped along it for 10 minutes, then back out through the nice boulder choke and entrance series. A most “sporting” trip, which took us 5hrs 40mins rather than the expected 8 hours. We must be ‘ard as nails. (Well, ‘ard as wood screws at least. Definitely harder than rawplugs.)
Anthony Day