Present: James and George
Well I was going to write up a trip report along the line of – We went caving, we got to the bottom. Found it easier than expected, didn’t take long to get out. Went to the pub. Went for some kebabage. This is the sort of trip report that has often accompanied trips recently. However this trip was a bit different.
Think back to last week, or possibly even to Christmas. Me and James were looking for a cave which would give us a bit of a challenge, but preferably wasn’t to tight, or didn’t require a mountain of gear. It was also essential that the cave was fairly unknown.
We left Durham at the sensible time of 8.30 and arrived at Bernies for some grease and tea. To quote Andy Whitney’s thoughts on Crescent Pot – “I Think it’s small and wet, I don’t understand why anybody goes there” Things were looking promising, although the weather wasn’t looking so good – grey and cloudy. Though the fell forcast assured us it wouldn’t rain. (which it didn’t)
We arrived in Kingsdale just before mid-day, when Dave Elliot pulled up in a mini-bus filled with small children. “You off down Swinsto?” he asks, Erm no, I say Crescent Pot. “silence and funny look.” “Why, what do you think of it?” I ask tongue firmly in cheek “It’s a shit-hole” – drives off. Things are looking very good.
After an unneccessary detour via Braida Garth we reach the foot of the hill, upon which Crescent pot sits. We stagger up the hill, and fortuitously arrive at the correct shakehole. The entrance looks dingy and un-inspiring. There’s also some tatty old rope. We’re definitely in the right place. James rigged the first three pitches. He wasn’t helped by the fact that I forgot the tacklesack for the 77m rope. We arrive in the large chamber, and look at the pit in the floor which is the way on. Climbing down large boulders supported by very rotten stemples isn’t good for the nerves. At the bottom the way opens out into a wet crawl over shingle in a 10″ high bedding plane. This felt much longer than it was. We then spent some time thrutching through various bits of deliteful passage, remiscent of a darren Cilau entrance crawl in minature. We then came upon the rift described as being tortuous in the guide book. Quite why this particular section was singled out I don’t know. Anyway James reached a squeeze which he reckoned he couldn’t fit through. I took my SRT kit off and gave it a go, finding it more akward than tight, so I encourage James to give it a go. He found it OK too, so we carried on into some larger passage, we were going OK and were feeling fairly confident that we would reach the bottom.
We then reached what is described as a prominent roof tube in the guidebook. I was expecting something with a floor and a ceiling, unfortunately it had neither, and looked like it continued on for as far as we could see at a width of about 10″ As I was feeling alright I forced myself into it and pressed on till I reached a traverse line. I clipped into this and carried on, noticing the slightly down-hill nature of the tube as I went. I arrived at the pitch, which was only really where the floor of the tube was wide enough to be able to drop down for a few meters. I called James on and had a look at the next pitch. After a while James didn’t arrive. Rather sensibly he’d realised that if he was unable to go forward he wouldn’t be able to go back either. So I go back up the pitch and struggle back into the tube using some unorthodox SRT techniques. At first making forward progress was fairly straight forward, then towards the end the angle of the tube steepens by a few degrees. I was now starting to feel quite tired. The complete lack of features useful in order to make forward progress was beginning to get quite worrying. Every now and then I picked up the energy to do a sort of udge. Although it didn’t feel as though I was making any sort of forward progress, James assured me that I was, and so I managed to persuade myself that I was. Each time I had a go at moving I seemed to make half as much progress, and needed twice as long to recover. This was not good! I then rested for a few more minutes and realised that slightly more effort was needed and slowly I started creeping froward again, until at last I was out.
Unfortunately I was now completely knackered, and we needed to get ourselves and a large amount of gear back to the surface. This seemed like such a desperate struggle that I was very tempted to leave half of the gear in the cave and pick it up later. However after a bit of jelly and a rest in a larger part of the cave, I started to regain some strength. James rather selflessly picked up the heavier tacklesack and we headed out. I can’t be arsed to describe this process except to say that it was somewhat unpleasant. Eventually we reached the surface, having struggled slightly to get the sackless 77 back up the last 3 pitches.
It probably took us about 6 hours to traverse about 400m of cave, though I can safely say that it was the hardest trip either of us have ever been on by a very big margin!
Things that Crescent pot has taught me:
1. You can’t bottom hard caves with lots of tackle with 2 people unless you’re super-humanly fit.
2. Energy bars and water are not optional
3. Beware of descending squeezes.
4. Crescent Pot is a shithole, though I’m looking forward to having another go.
As a point of interest me and James both left the cave with very dry skin and shredded hands, Crescent Pot mud is funny stuff!
George