Present: James and George
After a long lay off of almost a month from Yorkshire caving this was a trip I was really looking forward to. The previous rather hellish experience of CP meant that this was a trip I was also slightly fearful of, the roof tube in particular seeming quite daunting. We were however fairly optimistic that we could get further than last time, although reaching the sump seemed somewhat unlikely.
We managed to leave Durham at a fairly respectable hour, partly due to fearing a long trip but also because Al and Stacey were up, and it wouldn’t do to leave the house after them! We stopped off in Bernies for a quick snack, and departed soon after for East Kingsdale. We decided to walk up via King Pot, in order to save the slog directly up the hill which had been so unpleasant last time. Unfortunately this time it took us a bit longer to find the correct shakehole. James rigged down the first three pitches, whilst I placed my first ever bolt in Yorkshire rock! All the practice bashing spits into our back yard had clearly payed off because it went in perfectly.
The crawl/thrutch to the second pitch passed far more smoothly this time and we reached the roof tube after about 45 minutes, the shoring below the entrance however was just as dubious as last time! Luckily the roof tube which had featured in my nightmares since the previous visit seemed far less intimidating this time, another bolt was placed for a hand/haul line just in case though. James went through first, and found it straightword, I followed knowing however that going in had also been easy on the previous occasion. Then the fifth pitch! I hadn’t really looked at it last time, but it proved to be somewhat tight and awkward! The ancient wobbly spits, which were both limited in number and badly placed, combined with the ‘Turkish style’ rub-point didn’t help things either. We then wandered down to the sixth pitch. Ah!
Having seen the relatively good condition of the in-situ rope on the last visit we gambled on the rope on this pitch being in good condition, and so had not bothered to bring one. We hauled the rope up the pitch for a quick inspection and realised that our gamble had not payed off. The rope had clearly taken a bit of a battering from the force of the water, and was almost entirely stripped of its sheath, and had worn down to 2 of the normal eight strands in places. Being big wusses, we decided not to use this rope and retreated. This was a shame because it is at the bottom of this pitch that according to an OUCC trip report that “The misery really begins”
We decided to have a quick look up the major inlet on the way out, which is where most of the water comes from. This proved to be rather interesting, from the pristine state of the pretties it was very obvious that only a handfull of people had bothered to explore it, which is of course is a great pity!
Anyway, the trip out was most uneventful, and we were soon back at the entrance, contemplating the next trip!
To be continued…….
George