Present: James and George
All too soon we were back in Kingsdale with that unique sense of fear and excitement that only CP can bring. We spent about an hour fine tuning the gear so that we would only have to carry down the smallest possible amount of stuff, almost inevitably however we ended up with three large and heavy tacklesacks filled with ‘stuff’. (Bring on the 9mm rope!). The trudge up the hill seems to pass quicker each time though and luckily we managed to find the entrance straight away. The entrance shakehole is now becoming noticeably muddier following all our visits. I think it’s probably safe to say that nobody else has visited!
For a change I rigged down the entrance pitches and was soon faced with the flat out crawl, which always seems longer on the way out (and tighter than I remembered), then the muddy thrutch, and the squeeze where James got momentarily stuck and then the roof tube! Although this obstacle gets easier with practice it can only really be described as being hard work, even more so with roof tube sized tacklesacks. Anyway, the fifth pitch! The bolts on the fifth pitch are not good, infact they could probably be described as being awfull. There are only three of them and each positioned so that if one were to fail, so would the others. Add to this the fact that the bolts are from the original exploration (1970), and are poorly placed and we therefore felt that some new bolts were in order.
Enter, the DUSA bolting kit. The first bolt went in very nicely and just needed tapping home which is technically the easiest part of the placement. Bang, tap, bang, tap, TWANG! The bolt driver shoots from my hand. A quick inspection reveals that the not exactly new driver has sheared straight off at the critical point. The critical part now being stuck in the bolt, which is stuck in the wall. AAaaaaaghhhhhh! The curse of CP has defeated us again.
With great foresight we had realised that this probably wasn’t going to be the last trip down CP, so we had bought some old rope with us. This is now tied up at the top of the 5th pitch waiting for the return visit so at least the trip wasn’t a complete waste of time. Anyway, yet another slightly pissed-off exit was made through CP’s delightful entrance series.
To be continued……….
George.