Present: Anthony, Chris F, George
Team keen were up and at it early on Saturday morning in the hope of actually getting underground during the dinner meet – a hard task to demand of anyone! Me, George, Anthony, Julia and Katrina piled into Ghengis, the hulking beast of an Escort and proceeded to drive to Bernies for a lard fest. Being a fat bastard I ordered the extra-large breakfast and failed to finish it completely, neglecting the tomatoes and black pudding. As a note, Steve really needs to get his bacon sorted out – it’s horrible and is making me seriously consider going elsewhere for my breakfasts in future! A small amount of faffing and we got back to the farm – the only purchase made being a new hat as my ears were freezing. A large number of various DUSA / DOSA joined us at the café as time went on.
Back at the Station Inn other people had stirred and there were talks of caving. Whilst at Bernies George, Anthony and I had decided that it’d be just the sort of day to go and attempt Vulcan pot. Unfortunately team keen were seriously delayed. Despite being efficient and packing the ropes relatively quickly, we seemed to hang around for a while and were the last out of the station, with trips to Valley Entrance, Little Hull, Sell Gill and Coppice Cave all beating us out of the stocks. At about 1PM we finally managed to make it up to near the farm where you park – there was still lots of snow and Ghengis couldn’t make it up the path. After getting changed George realised his light had no batteries so we had to go into Selside and get him some. Luckily the only faff until that point. Batteries fully replaced we started the trudge up the hill side, stopping to pay the tresspass fee (technically it’s car parking but we felt generous) at the farmhouse. The walk up to Nick Pot was very pleasant with the wind not being too cold and a reasonable amount of sunshine to light up the dales. The snow had was still settled and we crunched our way up to Nick, thinking how smug we were going to be having done the longest pitch in Yorkshire AND arriving home in time for tea.
When we got to Nick Pot it soon became very apparent that we were going to be in for a hard time trying to find Vulcan. The entrance is reasonably small and with all the snow having drifted, the entrance was completely concealed. After about half an hour of walking around looking at various shake holes we came across a nice pile of snow that looked like it had a dip in it. Gingerly keeping to the side we kicked it and, lo, the snow fell in with a wet splosh. HAHA we thought, the entrance. Down we went (now about 2.15), with George in front with the tackle sack, him having been gallantly volunteered to rig by myself (who’s a bit soft at the moment) and Anthony (whose blood was probably still flammable from the alcoholic content still left). The entrance we went down was a crawl varying between hands and knees and flat out. The water was quite cold being primarily from the melt water. We were going great guns, with the cave sort of matching the book description until George stopped and declared he’d found a sump. Bugger. Bang went our smug faces. We turned round and crawled out again into the dazzling snow – the sun had really come out now. We spent the next hour or so looking round on the surface, kicking snow down shakeholes left right and centre. Unfortunately Vulcan was the last hole we looked down. Being aware of the time and the fact that our dinner was pre-booked we decided that 3 hours to rig, cave and de-rig was probably a little optimisitic (not to mention the fact we also had an hour’s walk back and changing time!) so we decided to jack and not miss the dinner meet.
Not the most exciting trip report ever but hey, that’s life and besides, the dinner meet isn’t really meant for actual caving!
Chris F