Present: Ian W and Mssr Leech
A great trip, 6.5 hours. Short pitches, a boulder choke dig and some narrow passage leads to the head of a whopping great shaft. Go do it.
Ian.
Planning to meet at Inglesport at 10:00, I was proud to arrive in the café at 9:50. I’d done it! I was first to arrive! Or was I? Nope. Ian’s breakfast was just arriving, having just set some kind of record for the Landy run in from Bradford. Same again then, please.
Over breakfast, the route was scribbled out on a scrap of paper and we discussed our ropes. In addition to my shiny nine mil, Ian had his two twenty metres (nice) and a rope of George’s he’d not got round to returning (handy). Unfortunately, that’s all he had so the gaps had to be filled using rope condemned during DUSA’s clean-up trips to Crescent Pot (Ooops). Still, they are only short pitches and one’s just a handline.
Reassuring each other with raised eyebrows and wry smiles, we looked over our route notes one last time and declared the trip fairly straightforward. So we were ready then.
Parking on the grassy triangle opposite the signpost to Cold Coates, we crammed as much rope as possible into our single tackle sack and I went to put on my wellies. This didn’t work, as they were still at home. An embarrassing drive to Inglesport to hire a soggy pair ensued and we headed up the hill.
The cave was pretty straightforward. Interesting bits included the stabilisation of the choke above foam pitch with expanding foam (reassuring!), the lack of stabilisation of the FTSE choke (though not as bad as made out to be by a long shot – looks like the shoring timbers have been recently renewed) and the final squeeze – the only awkward move on the trip. And the Megatron. That was pretty interesting. Kind of like East Kingsdale, the cave is all tight and wriggly then huge and airy. It’s a fantastic reward at the end of the trip, easily making up for the lack of sump. Nowhere to go but out, we were back into a fantastic early evening 6.5 hours after entering.
All in all, a top trip. Next time it’s wet it’ll be revisited and the they think it’s all over series investigated too, possibly with a stove to have hot tea at the bottom. I did miss the underground dining that has come to be part and parcel of our trips of late.
Ralph