Present: Ben, Matt, Jonathan, Joanna
(Present: Ben Woodhead, Matt Jaworski, Jonathan Lester, Joanna Iosifidi)
Early one September morning (11:45AM) two Englishmen, a Greek and a Pole set off to find the “classic trip” down Sunset Hole. It was a beautiful day but tractors, caravans and breakfast in Ingleton meant that it was 3 o’ clock when we finally reached the lay-by in Chapel-le-Dale. Said breakfast was our first ever at Bernie’s and it was phenomenal.
It was at this point that our carefully-printed map and rigging guide mysteriously vanished, but we decided to press on. After all, how hard could Sunset Hole be to find?
Many, many hours later, after combing Ingleborough’s limestone pavement where every rock looked like a cave, we abandoned the search. The new plan was to poke around a lead mine Jono had recently found, which turned out to be very good indeed. Some crawling and swimming occurred and there was some exciting industrial archaeology.
One week later, two Englishmen, a Greek and a Pole set off once more to find Sunset Hole, with a fresh map printed and fully memorised. We found it immediately and piled into the streamway. This was fairly mundane apart from some odd rigging arrangements for the cascades. We did SRT but a handline would have been quicker. After the lovely final pitch, we turned around, climbed back up the cascades (rope definitely needed) and found the way out.
As usual, the trip took us twice as long as the guides suggested, so we surfaced just in time to see the sun go down from Sunset’s entrance. All in all it was a nice cave but nothing special.
– Ben Woodhead (Trip Sec)