Present: Sascha, Jack, Ben, Jonathan
Mega trip. Got a bit lost. Got call-outed.
After faffing and a McDonalds breakfast, we arrived at the cave at 2pm. We had a look at the colonnades and found a great mudslide, before descending the middle route into Fall Pot. Sascha did well for his first SRT trip! The right-hand route is a bit quicker.
Next we did Wilf Taylor’s Passage, which was fairly good. Jono and Jack were scared about pull-throughs. Not wanting to miss the callout, we picked up the pace. The route up the Main Drain was brilliant, with lots of pretties and water chutes.
After a while it turned out we’d gone pretty much off the survey because none of us read the description properly. We then went wrong again (if going up to the high-level route at Oxbow Corner, it’s downstream of the oxbow and not up the incredibly slippery cliff). The description was very vague here.
Being over halfway, we thought it would be silly to turn back! This proved to be a mistake when, at Main Line Terminus, Jono’s PTSD kicked in from his dramatic 30m fall at Christmas. He announced that the (correct) boulders were far too dangerous and that we should leave immediately. After 30 minutes we found some nice steps wedged in right under his nose (back-right of chamber).
At last we reached Stop Pot. With only an hour until callout, two of us sped ahead to get to a phone whilst the other two followed (another very bad idea).
Naturally our phone died as soon as we reached the surface and then to top it off we got lost again. We were over half an hour late when we explained to the wonderful people at Cave Rescue what was going on. They said that we should wait for the others, who it turned out were also waiting for us! Eventually Jono heroically led the way back to Bull Pot Farm and definitely didn’t get met by Cave Rescue.
It was an amazing trip (would highly recommend), but read the description and always leave a longer callout than you think!
Ben