Present: Maria Buckles, Berat Bulbul, Rosie Hendriksen, Jakub Dominikowski
Duration: 6 hours 45 minutes
With a brand new car and me back in the driving seat, we set off towards Clapham. On the way, we encountered Gracie and her fellow cavers getting ready by Cold Cotes and we stopped to say hi – by that I mean I rolled the windows down and shouted her name. After a quick chat, we carried on to end up parking right in front of the cave rescue building and had a chat with a lovely volunteer. It took us 40 minutes to get ready due to the mandatory DUSA faffing around but we set call out and began the trek up the public footpath before joining the trail right next to the show cave. We headed up, stopping for a 20 minute break for Rosie and Jakub to pee – Jakub nearly getting caught with his wetsuit undone infront of some unfortunate walkers. We then put our kit down by a hole to realise it was the wrong hole but some walkers had come our way to have a look where we were (not) going down – we did inform them, but their dog really wanted to go down the hole. We then moved about 15m up the path and found the correct entrance and Berat and I both went to go pee.
Once everyone had empty bladders, we headed into the cave with Jakub going first since he wanted rigging practice, followed by Berat, Rosie and then I brought up the rear. The first pitch had a little bit of faff since I believe it was Jakubs first time rigging a rebelay (I could be wrong) and the first time he rigged it, the rope did not touch the floor. He then made the rebelay loop slightly smaller – still manageable since there was a very convenient ledge – and continued down. Once Berat had descended after Jakub, they carried on through to the 100m of crawling, whilst Rosie and I descended and then made out way to join them. Once together, Jakub rigged the 2nd pitch with ease, a nice little straight drop of a Y-hang and we quickly came upon the 3rd pitch, which was also completed with ease and quickly.
I then took the lead since I was going to be rigging the last pitch and made the decision to put a handline in for the cascade since even though Jakub could climb it with ease, I was nt that comfortable in doing so and wanted to give Berat and Rosie the option. Uisng the 2 obvious naturals available, I rigged it up tying an alpine in a sling to shorten it, a single crap and a very neat rethreaded figure of 8. After the cascade we came upon South-East pot and i started to rig. I found the obvious marks on the rock that had been used as an anchor and rigged until I reached the Y-hang bolts. Here is where I encountered my first problem. It seemed that I was too short to reach the second bolt for the Y-hang. After some shuffling and sketchy movements, I was finally able to clip the carabiner and rope into the anchor – although Berat had to flip the carabiner since I physcially couldn’t reach to do so. Anyways, I headed down, searching for the rebelay bolt when I found it and started going through the motions. I clipped my short cowstail into the bolt to keep me close since the bolt wasn’t near to where the rope had lowered me (I had to swing to get there). I ensured I had left an adequate loop size and then started to descend… or tried to. The issue is that I had left my short cowstail into the bolt so I could not get it out to carry on downwards. I tried to use my hand jammer and foot loop as a ledge to stand on – did I mention there were no footholds or ledges to use – but despite my efforts (and there were many believe me) nothing worked to get enough tension of my short cowstail for me to get it out of the bolt. At this point pretty much everything that could be attached to the rope was attached so I made the decision to just go through the rebelay from the start, so I swapped over to my ascenders and headed up to a ledge on the pitch to stand and regain some energy before heading back down. The others must’ve head A LOT of grunting from me and swearing so I warned them there were no footholds or ledges for the rebelay. Anyways, back down I go, and this time, I manage to get through it with less difficulty – still some – and down I went, continuing to find the first and second deviation. Now, I had a much better time with the deviations, since I got to swing across the pitch to reach them, celebrating each time. After both deviations were rigged and passed, I descended to the ledge, freed up the rope and laid the bag down to lean on and just to close my eyes for a bit since all the energy and effort I had used had made me feel like I was going to throw up. Rosie was sent down after me, but as I lay there at the bottom of the pitch, I could hear her struggling with the rebelay as well. Jakub and Berat were shouting to her from the top to help her since I was practically inaudible from the bottom but after 10 minutes she went back up to the top of the pitch. Imagine my surprise when I start to see a light descending. I shouted up to see if Rosie – who I thought it was at the time – had the bag with the water since I was feeling like vomit was imminent and someone answered. But, it was Jakub! He tried to talk to me as he was descending but his words were a little too hard to make out so I told him just to say it when he had got to the bottom. Anyways, he tells me he’s a little worried about the time and thinks we should turn around. I informed him that I was thinking turn around time should be 6:00pm and since it was about 5:30pm we both agreed that it was probably best to do so. However, I informed him that there was no way I could go back up the pitch before I had some water. Alas, he did not have the bag with the water since Rosie had been carrying it for the majority of the trip, and they did not hear me shouting for it. So back up Jakub went to the rebelay, where he met Berat with the bag, and then he descended back down. It should be noted that later in the trip whilst Jakub was derigging and I was waiting for him, he told me I was PAPER WHITE. Never have I felt so ill underground and I think he may have been a little worried I was going to pass out – I knew I wasn’t, I just genuinely felt like I could vomit. After drinking some water, I had regained some of my colour and decided to head up. Jakub and I strategised on what may be the easiest way to do the rebelay but I just decided that since I got myself down, I could get myself up. Well, I get to the first deviation, easy. Second deviation, easy. Finally reach the rebleay, I look at it like it’s the bane of my existance, and what do you know, it was bloody easier on the way up than the way down. Like, I handled it so easily, cowstails didn’t get stuck, I was able to get my chest ascender off on the first go – that’s kinda rare for me – and I celebrated, rightly so. The thing that had caused me so much hassle on the way down was a breeze on the way up. Anyways after a celebratory f-you to the rebelay and letting Jakub know the rope was free, I continued upto the Y-hang to finally see Berat and Rosie. Jakub then came up, de-rigging as he went. Oh, also to note, when I was by the first deviation on the way up, Jakub was trying to ask me something from the bottom. He said “Are there crabs in the cave?” Well thats what I heard, and for some reason in my dehydrated mind, I decided he meant crabs… the animal… in a cave… in the yorkshire dales…. I know. Well, after some back and forth, I then realised he was asking if the crabs in the deviations were ours and I did tell him they were. So, Jakub finally reaches the top of the pitch and he informs me that apparently Wades is a grade 4 (In northern caves 2 i believe) and I’m guessing that South-East pot may just be the reason for that. Berat and Rosie start to head towards the cascade and then we just do the cave in reverse. I told Berat and Rosie just to head to the surface, whilst I waited with Jakub as he de-rigged. We all made it out with daylight and quickly went on our way towards the car down the path. We spotted two hikers coming down the path from the mountain and set off – remember these hikers… So down the path we go, chatting away and me messaging the various people that like to know I’m alive after caving, and telling our callout that we were out and safe. Eventually, when we entered the part of the trail under the trees, we came across a man that asked about two lost hikers. We informed him that we saw two people as we came out of Wades heading down the path towards us and that they shouldn’t be that far behind us. We headed off up the path and we carried on. We passed another man with a headtorch as we exited by the cafe and when we reached the car, we saw volunteers starting to pull up by the cave rescue base. Guessing that they were in search of the hikers the previous man had asked about, we got changed quickly but still watched as it was pretty cool to see the CRO vehicles being pulled out of the garage. One of them came up to us – the very nice guy we had spoken to when we were getting ready to go – and asked if we had a good trip and had happened to see the two hikers. We told them what we told the other man and he went inside I guess to inform the others? At this point, I was changed and just trying to sort gear when I needed the toilet immediately. Now, I had needed this bowel movement back down the bottom of South-East pot but obviously did not do it. So I decided to quickly ask someone passing by if the public toilets happened to be 24 hours, he didn’t know BUT he said I could use the cave rescue hut’s toilets, so I GOT TO GO INSIDE THE CENTRE OF OPERATIONS. It was pretty cool but I tried to be as quick as possible in order not to hinder them in any way, thanking them on my way out. Berat and the others had packed everything in the car so we headed off pretty quickly since we wanted to get to Catterick maccies before it shut at midnight. The journey back was a little stressful since with my car being new to me, I wasn’t sure how it would fair on going up some of the hillier parts of the roads – I’m talking about the road past Redmire station and Sissy Bank :/ – but Pablo Escocar (yes that’s my cars name) did very well. We got to maccies just past 11pm and got some scran. Not going to lie, I was still feeling pretty ill, and so I ate a lot slower than normal and with a lot less ketchup. Durham was only 40 minutes away and the rest of the drive was on the lovely A1 so no more hills for Pablo. Overall, I think I’d like to return to Wades to get better at hanging rebelays but to also see the main chamber off gg again. AND Jakub was definitely the MVP of the trip, bless him, going up and down South-East pot to get me some water and make sure I felt better.
Maria Buckles