Present: Lydia Miller, Tom Green-Plumb
Duration: 1 hour 49 minutes
A nice short trip to end our few days at Bullpot Farm!! Still very bruised and achey from Trapdoor the previous day, we were looking for something relatively short and ideally close to the farm–Aygill would be perfect! so once again we were up at 7:00am and ready to leave less than 2 hours later. The approach to Aygill was so much kinder than the one to Trapdoor; we followed a nice relatively flat path and then down a bit into the river valley. Having failed to look at the entrance photos before I lost service (oops) the first hole in the ground, on the left, surrounded by boulders, underneath a small cliff (exactly as the route description said) seemed like it would be the right cave!! The entrance was a square of wooden planks holding back a pile of rocks from falling in, and as I climbed down some of the planks definitely moved, which was not super ideal. I got to the bottom and looked for the crawl that was supposed to be to the left…and found more rocks. To the right…also more rocks. There was absolutely nowhere to go. Tom had also climbed down at this point, and we agreed that climbing out was the only option. We headed further upstream for a bit to try to find another hole which matched the description. And we did!! It even had “Aygill Caverns” engraved right above the entrance, so this time we were definitely in the right place.
I headed down the entrance and took the crawl to the left (which was actually there this time!!). We made it to First Chamber, and having looked at the climb down, decided not to rig it and just climb down using the in-situ rope. We headed onwards, getting to the squeeze (which was a breeze after going through the ripper, gripper, and stripper yesterday) and made it to the larger passage right before Cascade Pitch, where we stopped to try to find the flake to rig off of. Tom found a suitable one up high right before the bend that leads to the pitch, and continued on rigging the pitch. Despite it having rained a bit the day before, the pitch was dry (hooray!). The Cascades were up next, which also weren’t massively wet and we got down easily. We found the dry crawl and managed to take all the correct twists and turns to make it to Shatter Chamber (while also thinking that navigating back out will be a pain in the ass). We followed the route on to Middle Chamber where we were then able to just follow the water–on the upside, this made route finding easier. On the downside, it did end up forcing us into a 20 meter wet crawl which Tom was very much not happy about (fair enough, that water was really cold and neither of us had felt like getting out the wetsuits for a 2 hour trip). At the end of the crawl though we were rewarded with being able to stand up! and look at a massive sump!
I was far too tempted to jump into the sump, and I did indulge; predictably, it was freezing !! Really fun though as that was a very deep sump. Aaaand we made a friend as I was getting out! Tom spotted a frog swimming around near the edge of the sump!! We watched the little guy for awhile, Tom made fun of him for “looking ridiculous” trying to swim up the current, rude 🙁
Eventually it was time to say goodbye to the frog and head back out. As we had expected, it was difficult to navigate out, and we had to really pay attention to find the random holes and crawls we had emerged from in order to get back out. We did have a minor detour after Sand Junction, as I turned right too early and tried to climb up, but the actual way on was a bit further down which we found in the end.
I took a quick minute to stand under a waterfall at the bottom of the Cascades to wash off more mud that had gotten into my oversuit, then climbed up the Cascades. At the top, Tom started up the pitch while I explored a bit around the passages at the base of the pitch. Eventually I came back to find that Tom was actually climbing the pitch instead of prusiking up, which I really should have expected at this point!! Once he made it to the top, I ascended (actually prusiking, as I need a few more visits to the DCC before I attempt to climb a 17 meter pitch !!). I derigged, then we made our way to the first pitch, which we both climbed with no issues. It was easy from there to the entrance, and no navigational blunders were had!! We’d made it to the sump and back in less than 2 hours, which I was very satisfied with. Left us enough time to wash kit in the pond back at the farm and convince Tom to squeeze through the Bullpot pipe!!
Much grumbling was heard as he went in, backed out to take his oversuit off, then went back in. Lots of webs to push through and some rocks to be shifted, but he made it out the other side (looking very disgruntled with his life decisions) !! I, being very happy with my own life decisions, began my own crawl into the pipe, which was very nice having all the bugs removed and rocks shifted by Tom’s journey (hehe). It was as tight as I remembered, but my knees were very much not having a good time by the end (ouch). Made it through though, hooray !! I was very grateful to then be able to hop into a nice hot shower (god bless bullpot having hot water). We even still had enough time for tea and cold leftover chili before we cleaned and headed out. Also had sublime timing, as it started pouring as soon as we pulled out to begin the drive back to Durham. A very good short trip (especially with the frog).
Lydia Miller