Present: Lydia Miller, Rosie Hendriksen, Charlotte Nielsen
Duration: 4 hours 45 minutes
After a lovely lie in until 10am (my sincerest apologies to Charlotte, as Rosie and I promised we’d be awake by 9 at the very latest…), we dragged our cold selves out of the safety of our sleeping bags and into the even colder kitchen. As I was working my way through a heap of beans with a side of butterless toast, we had a think about what cave we wanted to do. Rosie and I had made a plan at the pub the night before while Charlotte was having her impromptu nap on the table: Cherry Tree Hole with a little exploration into Darnbrook Pot as well. But after talking to a very nice woman who was also staying at the Bradford, we realized that that trip would take two hours tops. Now, after over 9 hours of sleep (unheard of on a caving trip, I know), I was not about to spend my Saturday trip on a two hour cave. Onwards then! I retrieved a copy of Northern Caves and set to work systematically considering caves—aka opening to random pages to see if anything struck our fancy.
As fate would have it, I landed on Pool Sink; an Easegill bimble had been suggested the previous day, so a venture into the system was in order. None of us had ever been to Pool Sink, but it sounded suitably confusing, and, more importantly, we actually had the correct ropes for it (…more or less). Bags were packed and maillons were counted—we did come up short. Even after scavenging the crabs off of the tackle sack leashes, we were still a couple short. No matter, traverses can skip bolts, right?? Armed with this very sensible logic, we packed the rest of our stuff and threw it into Charlotte’s car for the (40 minute!!!) drive over to Bull Pot Farm (my beloved <3).
It was nice and sunny as we started the drive over, but by the end we were driving through very thick fog on the way to the farm. After kitting up (with minimal faff might I add, we were speedy as hell for the first time ever) (thinking back this is almost definitely because it was so cold), we set off to the entrance. The walk was longer than I remember, so I was vaguely worried I’d led us off onto some random path. But we quickly came to the fence that I recognized, huzzah! We reached the riverbed and followed it upstream until we found a rectangular hole in the wall. This was in fact the wrong hole as it was on the right side, so we went on until we found yet another rectangular hole, this time on the left side and next to a pool!
Rosie led us in, and I waited at the back as I heard various grunts and shoves as she pushed the bag through the tunnel. I too was saddled with a bag, and it only slightly made the tube less fun as we crawled through. There were two fun little switchbacks in the tube which I quite enjoyed, and it popped out soon afterwards to join the stream. The first pitch followed quickly, beginning with a short traverse with fairly high bolts which continues around the corner, where it drops into the pitch. It does have a massive deviation only a couple meters down on the opposite wall; Rosie sounded like she was having a great time swinging to reach it 🙂 The CNCC description says the first pitch is broken by two rebelays, but that definitely was not the case (and is not the case on the topo), so just be aware of that.
Charlotte followed, getting a little caught up on the deviation (it really was huge, and we all have our caving enemies—Charlotte’s seems to be deviations). I shouted down to Rosie to pull the down rope to get Charlotte closer to the deviation, but oh no! Rosie was stuck on a little ledge that she had down climbed without being able to climb back up without help… so Charlotte was on her own. We coached her through taking advantage of your own momentum, and she soon passed it, allowing us to descend and rescue Rosie from her little ledge. Onwards !
It was my turn to rig for the second pitch, so I located the very obvious natural a couple meters back from the hole to start the rope from, then traversed over the very large hole in the floor. I had a great time on the traverse, the footholds are solid and the water cascading below you is quite cool. It was here that I got very confused, as when the description said a “long traverse”, I didn’t imagine it’d be that long and windy. You continue around for at least two more bends before you get to two more very large holes in the ground, then there are several bolts directly after those. I headed back to Rosie to make sure I wasn’t going insane, as the description in Northern Caves had mentioned a higher traverse you can take to reach a drier descent, and this seemed pretty damn dry to me. It was also even more faffing as we didn’t actually have the right lengths of rope, only having two 27m for the second and third pitches, and I really didn’t want to do a knot pass…
Eventually, we just decided to end the first rope there and start the second one, hoping it was enough to reach through the second and third pitches. I went ahead and rigged it, descending into a wet chamber where you can then walk over to where the third pitch commences. I went ahead and threw the remainder of the rope down to make sure it reached the bottom, then rigged the rebelay with whatever was left of the rope. 27 meters ended up being more than enough!! Once we had all made it to the bottom, Rosie set off first to rig the last pitch. I honestly can’t remember the fourth pitch, so I’m assuming it was unexciting. I do remember once again practicing my upside-down descending with my new simple 🙂
After reaching the bottom, we noticed that it was turn around time, so we allowed ourselves 5 minutes of exploring before it was time to head back up. We continued along downstream until the stream flowed off and down to the right where we could not follow, which is the point where we climbed up on the left to crawl over until we could join the stream again. On the climb there was lots of foam and recent bits of trees and other things indicating the height of flooding which is super comforting to see when underground!! But the water wasn’t all that bad when we went, as the rain had settled down the past several days.
Once reaching the stream, we continued over some more shattered limestone until we reached the Bacon Slicer!! I personally was very impressed, and did feel like a pig to slaughter when I crouched and crawled past this massive piece of serrated limestone, which at one point had a particularly blade like piece a couple of inches from my nose!! I’d never seen anything like it underground before, so I took awhile to just look at it. Unfortunately, our designated 5 minutes of exploration was over, so back we headed.
I headed up first so Rosie could derig the pitch, then onwards we headed. I derigged the middle two pitches, and Rosie derigged the final one. I will say, the passage right before the start of the traverse on the first pitch is perfect hip width (about a foot back from the inscription in the right side wall when facing the pitch), so I absolutely just sat in there quite comfortably and had myself a little nap while Charlotte came up and Rosie derigged.
I do really need to stop napping in caves, as I just wake up more tired than I was, so I was a bit groggy as we were heading out. The tube near the entrance gave both Rosie and I flashbacks to our Peterson trip…even though it was much shorter, much roomier, and didn’t have a perfect bag-sized rift for the tackle sacks to get stuck in. But we persevered out into the beautiful 6pm darkness of a fine English winter.
The three of us out, we started making our way back to the farm, picking up a stray Cambridge fresher on the way who was out wandering the fells and returning him to his group who were coming up County Pot. While crossing the fell back to the farm, we passed another slightly worried looking Cambridge dude who had gone to look for the County group, so we reassured him they had just gotten to the entrance when we passed.
It decided to start snowing/sleeting/raining (all of the above throughout the walk back), so we made quick work of the walk back, coming up to the farm to the delicious smells of the Cambridge lot’s dinner through the window. It was a very sad time when we were forced to bypass the beckoning warmth of indoor, heated changing room, instead stripping outside the car in the dark and rain 🙁 Although that is a surefire way to make sure we don’t faff, as we were all changed and packed up in record speed, ready to head back to the Bradford for some slop of our own for dinner (with a quick piss break on the side of the road before we made it back). All in all a good trip, I’d be interested to go back to attempt a pull through and exit out Wretched Rabbit or something similar!!
Dinner was followed by a pub trip to go bother the other DUSA group which had been caving this weekend, then into the Craven we went to steal some hot chocolate and biscuits (and many more hours of warmth and good company) before we were on our way back to the (oh so cold) Bradford at half past 1 in the morning, ready to be awake at 8am for a big day of Inglesport breakfast (and purchasing shiny things), Ingleton craft fair, and Wensleydale creamery—because we deserved a cute whimsical Sunday 🙂
Lydia Miller