Mariah Carey, a turkey, and Joe – guess which one didn’t make it through Pippikin

Present: Lydia Miller, Tom Green-Plumb, Joe (for a pitch)

Duration: 3 hours 12 minutes

After a very faffy morning—we woke up at 7:30am and still somehow didn’t leave until 10:30??—we were in the car and on the way to Bull Pot Farm. The plan was for Tom, Joe, and me to head down Pippikin and out Mistral while Jakub took some SRT trained fresh down BPOTW and Ian, Jamie and Ben took a non SRT trained fresh down some more climby bits in BPOTW. Well well well, we got to the farm, parked in the members car park (thanks Ian <3) and Tom and I headed inside to change (don’t judge, there was snow on the ground and I was feeling weak). Lo and behold about 5 minutes later Charlotte and Barney come in to the changing room asking where their SRT kits are. I’ve got no clue, I wasn’t in charge of that trip, and I had already taken care of their oversuits, wellies, and helmets…which apparently meant no one had packed their SRT kits…No matter, they could just have a bimble down The Mistral. That taken care of, we set off, three of us towards Pippikin and five towards Mistral. 

It was an absolutely gorgeous walk; the fell was covered in a dusting of snow and the sun was shining brightly enough to warm us all up. The vibes were good as we made our way along (although my decision to join the RRCPC was severely ridiculed by Tom and Joe), and we eventually got to the point where the Pippikin gang split off to head up the hill and find the entrance. Surprisingly, and for once in my life, we had no trouble at all finding the entrance, although that may have been due to Ian’s handy tip of mapy.com, which led us right to the cave!! After deciding that the one with rope visible was probably the right way to go down, Tom was the first to descend underground, followed by Joe, then me. The first pitch is almost immediately after the entrance, and we sailed down easily (I do really appreciate how quickly things go when the route is pre rigged!!). A short crawl after the pitch lets you out over a fairly significant hole in the ground with a single scaffolding bar over it, so we all rotated right before the hole in order to go feet first. You can pretty easily feel the bar with you feet, then scootch out so you’re fully above the hole sitting on the scaffold bar. I ended up waiting here for a couple minutes, as Joe had gone on to the right through the wriggley bit, which he found was quite tight while wearing his SRT kit (spoiler alert, this did not bode well for the rest of the cave), so he had reversed to take off his SRT kit. I handed it through to him once he was through, then went through myself. 

The 2m dive down into the chamber was an interesting one; I went head first and lowered myself halfway into the chamber, then ended up reaching behind me to pull up on the rock so I could get my legs out of the hole and crouch sideways against the wall. There was almost certainly a more efficient way to get down there (and I’m fairly certain all three of us had a different method), but it was fun and worked beautifully !! Just to left after the drop was a little window, which, keeping with the theme of Pippikin having very fun headfirst dives—was really fun to dive headfirst through. At this point, Tom had already made it past the sideways squeeze leading to the next pitch, and by the time I got there, Joe was preparing to try his hand at it. 

This did not end well!! The squeeze was wider on top and narrowed down at the bottom, and Joe (aided by our old friend gravity) managed to slide into the narrower part, getting his hips quite stuck. It was very much looking like Tom and I would have to perform yet another DUSA rescue (flashbacks to Big Meanie…). Tom tried shoving Joe from the back while I was pulling him from my side, but he still didn’t budge. Tom passed through the spare sling we had brought, but there was no good place to tie it around anything, so he passed through the spare rope as well. I tied the rope around a column of rock for Joe to pull on, and we resumed our efforts. This was still not working !! Took a break, gave some water to Joe, and brainstormed (all whilst having ominous Christmas music playing through my phone which Tom was carrying… I really hope Joe isn’t traumatized by Last Christmas after this…). We eventually decided it would be best to have Tom try to lever Joe up so he would become more horizontal and hopefully be shoved back into the wider part of the squeeze. I readjusted the rope so Joe could pull more upwards on it, Tom pushed up Joe’s legs, Joe pulled with all his might on the rope, and I yanked up on his chest harness — MOVEMENT!! He was moving !! With a bit more pushing and pulling from all of us, Joe was free of the squeeze, huzzah. Unfortunately, the squeeze had also stolen his welly, less huzzah. It had fallen off and all the way down the second pitch, so Tom had to perform another rescue, this time descending the pitch and coming back up with the welly tucked safely into his oversuit. Welly returned to its rightful place on his foot, Joe made the very sensible decision to leave Pippikin, so with a gift of two Boost bars for his rescuers and a promise to extend callout by an hour, he was off. 

Just the two of us remaining, we continued on to avenge Joe and conquer Pippikin. I went through the squeeze, popping out fairly easily (sorry Joe) at the second pitch. Tom headed down, and I followed. Jakub had suggested removing SRT kits after pitches 2, 3, and 4, so Tom faffed about taking his off while I went ahead through yet another sideways squeeze, then to the top of the third pitch. I rigged up my descender in the most awkward way possible; for some reason I decided to stay on the opposite side of the metal bar from the rope?? But it worked (albeit a bit jankily) and I was descending. I got down to the bottom where the rope continued onwards around the corner and through (surprise surprise) another sideways squeeze. Slightly confused at this point, because I wasn’t sure if the pitch continued onwards after the squeeze, I called up to Tom to read the description. We decided that the pitch probably(?) didn’t continue, so I went ahead while Tom descended. From the back of the squeeze, it seemed like the stemple was quite a ways from the end of the rock (which would provide a very sketchy dive out), but as I got to the end, it was pretty much arms length away, accompanied by a knotted handline to assist with the way down. At the bottom, I was treated to a great view of Tom’s headfirst dive as well—his seemed far more dramatic than mine (I later found out his was in fact more dramatic because I had unintentionally slid down into a narrow bit of the squeeze so I could reach the stemple more easily; Tom actually did have to dive for it…). 

Infamous stemple squeeze conquered, we continued on our way. Down the fourth pitch, then downstream to find the fifth pitch. Now this was also an interesting one, and I managed to get myself properly wedged not once, but twice !! It’s a very narrow rift that drops down into a shallow pool, but the rope is rigged quite far along the rift. I stepped out to try to reach the handline… and immediately slid down to wedge myself. Hooray. I was close enough to the beginning where I could step back up on my right food and try again!! Guess what I did?? The exact same thing, but further along 🙂 I’m struggling, Tom is laughing at me, how have I managed to do this. Luckily, I was able to pull up on the rope and un-wedge myself… and proceed to half fall, half climb (if you really really stretch your definition of climb) down the pitch. With the free tips about what not to do provided by yours truly, Tom very gracefully slid through and descended the pitch in about a quarter of the time it took me, big win. 

Some stooping, then a drop down. Here, the rift continues on to your right. Pro tip, actually follow the black book and climb up here to traverse above the stream!! We did not realize that at first, and I continued along the stream for a bit until it was getting concerningly (and more importantly, annoyingly) narrow. I backtracked, then we had a light bulb moment and realized we were in fact meant to climb up when the description said “climb up” (we were tired, okay?). Then came a surprisingly long traverse above the stream. Tom led, flexing the fact that his foot was big enough to just reach across the rift, as there was a severe lack of footholds. I, with a shoe size of about 6 sizes smaller, could do no such thing. It was slightly terrifying going for awhile as it felt like I could very easily lose my footing and slide right down into the extremely narrow rift, but I eventually got my technique down (one foot braced against one wall with the same knee against the opposite wall) and sped along behind Tom. 

After much longer than you’d think, the traverse finally ends in a chamber. The sixth and final pitch follows, landing right before a narrow rift. Tom and I decided that we’re hardy cavers, obviously, so we’re not going to take the easier bypass to the right. We continued on through the narrow rift, hit the T-junction, followed the water downstream, and had yet more narrow rift walking. This led us to a chamber which had large blocks just across the way, and the way on is crawling on top of those blocks and keeping to the right(ish), following along, and eventually making it to a climb entering Hall of the Ten. 

TURKEY TIME !! It had been far too many hours since we’d eaten, and I had packed some leftover Thanksgiving turkey (hehe), so I made my way up to the very top of the chamber, climbing over boulders, slipping on the mud, and being accused of being a mountain goat. Tom followed and we sat down with a great view across the entire chamber, took our helmets and gloves off (proper fancy) and dove into the turkey. It was sublime. 

Turkey time over, we made our way to Dusty Junction, Tom pointed out the “notable stal” which I now understand his frustration with, as it’s a stumpy little thing covered in mud—nothin’ notable about it whatsoever. Having been here before, Tom led the way until we reached The Hobbit, where we then had to sit down and read the description several times as we were navigating backwards from the Northern Caves Mistral description (I am now realizing the black book has a very easy description of the way out Mistral from Pippikin…oops). Eventually, we found the way up the slope and a crawl to the left, more crawling, then a final climb up. We were out!! And it was still daylight!! We also found a note Joe had left us in snow on the stones around the entrance 🙂

Feeling good, but also realizing it was much colder now that the sun was setting, we started our way back. This involved seeing a couple of deer, definitely not stacking it multiple times, and also definitely not going the opposite direction we were meant to… What can I say, our navigation skills are fantastic. 

Bull Pot Farm was a welcome sight, and we got changed in a nice warm changing room before heading back to the NPC to give Ian back to his wife, collect our belongings, have a final cup of hot choc, and drive back to Durham. All in all a bangin’ Chrimmermeet !! 

Lydia Miller

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Joe’s experience:

After an uneventful first pitch and short crawl, we arrived at a traverse over a large hole (Cellar pot) – doing this feet first was rather unnerving as it meant blindly trying to place your feet on a wobbly scaffold bar and trying not to slip and die. Then came a wonderful wriggle followed by a very awkward 2m drop. Jakob had warned us to do this feet first, but turning around over the drop seemed more difficult and dangerous than the acrobatics of getting down after the crawl, so head first it was. I tried with my srt kit on at first, but soon realised that was a bad idea. I retreated back to the scaffold bar (after asking Lydia to shuffle back too) and carefully took it off without dropping it (or me), after that the wriggle was roomy. I did a very unorthodox move to get down the drop and then climbed through a lovely window. 

This was where the problems started, Tom quickly slipped through the rift to the top of the second pitch and I followed soon after. Tom is however smaller than me and by blindly following him (a very silly mistake on my part – I should have checked out the rift first before committing feet first) I managed to get wedged down in a part of the rift far too small for me, with gravity not helping the matter. After a bit of thrashing and Lydia attempting to pull me back whilst Tom pushed me, I hadn’t moved at all. This was when both my stress levels and the amount of brainstorming increased. Tom and Lydia tried various methods of rescue: Tom on his hands and knees beneath me trying to push me up, Lydia rigging a rope for me to pull on, Tom letting me use him as a wall to push off of, and Lydia pulling on my chest harness. None of these worked unfortunately and after a very low moment accompanied by some rather depressing Christmas music and water (I wish we’d packed the lucozade), we tried again. This time Tom tried to push up my hips by standing underneath me and I started to feel some movement, this combined with a one arm pushup, yanking on the rope, Lydia pulling on my chest harness, a lot of thrashing and almost donkey kicking Tom down the pitch, I was finally free. At this point I also realised I’d accidentally kicked my welly off and down the pitch so Tom kindly went and fetched it for me.

I started to head back out the cave, thinking that was a much better idea than trying to continue, especially since I had a car worth of freshers waiting for me to drive them home. As I started to try and throw myself back through the hole 2m up, I remembered I had two boost bars that would hopefully serve as a welcome reward and thank you to Lydia and Tom, so I gave them their present (very well received) and after much wriggling emerged above the scaffold bar once more. However, due to the limited space, I was not wearing my SRT kit and also didn’t have enough room to turn around or put it back on so I had to do a hand stand on the bar whilst attempting to not fall down the big hole. After lots of faff and getting my leg caught in the traverse line, I managed to right myself and headed back towards the bottom of the first pitch. At this point I started to hear knocking as if someone was nearby with a hammer – this was very spooky given I was alone, however I soon realised it was just my hand jammer knocking against a maillon (I was clearly going a bit insane at this point). After an uneventful exit up the first pitch, I lay face down in the snow to cool off and then rang Rosie to change their callout etc. Not feeling like going down BPOTW, I decided an exploration of the fell was more enticing, I checked out all the different cave entrances along the river and then headed back towards the farm (also somehow walking in the complete wrong direction at one point even though I had a map open). On my way, I checked out a few exploratory entrances/digs and made sure to remember to ask Ian about one of them when I got back. Overall, it was quite an enjoyable afternoon in the end and I’ve already found people to do a return trip with me!

Finally, thank you to Tom and Lydia for rescuing me (once again!) – I seem to be amassing a list of caves that require a return trip, though finding people willing to come after hearing these stories is becoming increasingly difficult.

Joe Cullumbine