Present: Jakub Dominikowski, Lydia Miller, Tom Green-Plumb, Ben Black, Benedict Slade, Stanley Marshall
Duration: 7 hours
(NPC weekend with ICCC)
I think walking from Clapham Station to the NPC is one of my favourite walks in the Dales. It’s usually wet and dark but something about it sparks weird ideas in my brain. With a spicy forecast it took us a while to decide what trips to do, but eventually at around midnight we settled on a cave. This might have been the strangest exchange trip I have ever done.
After a delicious cooked breakfast and a very faffy morning we departed for the cave. Despite being only a 5 minute drive away from Clapham AND waking up at 9am, we expected to be underground by 1pm. If you ask me, it takes quite a lot of skill to have that much faff. We got changed quickly and were ready to spend the next hour complaining about the walk to Gaping Gill. I personally think it’s not that bad although most of the time my brain is not functioning. This meditative way of walking was disturbed by a slammed gate, I wonder who that was 🤔. Awoken from my vegetative state, I had a short exchange of words with Lydia about gate conservation (thank you for opening it for us). Of course to prove my point, I decided to crawl under a fence (to avoid the gate), cutting my hand in the process (I’m smart I promise).
After an hour of complaining we finally reached the Small Mammal entrance, which Tom volunteered to rig whilst we talked about something interesting that I cannot remember. If I were a dog then I would say that it was taking a while to rig. My natural curiosity told me to have a poke down and see what is going on. The 3 bolts that I was telling Tom about appeared to become 4 bolts and were quite a distance apart. I must say, Tom’s ability to force a rebelay is quite impressive. The Y-hang was placed perfectly between two MASSIVE ledges, making them unreachable and hence requiring a free hanging rebelay. At the time I was not really a big fan of this but now that I had the time to process, this was perfect for the ICCC members who were being SRT trained this morning.
Finally, just after 1pm we entered Stile Pot and were on our way to the Molestrangler. Benedict made the entrance climb look like a stairway. Making quick work of Stile Pot, we found ourselves in Small Mammal House, directly below the pitch that Tom rigged 10 minutes ago. The temptation to end the cave there and go to a cafe was high, but knowing there was another team on their way to the cave (we thought) there was no choice but to continue. After a bit of flat out crawling and almost missing the way on we arrived at the Big Pitch.
There was a non-zero chance that 13 people would end up going up the big pitch at the same time, so to somewhat mitigate this risk we decided to rig the alternative as well. Ben volunteered to rig the normal route and I rigged the alternative. We did not have a topo for the alternative but it’s quite simple, you just follow the bolts (duh). There are 2 initial bolts to a 2 meter descent onto a large ledge (from a single bolt). The back up bolts are quite far away from the single bolt so I was slightly unsure whether to make this a traverse or a rebelay. To keep it in spirit with Tom’s rigging I decided to go somewhere in between- it was a rebelay with a very small loop so a traverse? I did initially tie an alpine so you can sit on the ledge and rig your descender, which I then decided not to do and just hanged off my cowstail and rigged my descender. However the alpine was too high and I could not get my cowstail untensioned. This was also overhanging with no good ledges so to rescue myself I ended up using a bit of tat behind me that I ignored earlier. Disappointed and embarrassed, I went down to the ledge and asked Lydia (nicely?) to fix my rigging (I know, I need to take a good look at myself). The pitch continues to a Y-hang and a single bolt rebelay, which lands right next to the normal pitch. By the time I reached the rebelay Ben had finished rigging and Tom started descending the pitch. Rigging both pitches also gives the rare opportunity to hold hands on a pitch, which is always a fun experience.
I’m not quite sure what was changed about my rigging, but apparently some of my knots were dressed poorly (there might be some photos?). In fact, due to fear of severe damage to the freshers they were sent down Ben’s pitch. I believe all the important knots were dressed correctly despite some unpopular opinions. Ben and I went for a little explore whilst waiting for everyone to descend. Returning, we expected everyone to be down. This was not the case as Stanley had forgotten how to rig his descender. As any sensible leader would do, a distance learning approach was utilised successfully and everyone got down safely. Most importantly my “poorly” dressed knots did not kill anyone.
We moved on towards the main chamber. I have gone through this bit of passage plenty of times and was confident that navigating would not be an issue (we did not have a topo). For some reason however, who ever was in the front (Tom I think?) decided to unknowingly take a right turn by South East Aven. I did hesitate at first, but I assumed that this connects to the same passage if you go up the slope from South East Aven. I spent the next ten minutes second guessing myself if we are going the right way, giving a lot of concern to everyone. The draft is usually a good indicator of where the main chamber is and soon after reaching the low arch on the right, I knew we were in the right place.
The main chamber was gorgeous as always (especially with all the lights from winch meet gone). This was Ben’s first time in Gaping Gill and it made me quite happy hearing that this was one of the cooler places he has been in. We had a little poke downstream of the waterfall which after 2 ladders and somewhat of a sketchy climb reached a rift. This rift eventually turned into a pitch and looking down there was a blueish lake at the bottom. Shame we did not have any rope to check it out, it looked very enticing. We also visited Mud Hall. I’m of the opinion that the Mud traverse should be an essential part of every GG trip.
Returning to the bottom of South East Pot, we heard a lot of noise from above but did not see any rope. It was currently being rigged by ICCC. Despite the delay, we stuck to the original plan of going up Bar Pot big pitch and doing the Horrocks Stearn Crawl. I decided to run ahead in order to exchange a few words with them and see what their plan is. Despite being quite short, the Crawl has quite a lot of variety. A bit of flat out crawling into a pool of delicious glutenous mud and a sideways thrutch through a narrow tube- all the good stuff you would want from a crawl. It was a lot harder with a bag, I could not decide whether to have it in front of me or behind me and ended up switching like 3 times which added to the faff.
Eventually, I got through and managed to have a little chat with ICCC. Apparently they got underground at 2.30 pm, which coincidentally worked perfectly with our trip. Following me through what was later described as a “poop tube” was Benedict who passed through the tube with his SRT on. I found this quite impressive, given that at one point both my back and chest were touching the walls.
We waited about 20 minutes for ICCC to finish faffing with the rigging. Just as I was about to go and de-rig the pitch I heard Tom calling my name. Stanley was having a little trouble in the tube and needed a few words of encouragement. After a few minutes, it was evident that Stanley was going to get through so I went off to de-rig South East Pot. When I came back, I met Stanley with his face absolutely covered in mud. It was quite funny at first but I quickly started feeling bad for taking him here (I’m very sorry).
The way out was uneventful, I think we were all quite tired having spent much more time underground than we expected. The walk back was cold and dark, although it was down hill so there was a lot less complaining. We quickly changed and were on our way back for a well deserved dinner.
I spent the evening of the next day tying figures of 8 and making sure they are dressed nicely, maybe one day this will sink into my two brain cells.
Jakub Dominikowski
