Present: Maria Buckles, Christopher Pearce, Tom Green-Plumb, Lawrence Duggan, Joe Cullumbine, Fabia Moussong, Sarah Crooks, Oren Fox, Manveer Singh Bhalla
Duration: 3 hours 15 minutes
My first freshers trip of thrid year! Tom, Chris, and I took down 6 enthusiastic freshers to Long Churns!
We left Durham at about 8:30 due to a late arrival of the last freshers and completed the fastest drive to the Alum Pot parking I have ever experienced. Unsurprisingly, and even though we arrived at 10, we did not get underground until about 11:30, with the freshers taking an hour to get ready?! The plan was that, like last year, Chris would take half the group in via Dr Bannister’s and Tom and I would take the other half through middle entrance and rig the ladder. This would avoid people getting cold waiting at the ladder and this worked out. With Manveer, Sarah, and Oren in tow, I led the way through middle entrance and around the double shuffle pools whilst Tom brought up the rear. Only Manveer fell into one of the pools (the deep one) but everyone else managed to stay dry. We decided to do the free-climb first and give the fresh the option to do the cheese press after the ladder climb as it would be quicker and we could rig the ladder and have at least one fresher down before Chris’ group caught up. Tom rigged the ladder whilst I went through with the freshers what was going to happen and how they were going to communicate whilst on the ladder. Once I had checked Tom’s rigging and we had debated about how to attach the belay system to the freshers (ended up going with a double fig-8 on the end of the rope and carabiner rather than his idea of just a carabiner on a loop of rope), I headed down the ladder first, reminded the freshers of what they needed to communicate. Once at the botttom, I realised I had a bit of time before the first fresher came down so I ran to the window and took a very nice photo without any photobombers and achieved some alone time with the scenery. First to come down was Manveer. He tackled the ladder with the expected fresher ability… And once he was down I walked him over to the window with strict instructions not to go past a certain slab on the floor. I took his photo so he could have a keepsake of the trip and went to go get the next person. I was a bit surprised when Lawrence came down the ladder as he was in Chris’ group and I thought since my group had been waiting that they would be first down but I guess he was enthusiastic to come down?? Anyways, I went through the same script with him as I did with Manveer and took his photos although he wanted more of a photoshoot. The following order of the descending fresh were: Oren, Sarah, Tom (not fresher), Joe, and lastly Fabia. Tom seemed to SRT himself down probably due to a lack of patience with the ladder. Once all the freshers were down I went to go to take Fabia’s photo. Even under the same strict instructions as the over to NOT go further than the slab, when I was taking her photo, she started to head closer to the drop. After calling her name and telling her to stop several times, she finally listened and came back to the original limit I had set. Chris at this point had SRT’d down and then headed back up to start the ascent of the freshers. Everyone had gone up with no problems and I was last to ascend the ladder once more. I decided that with Chris at the top he could just pull me up and so I very lazily climbed the ladder, finding out at the top that Lawrence was the only fresher helping Chris and thus the reason for the slower ascent compared to last years. Chris then took the fresh through the cheese press again whilst Tom and I de-rigged, Tom de-rigging the rope and myself rolling up the ladders -a task I am not good at. We then headed up the free-climb rather than the cheese press, not wanting to scratch my shiny new SRT kit. We all then headed out towards the streamway where the freshers were given three choices. Dr Bannister’s with Tom, out Middle Entrance with me, or do the wet daylight crawl with Chris. Unsurprisingly, 4 of them wanted to do daylight crawl, 1 with Tom, and 1 with me. However, it ended up being all 6 fresh and Tom going with Chris and myself exiting out of middle entrance lonely – I actually really enjoyed doing it solo. I waited outside standing on the stile until I could see them emerge in the enclosure of lower churns. Manveer, Lawrence and Oren followed me to the car whilst the others decided to have a look in Wilsons’. Once at the cars, we couldn’t find where Chris had stashed his keys and so Lawrence was stuck waiting in his underclothes. Once changed I gave him my dry robe to keep warm which I later found out he dumped on the floor next to a muddy puddle – was not happy – he had also somehow lost my buff that I had lent to him… Chris and his company then came back and once everyone was changed, we headed to maccies on my new route that avoided Sissy Bank and Redmire station hills.
Maria Buckles