Present: Tom Green-Plumb, Toby Graham, Jakub Dominikowski
Duration: 4 hours (on the dot)
The weather for our annual dinnermeet trip was looking absolutely abysmal (the Zambezi is drier than the Yorkshire Dales). However, all was not lost as we had unfinished business with Jeans big naturals. For context go and read Jakubs trip report 🙂
After lots and lots of shameless begging Toby and I had managed to bank ourselves an early leave on the Friday by agreeing to take all the kit and food instead of any freshers (big win), although I fear my suspension will never recover. After a brief stop of accidentally buying super diesel (what a prat), we set off in a very fuel inefficient manner to pick up Jakub from Clapham. He was looking sprightly as always, although less so after we buried him alive in bread and wellies. With all the team now raring to go we made a quick stop at the hut and made it to Clapham for 3ish.
Kitting up was relatively faff free and with some mild grumbling we made our way up the big hill. The walk up was uneventful with conversation topics including, but not limited to, Jakubs love for young students (I’ll leave it at that). We found Jean with considerable ease this time around, mostly helped by the fact we had explored every shakehole of gaping gill on the previous trip.
Jakub rigged the first pitch while me and Toby finished suiting up. Given the biblical amount of rain the day before this pitch was very soggy meaning a wet backside was unfortunately unavoidable. Below the first pitch it was straight in to Hard Times Crawl. I had lucked out by only having to take the small tackle sack through so suffered considerably less than the others. The crawl itself is not that tight, but the rock-strewn floor makes it feel like crawling on thumb tacks. After the short drop comes Sweet Surrender which is a straightforward climb on the way down.
The second pitch provided the first opportunity for spit usage with Jakub opting to rig. This pitch also saw the use of Jeans first bomber big natural !! Although I will add that the extra faff created by someone removing the dubious spinning spit was not appreciated as I think it was super good enough. After a super safe descent (how boring) it was quickly on to the third pitch. We all free climbed this pitch; however, this should probably only be attempted by competent climbers (that being said do what you want (I’m not your mum)).
I opted to rig the fourth pitch so I could have my turn on the spanner. This was my first time rigging on spits and I can confirm they are a massive nuisance. Additionally, Jakub is apparently of the belief that spits are spontaneously explosive, so this pitch was backed up to about 4 things (including Jeans second bomber big natural). Lo and behold no spits exploded and we all descended with ease but received a substantial drenching at the bottom.
Jakub led on with a handstand dive manoeuvre down the descending crawl at the bottom of False Promises chamber. Next up was the Clap Trap and UGC crawl both of which had both decided to stick to the theme of being rather soggy. For once I will say that the black book slightly over sells these sections as if you were hoping for hard torturous passage (Jakub), you may be a tad disappointed. The surprise U bend was then tackled, the difficulty of which directly correlates to the length of your femurs (giants be warned). After the U bend comes the traverse which is in fact supremely slippery, so we were thankful for the in situ. The traverse itself is straightforward bridging but would be difficult for anyone midget sized (<5ft). Care should be taken to not break any of the straws, unless you are Jakub and enjoy swinging your dome about; shame on him. We did not descend blind pit (so I can’t tell you what it’s like, but I’m sure its lovely).
The fifth pitch is free climbable, unless you are like me and can’t be bothered (definitely not because I was frightened of the slab). After a quick climb down the fifth pitch, Toby proceeded to rig the sixth pitch rather slowly as he exclaimed he’s “having a hard time screwing Jean”. Notably, we did not utilise the rebelay boulder and our rope lived to tell the tale. After another light soaking at the bottom, it was on to the seventh and last pitch, which is fairly narrow at the top. Jeans bottom end is rather underwhelming but worth the few minutes of exploration for the complete experience.
Getting back up the seventh was a bit of a slog mainly because my massive head, helmet and light combo kept getting wedged in the rift. All the other pitches are reasonable on the outward journey. Although I struggled immensely to get back up Sweet Surrender and had to resort to doing my best beached whale impression on the wedged block; this was very unaesthetic. I yet again lucked out with the first aid bag in Hard Times Crawl. Unfortunately, Toby suffered considerably due to having to push the weight of our unused excess crap, stating “Jean has drained me dry” at the end of the crawl. Who would’ve thought you don’t in fact need 20 spits for 4 pitches !!
In usual gaping gill fashion, upon our exit we were greeted with snow and howling winds. This meant we had a very brisk descent as we were all probably (definitely) mildly hypothermic. Turns out Toby was definitely hypothermic as back at the car his “stupid” hands couldn’t remove his SRT kit and while mumbling nonsense proceeded to get fully naked, exposing his bollocks to the streets of Clapham. Jakub also got naked. After thawing out for a few minutes it was back to the hut for 11 for some dinner and socialising.
To conclude, Jean can be a cruel mistress at times, but in the words of some famous guy “nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty”.
Tom Green-Plumb
On our previous escapade we were unaware that the lack of spit(s) would prevent us from going deep inside Jean. Naturally we were overdue for a return trip. With there being about 50mm of rain on Thursday, a dry cave was forced upon us. Better prepared with 19 shiny spits, Toby, Tom and myself were ready to take it all the way.
We met up quite late on Friday and after a bit of faff with dropping the kit off and eating lunch it was already 4 pm as we got to Clapham. Finding a call out was also a bit of a faff. Ultimately we decided to send it to Lydia and if she didn’t like it, she could bounce it to someone else in the hut (but I think somehow it ended up with Chloe? I don’t really remember now). As always with Tom and Toby, getting changed was efficient and enjoyable. I decided to abandon my knee pads for this trip as I could not be asked to put them on. Also, I was slightly concerned that we would be back very late and I wouldn’t have much time to socialise. So, I decided to bring 2 cans of cider and leave them outside the cave for the walk back (will touch on this subject again a bit later). Now that I think about it, I’m not quite sure what drinking cider on a walk in the middle of nowhere has to do with socialising.
The walk was miserable and full of complaining (as expected). Thankfully it was not raining on the way to the cave. We had a little squabble over how long it takes to get to Jean from Trow Gill. It took us about 15 minutes, which meant Toby was indeed correct and I was wrong. With Jean easily located, we quickly plowed through her and were back at the top of 4th pitch, where our earlier venture was cut short. I must say, rigging on spits is kind of exciting especially due to the fact that one gets to play with a spanner (spanners are cool). Also, avoiding the sketchy naturals is quite a pleasant experience.
This is where I let Tom play with the spanner. At first I was slightly concerned about seeing the first hanger spin (which to be honest I screwed in myself), but the later ones were super good enough. Shame I couldn’t see Tom’s forearms as he was going at it (with the bolts of course you silly minded person). Descending the fourth pitch lands in the chamber of False Promises. I have to say in the context of the description this was pretty accurate. I was promised a muddy slope of boulders but instead I got a lovely soaking from Jean (this was suppose to be a dry cave 😣). For the next bit of crawling we decided to take our SRT kits off, not knowing how narrow it was. It’s always better to waste 5 minutes rather than having to take gear off whilst laying flat by a squeeze.
Following a short descending crawl the high aven chamber is reached. This chamber was really impressive and quite unexpected. I wonder if it has ever been climbed. Following this is some flat out crawling which passes over a muddy pool called the Clap Trap. Getting wet was sadly unavoidable, at first it looked quite bad but when I was going through it I felt like it was okay. Then I heard Tom and Toby complaining which once again changed my mind. The following “UGC crawl” is described as flat out for 6-8 minutes, which I feel is an over statement. Large parts of it involve hands and knees crawling, with a short climb in the middle into more easyish crawling.
After the underwhelming crawling a traverse is reached. This is quite muddy and you really don’t want to fall down this deep into a cave. Putting on SRT kits here is recommended-there is plenty of space to kit up. The traverse itself is quite easy but it does involve having to bridge between a flat wall and a less flat wall. After the traverse is probably the hardest single obstacle in the cave. A body sized U-shaped tube. This was quite unexpected given the description: “a crawling-sized-tube”. It took myself and Toby a bit of effort to get through, whilst Tom just slid straight through, his bones must be flexible.
The next few pitches are encountered relatively quickly and are not very interesting. The last pitch is quite narrow but nothing too difficult. At the bottom there looks like there may be a way on but would require a significant amount of capping and I guess the chances that it opens up are really low.
On the way out we discovered that the U-tube is trivial going head first in the other direction, and pretty much all of the cave can be done with SRT gear on. The walk back was really miserable at first, it was raining and very cold. But as the ciders were slowly being drained I started to enjoy myself quite a lot. I no longer felt cold whilst Tom and Toby were freezing. I don’t normally encourage drinking but perhaps for a cold return a bit of it makes the walk less miserable.
I wish to never visit Jean again. This is quite a boring cave and not really worth the walk in my opinion.
Jakub Dominikowski