Present: Jack, Ben, Annie
Annie’s Rigging trip, possibly the last caving trip this year
As always, we headed off at 8am, I was thinking to sleep in the car but we did some pre-training in the car as this was my rigging trip. Breakfast at Bernie’s of Ingleton which I thought was much better than Inglesport. Which cave to go became the world biggest question again, the weather was a bit wet so we changed the Aquamole plan and I wasn’t up for a wet cave, so the final choices were between Rift Pot and Notts Pot. Another 10 minutes later Jack gave up Rift Pot as Ben couldn’t be bothered to walk that far. Then Ben let me read the description and topo, I tried to memorise them but didn’t think my mind worked.
Even though Notts Pot is much closer we still got lost, ‘why can’t he just use the phone…’. Thankfully my memory was not too rubbish, I remembered the description says something like ‘along the valley and away from the wall’, then Ben found it 10 minutes later. Then we started! It was a bit more confused when I really rigged it but ben and Jack were patient so I slowly rigged the first pitch. The second pitch was described as 3 metre award climb, yes indeed. The third one was even tricky, the anchors were really high up and far away from where we could stand but I still did it, partially, because Jack wanted to double check when I finished the Y-hang. Notts pot is honestly unfriendly to new rigger so we decided let Jack and Ben to do the rest of rigging. Jack rigged Twilight zone by squeezing himself into the very slippery gap. Ben smoothly did the scary long traverse and the Y-hang. After descending a long pitch, we reached the lower streamway at the same time we ran out of ropes and time.
We started heading back and I decided to derig all the way up. Although we all worried about me derigging Y-hang over 45m shaft, I managed to do it with my tiny legs and arms by climbing and splitting. Derigging the travers was a bit complicated especially the rope was too tight but I did enjoy it. Ben and Jack went up when I was derigging the last part of travers, Ben shouted out what to do but it was completely non-sense and Jack repeated the non-sense thing again more loudly. I ignored what they said and did the right way I thought, nothing went wrong. As this is just a hard cave so the whole derigging and 3m awkward climb were kind of challenges for us, but we still did quite efficiently and went back to the car on time.
Unsurprisingly, it started raining again while we were changing (there’s just no point to complain British weather again😣). We had dinner on the way back at Golden Arches. Jack sent a Durfess post to diss DUMC as Sports Meet was unreasonably more expensive than Dinner Meet, but that post was unfortunately ignored.
It was a hard but fun cave, although nor very pretty. It is true that rigging makes caving more fun, we completely enjoyed this sick cave. We kept talking about Corona virus but none of us realised this was probably the last caving trip in this academic year.
Loads of caving love,
Annie Li
Left Durham at 8:20. Annie Li fell asleep by the time we started storming down the A1. Arrived in Bernies, faffed about trying to find a wet weather alternative to Aquamole. Ben was being a little bitch, and didn’t fancy the trek up to Rift Pot again, so we settled on the left-hand route of Notts.
We parked up on Leck Fell at midday. As per, Ben hadn’t looked up how to find the correct hole, so we stumbled around for 40 mins. Annie Li expertly rigged the first 3 short entrance pitches. I then took over for the tricky thrutching required to rig the twilight zone. Ben and I descended too far down, missing the start of the traverse on a small ledge, after correction, Annie Li joined. Ben then rigged the traverse and terrifying Y-hang, overlooking the abyss. I then rigged the final pitch down into the lower stream way. After a short amble down the classic Yorkshire streamway, we headed back.
Annie Li popped her de-rigging cherry in the most epic way possible – doing the splits over the magnificent shaft that is the left-hand route of Notts. After this admirable manoeuvre, we got changed in the pissing rain and headed for Maccies.–
Jack Sherlock (Treasurer)
探洞者： 杰克·夏洛克（Jack Sherlock），本·伍德海德（Ben Woodhead），李元欣（Yuanxin Li
李元欣的挂绳训练；可能是本学年最后一次探洞
和往常一样依旧是早上八点出发， 本来打算在车上睡觉的， 但按Ben和Jack的计划在车上教了我一些基本挂绳知识。在Bernie’s of Ingleton 吃了早饭，探哪个洞又成了最大问题。 当天天气不太好我又不想去太湿的洞，所以放弃了Aquamole的计划，最终落在了Rift Pot 和Notts Pot 之间。10分钟之后Jack放弃了Rift Pot 因为Ben不想走那么远。然后Ben让我读了Notts Pot 的信息， 看了一遍感觉啥也没记住。
虽然Notts Pot 不用走那么远，我们还是找不到洞“Ben为啥就不能用手机？”。还好我脑子没那么难用， 记得有一句什么“along the valley…away from the wall”，十分钟后Ben就找到了。然后我们开始了！真开始挂绳的时候比在车里更费脑子，还好Ben和Jack都比较有耐心，我就慢慢地挂完了第一个绳。第二节描述的是3米鸡肋的攀爬线，确实如此。第三节更让人心塞，固点很高而且够起来很费劲，但我还是挂上了……一部分，因为Jack中途想确认一下我做的对不对。反正Notts Pot 对挂绳初学者不友好，所以我们决定剩下的Ben和Jack挂。Jack挤在又窄又滑的缝里完成了暮光区的挂绳。Ben很顺利地挂了长而吓人的横越和竖井。下降了很长一段之后我们到了底部河道区域， 与此同时绳子用完了按计划时间我们也该返程了。
然后我们开始回返，我决定收所有的绳。我们都有点担心我够不到45米竖井上方的Y挂，但是我用我的小短腿和胳膊爬上去劈着叉把绳摘了下来。Jack和Ben先上去留我在下面收最后一部分，Ben冲我喊应该怎么做可是我觉得完全瞎扯，然后Jack重复了一遍Ben说的话。算了不管了，我就按我想法的收了绳，事实证明是对的。因为这个洞确实不简单，所以收绳还有爬那个鸡肋的三米对我们来说确实是个小挑战，但我们还是很高效的完成了收绳并按点回到了车里。
我一点都不意外，我们换衣服的时候又下雨了（再怎么抱怨英国的天气都没用了😣）。在金拱门吃了晚饭，Jack给Durfess发了一条diss DUMC的消息， 因为sports Meet 比Dinner Meet贵好多，性价比不高。然而那条并没有被录取。
这是个有点难度但是很有趣的洞，虽然不大好看。挂绳确实让探洞更有趣，我们也很享受整个探洞的过程。我们其实一直在讨论新冠状病毒，但是谁也没想到这大概是这学年最后一次探洞了。
李元欣
Did some rigging training in the back seat on the way to Bernie’s, where we had a lovely but expensive breakfast. Still having no idea what ‘slightly wet conditions’ meant in real terms, we decided against Aquamole. Rift Pot is really far (we did the first couple of pitches in February) so I made us do Notts (left-hand) instead. Notts Pot turns out to be quite a long way up the hill from the cattle grid, it’s easiest if you stick to the right-hand wall until the ‘valley’ (thankfully Annie had actually read the description!).
We used a tackle bag as a rope protector on the first pitch and so had to carry the 100m of rope. Bring a rope protector! Annie’s rigging was excellent, although we didn’t let her rig the traverses. It was a good cave with a fantastic pitch – and nothing went wrong for once!
Ben W