Present: Ben, Jack, Jonathan, Nasir, Annie
(Present: Ben Woodhead, Jack Sherlock, Jonathan Lester, Nasir Bawa, Annie Li)
Fresh out of the Lake District, we had an Inglesport breakfast and parked at Newby. It was an extremely wet day and therefore quite difficult to navigate, but we eventually found Bar Pot by following the wall all the way along from the car park. A tight squeeze in the entrance pitch led to the greasy slab (not to be confused with Alum’s greasy slab) and after a while we’d rigged the main pitch straight down. This descent was brilliant and if you’re doing Bar Pot is definitely the way to go.
It was the way to go next that eluded us however. The passage to the right was apparently no good without a rope (wrong) and so we spent a great deal of time in the SE Aven crawling to test every tunnel. Down one of these we got face-deep in mud because SOMEONE told us it was the right way.
Having not found the main chamber, we slowly made our way out. The greasy slab became quite a challenge on the way up. Annie then got stuck at the entrance pitch, with Jack ‘rescuing’ her before Nasir got stuck too and had a painful harness experience.
By this point it was getting close to our 12:30AM callout so Jono and I sent the others ahead whilst we de-rigged. We followed the wall back to the car with plenty of time to spare, but it was locked with no sign of the others. It got far too close to our callout and there was still no sign of them, so we woke up a farmer and made a phone call to stop the police/cave rescue. It was very difficult to explain that we were ringing because there wasn’t a caving emergency!
After a short time, the police got a similar phone call from half a group of cavers in a village several miles away, and gave directions to come and find us (who needs a sat nav?) We then went to Maccies. Things we learnt: always take a cave map, always know your callout’s number, and never let Jack lead the way back from Bar Pot.
– Ben Woodhead (Trip Sec)