Saturday 21st May
The Bradford Pothole Club were running the winch meet at Gaping Gill starting this weekend, so we decided to make use of the rigged entrances and floodlit main chamber. Martin, Olaf, Kathryn and I headed down Flood Entrance Pot, after deciding against Bar Pot when we saw the caver traffic jam at the top. The main chamber was really impressive with the flood lights on and the sight of the winch hoisting people up the shaft into daylight is particularly memorable. In addition, today, a group of people were playing improvisational music (drums, trumpet a cello and a lone dancer wearing bicycle reflectors - don't ask) in the main chamber, so we watched them for a while. I don't think the caving world is quite ready for such avant garde art forms yet though...
After a bit of a side trip into North West Passage, which is possibly the muddiest place I've been, we headed out of Stream Passage Pot. It was nice to see a new bit of the system and the pitches are very impressive.
T/U 5 hrs
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
South Wales
29th April - 2nd May 2011
An excellent long weekend at Whitewalls where we met up with Emma and Nial. Three cracking trips, followed by a lazy afternoon at Big Pit on Monday when we were all too broken to do any more caving.
The Promised Land is a mostly-pleasant, long, straight passage which is tantalisingly close to Daren at it's far end. Back at the top of the ladder, we had a quick side trip to look at the very nice formations in Helictite Passage, but unfortunately I don't think my photos came out very well.
The first obstacle was Squirrel Rifts - a confusing complex of passages which, on the survey at Whitewalls, looks like a toddler has been scribbling randomly on a piece of paper. The description we had with us suggested we followed our noses to get through this section and couldn't go too far wrong. I guess our noses must be crooked in just the right manner because we seemed to find our way through to the climbs down into Haggis Basher without too much difficulty.
Heading downstream, we joined the large gravel-floored Agent Blorenge streamway, which eventually became narrower and led, via some tricky climbs, to The Sewer and The Sewer II - wet sections/ducks (although the second sewer can be bypassed by climbing up the rift before the duck). Agent Blorenge eventually joined the main Beyond a Choke streamway, and at this point we turned upstream. A kilometre of very pleasant stream passage (and a couple of very minor boulder chokes) brought us back to White Arch Passage and the entrance series (we missed the turn off for Tea Junction or Wonderbra bypass, which would have offered a bit of a shortcut to Beer Challenge crawl).
The round trip is really fun, with a huge variety of caving but not too much that's difficult or terrifying. It was also very nice to see a different bit of Draenen finally.
The first climb we tried, turned out to be a wrong turn. Two electron ladders and a handline climb (which should really be called a pitch!) led to a fairly small tube. This in turn led to a very pleasant sandy-floored passage which we explored in both directions - left leading to a traverse arounnd a hole. The survey back at Whitewalls showed that we were in Half-Mile Passage, and the hole led down to Crystal Inlet. We'd actually climbed out of Bonsai Streamway at the Eastern Flyover.
Pleased with our find, but still keen to see Frog Street, we returned to Bonsai Streamway and finally found the correct climbs up. This was much more like what we were expecting - flat out crawling. A left hand turn led into an even smaller, body-sized tube. Just as mild claustrophobia was beginning to get the better of me (there was no room to turn round and no sign of the tube getting any bigger) we intersected a slightly larger passage and soon arrived at a dazzling set of straws and helictites. Crawling under the formations with amazing urchins and corkscrews inches from our noses was even scarier! I can't even begin to imagine digging under them.
After various appropriate 'ooh's' and 'aaa's' and plenty of photos we began the trek out, and immediately realised how broken we already felt after three days of caving.
An excellent long weekend at Whitewalls where we met up with Emma and Nial. Three cracking trips, followed by a lazy afternoon at Big Pit on Monday when we were all too broken to do any more caving.
- Caves attempted:
Craig a Ffynnon - Promised Land
- Date:
- 29/04/11
- Estimated time underground:
- 6hrs
 |
| The Hall of the Mountain King; Nial bottom left |
The Promised Land is a mostly-pleasant, long, straight passage which is tantalisingly close to Daren at it's far end. Back at the top of the ladder, we had a quick side trip to look at the very nice formations in Helictite Passage, but unfortunately I don't think my photos came out very well.
Ogof Draenen - Round Trip
- Date:
- 30/04/11
- Estimated time underground:
- 6hrs
The first obstacle was Squirrel Rifts - a confusing complex of passages which, on the survey at Whitewalls, looks like a toddler has been scribbling randomly on a piece of paper. The description we had with us suggested we followed our noses to get through this section and couldn't go too far wrong. I guess our noses must be crooked in just the right manner because we seemed to find our way through to the climbs down into Haggis Basher without too much difficulty.
Heading downstream, we joined the large gravel-floored Agent Blorenge streamway, which eventually became narrower and led, via some tricky climbs, to The Sewer and The Sewer II - wet sections/ducks (although the second sewer can be bypassed by climbing up the rift before the duck). Agent Blorenge eventually joined the main Beyond a Choke streamway, and at this point we turned upstream. A kilometre of very pleasant stream passage (and a couple of very minor boulder chokes) brought us back to White Arch Passage and the entrance series (we missed the turn off for Tea Junction or Wonderbra bypass, which would have offered a bit of a shortcut to Beer Challenge crawl).
The round trip is really fun, with a huge variety of caving but not too much that's difficult or terrifying. It was also very nice to see a different bit of Draenen finally.
Daren Cilau - Frog Street
- Date:
- 1/05/11
- Estimated time underground:
- 8hrs
The first climb we tried, turned out to be a wrong turn. Two electron ladders and a handline climb (which should really be called a pitch!) led to a fairly small tube. This in turn led to a very pleasant sandy-floored passage which we explored in both directions - left leading to a traverse arounnd a hole. The survey back at Whitewalls showed that we were in Half-Mile Passage, and the hole led down to Crystal Inlet. We'd actually climbed out of Bonsai Streamway at the Eastern Flyover.
Pleased with our find, but still keen to see Frog Street, we returned to Bonsai Streamway and finally found the correct climbs up. This was much more like what we were expecting - flat out crawling. A left hand turn led into an even smaller, body-sized tube. Just as mild claustrophobia was beginning to get the better of me (there was no room to turn round and no sign of the tube getting any bigger) we intersected a slightly larger passage and soon arrived at a dazzling set of straws and helictites. Crawling under the formations with amazing urchins and corkscrews inches from our noses was even scarier! I can't even begin to imagine digging under them.
After various appropriate 'ooh's' and 'aaa's' and plenty of photos we began the trek out, and immediately realised how broken we already felt after three days of caving.
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