Caving in a Washing Machine

15/06/13 An aborted trip down Roaring Hole

Wookey, Kathryn and I, joined by Jeremy and Chris, were following a team of Durham cavers into Roaring Hole, a cave notable for its damp boulder chokes. The plan was for us to loiter in Inglesport for an hour or so then head down the cave in Chapel-le-Dale and derig their ropes. We executed the first part of the plan exceptionally well.

 

As we walked towards the cave we met a gaggle of familiar but cleaner than usual-looking, yellow-suited cavers coming the other way. Durham had aborted below the second choke because it was too wet. After a couple of days of unsettled weather it seemed we had made a poor choice of cave.

War of the Worlds, Ogof Draenen

8/06/13

Nial and Emma in War of the Worlds

With the prospect of a long trip to Draenen at the weekend, I had spent some time on Friday printing out various bits of description and surveys to several potential locations in the cave. I had then cleverly forgotten to pack them before driving down to South Wales.

Emma, Nial and I settled on a trip to War of the Worlds, a huge passage in the south of the cave, with some formations nearby. Armed with one paragraph of useful text, a photo of the survey and a vague recollection that I'd read that "it's somewhere a bit beyond Snowball Passage", we reluctantly left behind a rare sunny day above Abergavenny and squirmed our way through the somewhat miserable entrance series. A little while later we stripped off the tops of our oversuits at the first water stop (in Lamb and Fox Chamber) and made our sweaty way through the maze of dry tunnels to Snowball Passage.