An Ogof Ffynnon Ddu Trip

10/08/2013

I'd only ever done through trips in OFD in the upstream direction, so it would be interesting to see how hard the route-finding for our planned downstream (OFD Top to OFD 1) trip would be today.

Kathryn, Anya, Jess, Serena, Adrian, Olly and I slogged up to the top entrance, half of us poaching, trussed up in neoprene and PVC oversuits. Some highly sweaty caving brought us to the very shallow Salubrious streamway and a certain amount of relief. Soon enough we were at the top of Maypole Inlet. I was last down the climb into inlet, and without a rope it was more slithery than I remembered. The inlet itself wasn't carrying much water, and we followed it down into the main streamway which was also low.

Alpine Adventures

Around this time last year Kathryn and I headed to the Ecrins for our first attempt at conquering some alpine mountains. We had an lovely time, although things didn't quite go entirely to plan: I dropped my camera off a via ferrata, and we failed to make it up any summits due to a combination of failing to acclimatise properly and picking some peaks that were beyond us. My grand plan of a romantic mountain-top proposal was hastily rearranged into popping the question on a col.

Looking across to the summit of the Allalinhorn