Titan - Peak Cavern Through Trip

12/03/11
With Martyn G (TSG member, showing us the way), Nimrod and Adrian.

Titan hasn't got any smaller. Unfortunately everybody's lights have become brighter though...

Once we were all back on the (under)ground at the bottom of Titan, the rest of the trip was great fun! There is such a variety of obstacles (crawls, climbs, traverses, ladders, streamway, boulder chokes, mine passage) that the caving is always interesting and exciting and never boring. We took a side trip to visit Speedwell Main Rising and the Bathing Pool (both very impressive sump pools) before contnuing downstream, through the aptly named Colostomy Crawl and out past the tourists in Peak Cavern. An absolute classic!


Time Underground: 4.5 hrs

Ogof Draenen

26th February 2011

Kathryn, Emma and I had travelled to Whitewalls from our respective locations to join a 3-person Cambridge contingent. With the possibility of very small caving groups and therefore minimal faff, it was an excellent opportunity for doing a long trip, so the three of us settled on trying to find the formations at the very furthest southern tip of Ogof Draenen, 3km as the crow flies, but 4.5km caving (according my survey and piece of string) from the entrance. This sort of distance is generally classed as 'a long way' in my caving world. Kathryn, presumably having realised this, attempted to sabotage the trip by forgetting her battery pack and only realising whilst getting changed that Emma's spare wouldn't fit. A finger-numbing bit of light-fettling at the blustery changing spot soon had us underground though.

It was Kathryn's first trip in Draenen, but between us, Emma and I navigated our way successfully to the Dollimore's Series in 3 very sweaty hours or so, stopping to photograph the Snowball on the way.

Kathryn at the Snowball

The Snowball, close up

At the Hall of the One, we turned away from the usual route to the digs, and climbed up a slope into the start of Luck of the Draw and new territory for us all. We were still a fair way from our destination even though we were pretty much as far in as Emma and I had been before. It was starting to feel very remote.

The Hall of the One

We followed the walking sized passage for over a kilometre. It started with some very nice cracked-mud formations in the floor. These soon gave way to small crystals on the wall and floors, absolutely everywhere. With so few visitors (perhaps less than 100 at the far end of the passage since it was discovered 13-14 years ago?) the passage was in pristine condition. We then got to a few sections where somebody seemed to have exploded a bag of icing sugar on the floor, which semed a bit clumsy. Further along, at Medusa's Children, presumably the same person had covered the walls in fondant icing and then stuck sea urchins to the ceiling which was unfortunate. We had to move very carefully to avoid making our caving gear all sticky and sugary.

Medusa's Children consists of several dozen metres of this sort of stuff.

A hundred or so metres of more traditional brown cave brought us to another dazzingly white section, lit up by a light bulb dangling in the roof. By now we were looking for the turn off into the Cantankerous Surveyors Series. We eventually found it after a low crawling section, but had almost given up after quite a long time looking, convinced that we'd missed the turn off earlier (as a general rule in Draenen everything is either further away than you think, further away than you remember, or further away than you'd like). I'm glad we persisted though, because a few minutes later we found ourselves in a rather nice chamber, Geryon's Lair, containing The Geryon, our goal for the day:

Geryon admiring a helictite.

Same caption applies really.



Close up.



Another close up of the Geryon

After sigining the log book, we began the long haul out. Did I mention that it's a long way? Anyway, the Last Sandwich crawl was a bit of a blur as Emma, worried she was holding us up at the front, hared off at lightening speed, hounded by Kathryn behind her who was worried that she wasn't keeping up, and me panting at the rear. A few hours of boulder-hopping later we emerged from a refreshing drenching in the entrance series to a cold, clear night with lovely views over Abergavenny. Half an hour later we were back at the hut nursing sore legs, plates of food and mugs of tea.

Is anybody still reading this far? Well, I've put together one of my trademark grainy, badly lit and shaky videos, which you can watch below as reward (or punishment) for having read so much of the dirge above.

Time Underground: 10 hours



Penarth Slate Mine

19/02/11

Penarth Slate Mine/Quarry is just a few miles along the valley from Moel Fferna in the Llangollen area of North Wales. Kathryn and I decided that it was probably worth a visit. It is in fact very similar in character to Moel Fferna, but with slightly smaller chambers. There was a confusing mess of junctions, rubble slopes down to the lower level, chambers and passages; almost enough to make us feel like we might get lost, even though we were never more than 10-15 mins from the entrance. There were some interesting artifacts left behind: plenty of rail tracks, including an incline and associated cogs and gears, an old rail carriage and some tools.

Kathryn's silhouette at the entrance

Railway tracks

One of the largest chambers

T/U A very pleasant 1.5 hrs

Yorkshire Dales

We headed up to the BPC hut near Horton-in-Ribblesdale to meet up with CUCC once more; 12th-13th February.

Washfold Pot
On Saturday Bela, Adrian, Aiora and I were supposed to be rigging down Washfold, with another team heading in later to derig. It didn't quite work out as planned. Aiora managed to fall down the entrance climb (somehow she didn't break herself too much!), Adrian turned back at the rather nasty climb into the flat out squeeze, and ~30m further on I bottled it when attempting to rig the big pitch and decided that it was probably too wet, but definitely too scary. So out we headed. Annoyingly, the other group did go down the pitch, so I was just being a wuss! Nobdoy made it to the bottom though, so it seems that we all have unfinished business with this cave and a return match is warranted.
T.U. 2 hrs

Long Churn
Having some spare time after Washfold we wandered over to Long Churn for a quick splash.
T. U. 30 mins

Jingling Hole
A cold rainy Sunday saw us trudging up the side of Kingdale to Jingling. Olaf was learning to rig, so I followed him down the Lateral Cleft route. Meanwhile, Kathryn, Bela and Gareth did the straight hang and we swapped over at the bottom. Good fun!
T. U. 1.5 hrs

Giant's Hole

Our caving gear was very muddy from our last trip down Lancaster Hole. In order to clean it, and because Richard was visiting, we decided to head down Giant's Hole and try and get to the bottom.

The three of us made good time through the entrance series, down Garland's Pot and through the Crabwalk. The next section was new for us all and was a confusing mess of small passages which didn't seem to make much sense, but we somehow emerged in the stream once more, having bypassed the sump. The 'bad step' traverse, Geology Pot and the two short pitches below were all rigged already so it didn't take us long to get down. The Far Curtain duck was a 'one wet ear' job which would be fine were it not for that fact that the water was hideously cold. We got thoroughly drenched again at the Spout Chamber climb. Given the water temperature, we decided that swimming in East Canal would be far too unpleasant without wetsuits, thank you very much. So out we headed to complete the round trip and eat cake in Castleton.

Estimated Time Underground: 3.5 hours

A Damp Weekend at Bull Pot Farm

It rained. A lot. Even Lancaster Hole was impassable on Saturday so we settled for a quick look at Bull Pot of the Witches but didn't really get out of daylight.

Bull Pot of the Witches

Caves attempted:

• Lancaster Hole

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Lancaster Hole

Date:

16/01/11

Estimated time underground:

7hrs

Present:

• Kathryn
• Olly
• Adrian
• Serena
• Matt
• Alex

By Sunday morning, although it was still raining, water levels had dropped sufficiently for Lancaster Hole's entrance pitch to no longer have a waterfall entering part way down. We thought we'd see how far towards Cape Kennedy and the 88 ft pitch (the route to Link Pot) we could get before turning back. Despite intending to turn back every few minutes, we kept deciding to go just a little bit further and ended up going all the way, which is very satisfying as it's a crucial bit of route finding for some of the longer Easegill through trips.

Fall Pot was very muddy and slippery, and things weren't any better towards Stake Pot on the high level route. By the time I'd crossed Stake Pot, Olly and Serena had found the start of the passage towards Cape Kennedy. We followed our collection of surveys and descriptions along a rifty stream passage and up Canuck Climb - a 5m iron ladder, attached at the top by not very much. Next we followed the (mainly obvious) route through a series of low chambers and crawls - the Earby Series. A couple of downward slithers brought us to a traversing section in a rift with another stream raging away a few metres below. Finally, after a climb down we found the top of the 88ft pitch.


The crystal pool

 Carrying on above the pitch, we almost found Cape Kennedy. I'd gotten as far as the crystal pool which my description mentioned as being very close to the chamber we were looking for. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to put the description in a plastic wallet and by now it was in several soggy pieces and unreadable, so I missed the climb up and we headed quite a way down Maple Leaf Passage by mistake. We decided it was time to turn round at this point so as not to miss our call out. On the way back, Olly spotted the climb up that I'd missed, so at least we know how to get to Cape Kennedy for next time. Olly, Matt and Adrian headed out ahead of the rest of us to make sure somebody got out before our 7pm call out. This was a good move as there was a bit of traffic at the entrance pitch and it has well past 7:30 by the time everybody was on the surface.

A Bit of Messing Around at Christmas Time

A couple of quick trips round Christmas time

Caves attempted:

• Haytime Hole
  
• Coniston Copper Mines
  

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Haytime Hole

Date:

28/12/10

Estimated time underground:

2hrs

Present:

• Kathryn
  

Kathryn and I decided to stop off in Yorkshire very briefly for a quick trip on the way from her parents to mine. Haytime Hole is a quick and easy cave, although the climb down below the first pitch is collapsing quite badly. After another rifty pitch.climb there's a pleasant enough streamway, a couple of larger chambers and an oxbow enabling a little round trip to be done.

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Coniston Copper Mines

Date:

29/12/10

Estimated time underground:

1hr

Present:

• Kathryn
  
• Kim

Another visit to Coniston, this time to the 'Back Strings' entrance: the upper entrance from which the through trip begins. We couldn't get very far though because we didn't have the right gear and it was all a bit on the rickety side. Some of the copper deposits were nice though.