Tenerife

15th-21st April


The Barranco de Masca



Kathryn and I spent the week in Tenerife, for a combination of lava-tube-caving, snorkelling and walking. When you get away from the resorts and built up areas it's a spectacularly scenic place, and is well worth a visit.

 

Our first attempt at finding a lava tube (Cueva de San Marcos) ended in frustration as we spent a couple of hours trudging around looking for an entrance that was hidden somewhere on an inaccessibly steep hillside. Somewhat deterred from looking for lava tubes, we spent the next day doing the impressive Barranco de Masca canyon walk and snorkelling from the beach at the end.

A North Wales Mining Weekend

An unseasonably warm March weekend saw various cars converge on the caving/climbing hut in Tanygrisiau, the main aim being to complete the Croesor-Rhosydd through trip.

The Croesor Rhosydd Through Trip - 24/03/2012
Croseor and Rhosydd are two huge slate mines (more like quarries with a roof on top and a swimming pool at the bottom) on opposite sides of Moelwyn Mawr, above Tanygrisiau, a village near Blaenau Ffestiniog (is that the most unpronouncable sentence ever?). When the two quarries were still in use, a tunnel was driven to connect them. It is claimed that this was to settle a dispute over who had the rights to the slate in which part of the mountain, and subsequently to aid ventilation. However, in reality the tunnel was clearly driven by forward-thinking mine owners to enable mine explorers and cavers to complete an exciting through trip seventy years after the mines ceased producing slate. More background here.

White Scar Cave

17th March On Saturday I joined a large group of Red Rose members for a trip down White Scar, beyond the tourist show cave bit. After squeezing into as much neoprene as we could muster (a task which looked like it was harder for some than for others; I'm assured because the neoprene had 'lost its stretch...') we stomped through the showcave and, after a quick look in Battlefield Chamber, climbed over the railings and into the continuation of the streamway.

Tourists don't go beyond this point, mainly because the water is 8 feet deep and there is no walkway above it, but after a combination of swimming and holding onto ledges on the side, we were through the deep section and into the boulder choke. There was a delay here as nobody could find the way through. After a time, Ian clambered through a hole to find somewhere to pee. Thinking he'd found the way on I followed him. I presume he kept going to get away from me and find some privacy, but eventually he popped out on the other side of the boulder choke, so I guess I can claim some credit for finding the route...sort of...?

Several hundred metres of large, fun, wet streamway followed. Eventually we reached a cascade on the right, at the top of which the passage changed character. The stream was now wide, slow and silty with a low ceiling. A series of ducks followed but, rather than being intimidating, they were great fun as there was so much space under the water and I was quite warm in my wetsuit. Eventually we found a dive line and the first sump. I poked my legs through and could feel the other side, but didn't fancy the free dive!

Back at the cascade, we had a look at some impressively long straws at the top of a hand line climb before heading out after a fine 4 hours underground.

Some Peak District Trips

10th and 11th March 2012

We joined CUCC for a Saturday trip, the plan being for Kathryn, Siobahn, Dan and I to head down Knotlow and Olly, Aiora, Anna and Nimrod to go down Hillocks. All being well, we'd meet underground and swap entrances for the return. Owing to a lack of reading abilities in our group we had a bit of a false start when we started rigging the wrong mine shaft. Kathryn was rigging, and her suspicions were aroused when the shaft had the wrong number of bolts at the top, several more rebelays than expected and a very notable lack of floor where she was expecting one 9m down. The incorrect name on the shaft lid was probably also a bit of a giveaway.

Having eventually found the correct entrance in another field (with a the namne 'Knotlow' on the lid) we rigged a nice 9m free hang follwed by another pitch to get to some scrambly horizontal caving. We then made our way towards Waterfall Chamber, with an impressive flooded shaft at the bottom and waited for the Hillocks team to appear. By now Siobahn, who was already a bit ill, was feeling even more rubbish (most of CUCC seemed to have a cold this weekend), so I headed out of Knotlow with her, whilst Kathryn and Dan waited for Olly's group to appear to complete the exchange trip. 4 hrs T/U

Sunday was rescue practice in Oxlow, 4 hrs T/U.

Serendipity

3rd February

Becka, Fleur and I had a fairly quick trip into Link Pot before the Red Rose dinner, the aim being to find the Serendipity pitches and Easy Street. We'd all been in that part of the cave before, but were all a but hazy about the route, so Fleur took Northern Caves underground with her and we managed to navigate our way through a slightly confusing maze of crawls after leaving the 'usual' route towards Mistral. Eventually, a flat out crawl led, somewhat unexpectedly, to the top of some pitches; Serendipity. Becka rigged, and we were soon down into a very pleasant walking sized streamway. We stomped all the way down as far as the sump before heading back out again. T/U 3hrs

Back at the bottom of the entrance pitch, a pile of snow at the bottom suggested that conditions above ground had changed a bit, and sure enough, after a hand numbingly cold climb up the ladder, we emerged to find a couple of inches of snow had already settled. A somewhat exciting escape from Bull Pot Farm followed in a blizzard, with ice and snow on the road, in order to make it to the dinner near Kendal, 15 miles (or 2 hours drive) away.

A Couple of Mines

Not much caving to report of late, but a couple of mine visits.


Borrowdale Wad Mine
28th December 2011, with Kim and Kathryn.
We had originally hoped to visit Force Crag Mine a couple days earlier but were thwarted by concrete and a gate, as some work is being done to divert the water coming out of the mine. Borrowdale Wad Mine is found on the steep slopes above Seathwaite and consists of three adits at different levels, connected by shafts. We had a look round each level, and located the various shafts for a future visit with SRT kits (it would make a nice through trip). T/U 1hr


Cumberland/Wapping Mine
22nd January 2012.
Kathryn and I had a look around on a lazy Sunday. We pretty much walked straight to the entrance and both managed to miss it, before spending the best part of an hour looking elsewhere. Eventually we got underground and followed the obvious route through some largish chambers. Eventually we got to some concrete walk ways and spiral staircases - this part was a showcave in Victorian times. It was slightly eery seeing it in such a different state now. T/U 1hr

Cwmorthin Slate Mine
29th January 2012
We'd spent the weekend in Snowdonia with Richard, and after a beautiful crisp Saturday, Sunday turned out to be blizzardy and sleety. So armed with a printed survey we headed into Cwmorthin Slate Mine near Blaenau Ffestiniog. It's a ridiculously complicated maze, and the first half hour or so was spent wandering backwards and forwards, trying to get our bearings and work out where on earth we were; it's not often I go underground and genuinely feel like there is a risk of getting lost! Eventually we found an impressive set of stone steps leading down the side of a gigantic chasm. After a couple more junctions we managed to find an incline that we'd been looking for. This lead steeply downwards, past various broken carts. Every so often there would be a side level we could explore, which usually ended in a dodgy bridge. The bottom of the incline lead to a level with a foot of water so we decided to turn round here.

We got back to the surface after about two hours underground, having seen about 5% of what was on the survey (and 0% of however much there is that isn't on the survey...so several return trips are needed - what an amazing place!). After trudging back to the car in the sleet, we headed to a cafe in Blaenau Ffestiniog where I did my best ever, but unwitting, impersonation of a welshman by asking for a pot of Lapsang Souchong, which the waitress assumed was a Welsh turn of phrase!

The steps - only the bottom third or so are seen here.

Richard and Kathryn admiring a broken cart

One of the many dodgy bridges

Digging in North Wales

10th December

Tony and Emma came up to visit, and we headed over to a cave called Ogof Dydd Byraf in North Wales for the day, where Becka and Julian (Martin also with them) had been recruiting cavers to help in a North Wales Caving Club dig which required large numbers of people to operate.

The first part of the cave is an old lead mine. After a few minutes a slightly constricted ladder pitch breaks into natural passages, some of which are very large and really pretty. After this, it probably took us about 45 minutes of fun caving to get to the dig; via a series of flat out crawls, another ladder pitch and a handline climb.

The dig itself would have made Wallace and Gromit proud. After a long flat out crawl and a small boulder choke, we had popped out into a large chamber containing stacked piles of sandbags holding back more piles of sand. The dig face was located 50 odd metres into a downward-sloping, crawling-sized tube at the base of the chamber. Since bad air collected at the bottom of the dig, a ventilation pipe had been rigged up all the way down the tube. Back in the chamber, it was connected to a fan run off a car battery which some poor sod must have dragged in previously! Various drag trays were used in the tube, with people positioned at each corner to transfer bags of sand from one tray to the next, and more people in the chamber emptying the bags, which would then be returned to the dig face.

By the time I had worked my way forward to the dig face, having a go at each job on the way, the Great Escape theme tune had inexplicably found its way into my head. The digging (which, it is hoped, will eventually lead to a known part of another cave beyond a sump) was in nice dry sand. After a couple of stints at each job, with some sandwiches and tea in between, we headed out.

T/U 7 hours