Sidetrack Cave

Sidetrack Cave has an unusual access procedure which involves abseiling down the side of a quarry to get to the entrance. Kathryn and I decided that this was enough of a novelty to warrant a trip in itself.

After half an hour of wandering along some dodgy ledges in completely the wrong part of the quarry, we eventually found the right spot for the abseil. Watching the rope sawing across sharp edges of quarried limestone was a little perturbing but we made it down safely.

The cave itself starts off with 100m of flat out crawling, with a few puddles thrown in for amusement (well I was amused anyway...). The passage was probably once 2-3m in diameter, but it is now full of mud to within a few inches of the ceiling, so there's no choice but to squirm through on your belly. Eventually we reached a T-junction with a walking-sized passage. We explored in both directions and looked at some quite nice formations, although I think they are starting to get a bit muddied and damaged in places.

After a few photos we headed back out and prussiced very gingerly back out of the quarry.

T/U 2hrs

Surveying in Boxhead Pot

We had originally planned on a trip to the Eastern Front, Becka and co.'s new section found recently in Large Pot, to help Jeff take some photos. But after a wet week, and more rain forecast for later on Saturday the trip was a non-starter.

As Friday night at Bull Pot Farm wore on and started to look worryingly like Saturday morning, Becka suggested a trip from Boxhead Pot to Notts II. There were some odd bits of surveying she wanted to finish off around the bottom of Boxhead. The prospect of a first trip to Boxhead and through the new connection to Notts II was too good to turn down so somehow I agreed to be ready to go to Leck Fell for a 9am start. It was now approaching 2 am and the beer Holly and Noel had got for their party was really very more-ish indeed... I suspected I might regret this in the morning. Some vintage snoring and sleep-talking in the bunk room later was not particularly conducive to a restorative night's sleep either...

Bonfire Night Caving

2nd and 3rd November 2013

 

It was a scene from a war film. Clouds of smoke billowed around us. We choked on the acrid smell of gunpowder, as we cowered from the rockets screaming overhead, temporarily illuminating the murky gloom as they exploded close by. Yes, it was another typical bonfire night at Bull Pot Farm, and yes I'm probably exaggerating a bit.

 

Over the din of the outdoor-fireworks-inside, we managed to establish that the weather forecast was terrible, and that our planned trip from Top Sink to Link Pot should probably morph into a trip from County Pot to Lancaster Hole, avoiding any potentially dangerous wet bits. So on a chilly Saturday morning (it would be warmer underground than above for the fist time in months) Tony, Kathryn, Emma, Nial, Aiora, Kayla and I dropped into County Pot. The climb up to Poetic Justice was as entertaining as ever, and soon we found ourselves in the Main Drain at Eureka Junction, where the water was still very low - presumably the rain hadn't arrived yet.

Late Summer Tomfoolery

21/09/2013 - King Pot

Emma, Tom and I spent a misty Autumn day bottomming King Pot. With vague intentions to look at the Middle Sump Bypass and the Grasshopper Series, we'd packed neoprene hoods. We made fairly serene progress through the early obstacles, including the T-slot. As expected, we found that since our last trip there the whole of the cave is now p-hangered, which sped things up a bit.

 

As we descended and entered some of the damper crawls in the lower part of the cave (which is otherwise large, impressive and very pretty), resolve weakened and I found myself hoping that it would be too wet for the Grasshopper Series. It probably wasn't - but I was! The 1 inch airspace over the flat out crawl was enough to deter all of us. After looking at the impressive sumps that bookend the East Kingsdale Master Cave, we started the trip out, the official line being, 'we really wanted to go through the horrible ducks, but thought it was too wet'.

 

An Icelandic Adventure

Having run out of frozen meals, Kathryn and I decided to go to Iceland. Our main objective was the Laugavegur trail, which runs from the hot springs of Landmannalaugar to the glacial valley of Þórsmörk, with an optional extra day or two over the Fimmvörðuháls pass to Skógar. The route would take us past the  Eyjafjallajökull glacier, the scene of the 2010 eruption which disrupted flights across Europe. When it comes to words I am physically unable to pronounce, Icelandic is rivalled only by Welsh. Try saying Eyjafjallajökull three times backwards as fast as you can...

The geothermal pool at Landmannalaugar

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