YUCPC 30th Anniversary - 2011
2006 saw the 25th anniversary of YUCPC, a huge gathering of past and present members of the club at The Buck Inn at Malham. The following five years seemed to fly past, during which time, we’ve had hundreds more caving trips, trained hundreds more new recruits, and of course generated dozens more old fart members waiting for another reunion to arrive. So it was with great excitement that the 30th anniversary of YUCPC came upon us in March 2011, and with the club being the biggest it has ever been, this was clearly going to be a much larger event than the 25th.
After much searching around we concluded that a pub just wouldn’t do. What we needed was an entire events centre! The Dalesbridge Centre near Austwick (just down the road from Ingleton) was perfect, and surprisingly happy to cater for a large group of cavers! And a large group we were, with around 60 members, past and present, coming from all over the country for the event.
The weekend was a huge success. Saturday featured a faff-tastic trip down Valley Entrance for about 20 of us, armed with ladders, ropes, camera equipment and a cake! A pleasant stomp up Kingsdale Master Cave then saw the cutting of the cake followed by an afternoon enjoying the sunshine. The evening events saw a bar with live music, and of course the slap-up meal. Roo Walters (1981 club founding member) and Mark Sims (2010-2011 president) provided the after-dinner speeches, and drunken (and semi-naked) dancing followed. It was a great weekend.
So what do the next five years hold? Will SRT be superceded by the auto-jammer? Will anyone ever install a chairlift up Kingsdale? Will cavers ever stop complaining? Will faff become a thing of the past? Alas no to all of these. But one thing for sure is that come 2016, YUCPC will be a staggering 35 years old and the 30th provided one heck of an event to try to follow.
