Trips & Reports 2011

I hear Brendan and the gang did it in 3 hours on a sunday before heading back to york

Our first midweek trip gave us lots of choice. What cave should we do? It wasn’t much of a decision when it came down to it – we’d been planning it for a fair while. Apart from Top Sink itself, both of us had done the whole of the route before. Being midweek we had to have an early start to avoid the York/Harrogate rush hour, but given we both had work the next morning it was probably no bad thing... read more

Saterday dawned clear and bright at the container as we waited for people to turn up. After the usual faff we were on the road and into the Dales, which were especialy beautiful on this fine autumn day. We all met at Bernies and most of us set off for Valley entrance, while Kev, Theresa, Marianne and myself headed for longchurn. After a bit of faffing with suits to arrange it so everyone had something that fitted as close as... read more

One of the largest groups of YUCPC down Long Churn ever! After a couple of days of relatively dry weather, but preceeded by wet weather earlier in the week, we suspected that Long Churn would be sportingly wet (but suitably safe) and we weren't disappointed. We had a relatively efficient start considering the numbers, and we were at Selside and getting changed by 1pm in reasonable sunshine. A full head to toe soaking was gained by most (and for any... read more

I hope not Wet caves FTW.

Hardcore/scumminess ratings purely due to Ade sending me the wrong way down a squalid wet low crawl/squeeze. Also, the wet crawls become significantly more difficult when you're trying to keep the tackle sack out the water so the tiffin stays dry (it did :) ) A great little cave, and a good warm-up to the day.

Quite a fine little cave - would be good for a quick sunday afternoon jaunt. The deviation on the first pitch required a bit of monkey acrobatics to get to (unless you wanted to get soaked by the waterfall) and the rope position looked a little precarious. Perhaps there was a better place to put it that we didn't spot? The flooded shaft at the bottom was a bit Eerie Indiana - I think Ade was scared!

Scared indeed, that sump was well spooky!

Have to say, we weren't a fan of this cave! There were a couple of interesting sections and big chambers, but other than that it seemed to be mostly wet boulder choke after wet boulder choke. Very soggy by the end. Not that we got to the end... we got to a chamber where the way on appeared to be down a narrow slit in the floor, leading to what looked like a flat out crawl. With not that long... read more

Met at the container with a couple of ideas, expecting horrendous weather wherever we were to go, preferring the Peaks due to (more) road works in the Ingleton area and a slightly better forecast. Given a choice of SRT or little SRT, SRT won out and so we tried to pack 4 people’s gear and about 150m rope into my little car. After some cajoling and the removal of the parcel shelf we were away. We got to the café... read more

A good trip. After walking round Bakewell for a while we headed over to Monyash and found the mines. I threw a rope down Hillocks (thankfully not before tying one end of it to the surface) and then walked over to Knotlow. Lieke had rigged the Y hand and we were ready to go. I clipped in and gingerly climbed below the pitch-head, taking care where I put my feet but in truth its all pretty well shored up. Looking... read more

We chose Flood because water levels were up and the forecasts weren’t brilliant for the weekend. Despite this the weather was fine for the drive out to the Dales and the walk up the hill - despite seeming to last forever – was fine until we reached the show-cave when it started spitting. This stopped soon enough but by the time I was kitting up at the entrance the rain was back again and threatening to get worse. Still, this... read more

Steven spotted this in CotPD and so we went for a poke around in Matlock Bath, having not really caved that way before. We parked by a hotel and the wandered around a bit looking for a public footpath, once located we jumped through a gap in the wall and found the entrance with relative ease. Almost immediately my light died. Grrr. So I climbed in using Toby's backup backup light, feeling like a real novice. The lack of light made... read more

So, turns out Peak District caving isn’t as bad as Mark would have us all believe :P The start of the cave is stupidly loose, but that’s not really a problem as any rocks you knock gain much momentum before they hit the person in front. There’s some crawling, and slotting yourself down slots (down some mucky cord thing), then across a traversy thing – tad bit exposed, but it is the right way on. All pretty easy, following your... read more

New cave for us all, it was good fun. Was a bit difficult to interpret the description but we had a good poke around all the passages. Lots to look at, but quite a few deadends too. The entrance shaft is pretty cool. Would recommend it as a nice Sunday bimbly trip.

After driving and marching through the river on Masongill Lane we found the cave really easily. The “new” entrance in the guidebook was apparently off to the side, traversing a pit and heading into a crawl. We found this quickly and Adam started rigging across. Whilst this was happening I went for a play in the obvious large entrance opposite and ended up a few metres below Adam, but with no way on and the floor looking pretty collapsed. I... read more

Lovely mine! neck deep in water. (in places) Road from Penrith to Nenthead is brilliant, shame about the midges and stubbing my toe on a step!

The plan was to do rowten, aquamole and bull pot in a day to practice for the berger. Rowten was first, then aquamole then bull.