Trips & Reports

My first time down Bar Pot (amazingly)! The trip was immensely faff free and ran very smoothly. The entrance pitch is quite awkward but relatively easy to get through before heading down the greasy slab to the second pitch. Route finding from there was quite easy to get to the main chamber with Luke recognising most of the passage. having never been in that part of the system before I wasn't much help until the crawl met up with the... read more

A surperb freshers trip to Bar Pot and perhaps one of the most efficient ever! David and I were not needed as drivers so, rather than spend the day watching telly, we decided to go with the Bar Pot trip. We went directly to The Dales while Gary went and picked up people and ropes at the container. This meant that when Garys car arrived in Ingleton, David and I had already had breakfast, and so we took the ropes... read more

So at least my 4th trip to this epic of epic caves! And once again we got there to find it rather full! An hour wait on the windy surface turned into a complete faff when the heavens opened and we all got soaked. Lovely. Anyhow after more waiting in the cold and wet the previous group finally vacated the cave and so we were off! Andy rigged the whole system after I gave him a broad overview of what... read more

Forecasts of 85 mph winds in Snowdonia and a flooded bothy meant my original weekend plans were cancelled, so it was off to BPF to join in with the club weekend away. Rushed re-packing resulted in my SRT kit getting left at home which limited the trip options somewhat! The weather had been grim all week and there was more rain forecast so we were aiming to stay out of the main drain. So, making use of Easegill's two flood... read more

Just to clarify, this wasn't an exchange/through trip as that would involve diving - probably a bit hardcore for the freshers (and me!) :p We did one then the other (it didn't seem necessary to add both trips individually) Both are fun little stompy streamway caves, neither really worth doing on their own but combined with each other and/or Calf Holes, make a good day out. Getting to the Birkwith canal seemed a lot shorter than last time I was there,... read more

After a night of bbq, fireworks and mayhem in Manchester the previous night, Matt was giving Tobes and I a lift home. He wanted to be back in Leeds for 1pm but also really wanting to go caving en route... Meaning a 5am start - ugh! Arrived at New Houses at 7am. A reluctant change and walk up and we were at the entrance around 8am. I was nominated for rigging, a great plan since I'd had the least sleep... read more

Five years of caving, and despite it being on my to-do list for a long while, I'd still never been in Daren! It was time to finally rectify this. To be honest, enthusiasm wasn't particularly high after a 12 hour trip the day before. There were ambitious plans of getting up early to ensure getting to Hidden Earth at a reasonable time, but we all completely ignored our alarms in favour of an extra hours snooze. Over breakfast, Andy decided he... read more

Fantastic trip and one I've been wanting to do for ages! The Geryon is stunning, as are all the formations at Medusa's Children; I could have happily spent hours there marveling at them all (I spent a fair while as it was!) Navigation was straightforward, as Mark and Andy had been most of the way before. There's nothing at all difficult but it's a flippin' long way to get there! The return trip took pretty much bang on 12 hours despite... read more

Craftsman's had been mentioned a few times over the summer, and at the pub earlier in the week Toby & I thought we'd make the best of a wet forecast and see what it was like, and Andy soon decided to make it a three. I'd not read a description recently, so I was slightly off put the night before when I read about flat out crawls, mud, and loose rock all the way down, but it's always worth visiting somewhere... read more

After a lot of umming and ahhing about the weekend's plans, I finally decided to tag along with Rackman and Bobbin on their excursion to Craftsman's. I hadn't heard of this place before, but knew it would be interesting when I was told it could be found in NFTFH. Not owning a copy, I did some internetting and found a Black Rose report from 2000 (http://www.blackrosecc.org.uk/reports/craftmans1.html) and a rather unhappy report on UKcaving (http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=2116.0). Neither of these filled me with... read more

We fancied a short excursion, and our gear was all filthy from Saturday's activities in Easegill, so Diccan seemed like the obvious choice, especially given the hot weather. Mark and I had never actually done it before so were quite excited with the anticipation. It didn't disappoint. Mark started off first and made things a bit tight in places. As the day continued, we all got very moist. Despite the experience being over quite quickly, we finished feeling thoroughly satisfied;... read more

Woo! 2 pretty solid caving trips in one weekend after 5.5 years of no real caving at all! :s :p :p There was all manner of technical ropey what-have-you: weird rebelays with no slack, tight deviations with no ledge, big traverses, y-hangs dropping down into space, etc. I was really having to concentrate to remember what on earth I was supposed to be doing, and didn't always manage with much style or efficiency, but funtimes anyhow! I was... read more

First proper caving trip and first SRT for 5 and a half years! (though I did go down a mine last year). :p Genuinely fun, and for me genuinely quite hard and tiring. There was a bit of faff on one of the pitches in Top Sink but after that it was pretty speedy, 6 or 7 hours of constant clambering over boulders, squeezing along rifts and streamway, and slipping around on mud. Well done to whoever was navigating,... read more

Having not been for ages, I was feeling the need for some Easegill action, and given that we had permits for Top and Lancaster, the choice of trip seemed pretty obvious to me! There was a lack of other trip suggestions from other people so the number of people on our trip steadily grew to 8. The pull-throughs were unsurprisingly rather a faff with so many people! But it all worked out fine, eventually. At the bottom of the last... read more

My fourth time in this delightful cave. Stopped off on the way home and wandered up the streamway until the first cascades which were sporting.