Trips & Reports

Well... we didn\'t get very far but it was fun nevertheless. I hadn\'t been too keen on the cave after reading all the descriptions of tight nastiness, but Toby bullied me into it, insisting that I would be able to fit through the crux fine. As it happened, we never found out if that was true or not... We had a little bit of faff finding the right shakehole, and when we did, we opted for the dry entrance, seeing as how... read more

Ogof Craig y Ffynnon is a place I\'ve wanted to go to for some time, but have missed out due to permit timing in previous years. When we were given the opportunity to have a look around I jumped at the chance. Clive generously offered to take us and was an excellent companion as his knowledge of the system, and the history of the system is phenomenal and this trip was a truly fascinating experience. We pulled up in the... read more

Having lost Chad to an Otter Hole trip and with Imo being too broken to attempt Daren we decided on a quick trip to see Eglwys Faen which is only a short walk from Whitewalls before nipping off to find civilisation and some food for dinner. We knew there was an army group also going to the cave so we took our time changing and getting there. It was a very scenic walk. I wasn\'t used to seeing Wales looking... read more

Would have been lower on the hardcore rating had SMCC not rigged it with a 110m rope that I had to de-rig, and more to the point, prussik out with!

Managed (just!) to get through three days of caving on a dodgy knee :S Hence the hard rating, did not want to do a Brown Hill :P Rigging the last two pitches in Gavel was awesome stuff!

An awesome trip -Gavel SRT is a really fun route. The original, well planned routes for everyone worked almost to plan - just with a little deviation from Toby, Marcus and Sam - involving less time overground for those three. Me and Chad headed down into the Gavel shake hole to find our SRT route P hangers, we did, as wel as finding Mike and Jennie\'s for the other Gavel route so shouted at them for a while until we saw Mike\'s... read more

What an awesome traverse!!

Yordas is amazing!!!

3 for fun, because I didn\'t actually get to go down the ropes... but I did get to watch some hippy musicians!

I walked into Bernies and was greeted by Chad saying that Boggarts was off that day due to his knee and Gingling the previous day, and I wasn\'t desperately pleased to hear Bull Pot being suggested as the alternative. Since no other suggestions appeared, off to Kingsdale it was. Perhaps it was retribution for mentioning on the way that it\'d been too long since I visited Kingsdale! I wasn\'t too annoyed at doing Bull Pot - although it\'s short, it was... read more

5 for hard becuase I was in pain for most of the trip :S Although one foot prussiking with a foot jammer was ok.

After making excellent time to the Dales, and having a nice efficient breakfast – with purchases, we got lost! We were looking for a place called new houses to park (making the walk to the cave half as long), but according to the map it didn’t exist and according to the Sat Nav it was actually Helwith Bridge pub – unlikely we though. After a call to Ade gave in and parked up in Horton for more of a trek.... read more

\'Fools paradise\' is one of the most beautiful I have seen in the Dales. We attempted both the big pitch and big rift routes, on the the big rift route we stopped at the thrutch (a 4 m tight slot with not footholds) knowing that I was in a fit state to get back up and by that point it was only me and Marcus needing to carry three tacklsacks. On the big pitch route (a 65 m shaft) we... read more

I only go to show caves don\'t I? Much longer than I remember it being, the streamway was pretty impressive when lit up to the ceiling! We had a look at Battlefield, then went off to the sumps, and to our surprise we got through 3 of them. Not bad! Ben and his neoprene hood led the way directly through them whilst Mike and I picked the drier routes, preventing soggy ears. We thought we looked everywhere following that, but apparently we... read more

An awesome day down GG, adding to amount of times that I have had to do the long walk up, probably representing 10% of my trips. Seeing all the GG permits on the YUCPC diary makes me happy. After the extremely disappointing failure of a trip a few months ago, I was rather happy to have got to Farrar Hall. The best section of the Whitsun series is beyond the natural barrier of the Font, with a vast array of really... read more