Trips & Reports

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

Faff: Due to taking Peak cavern key to Titan entrance :P Hardcore: Derigging Titan, together with carrying a full tacklsack up the top section of Titan and the entrance shaft was a right good laugh. Scummyness: As well at a useless oversuit, a massive hole in the undesuit lead to leakage :S

Additional faff provided by my undersuit problems.

we had a person not going into the cave due to over currying the night before.

4 for sum because it was really muddy but not in a bad way.

http://www.peakdistrictcaving.info/caveguides/peak_cavern_pt5.pdf Sam and George went to Mark & Angela’s Wedding Present Passage. Ann waited at the bottom and I went up a shaft which turned out to be pretty pointless. There is still one up rope and several down ropes that I\'d like to look at in the NCC Shafts at some point. One day it would be good to see a survey that shows quite how close the Avens are to the surface, the bat skeleton indicates that there must be... read more

In and out in 70mins. The windpipe was suprisingly high and this should have raised the hardcore level but this was canceled out by the shortness of the nasty bit and the overall shortness of the trip.

Great trip. Entrance series is a bit grotty and drags on a bit, especially on the way out with a gigantic tackle sack! West chamber is absolutely stunning though and well worth the effort & the pitch with the in-situ guideline is excellent fun too. Shame we couldn\'t do the exchange and avoid the long exit, ultra faff cuz of a stupidly late start, got back home at 3:30am, quite ambitious for a post-titan Sunday trip :-S Hardcore 3 due to... read more

Maskhill is a fantastic trip, requiring a hell of a lot of rope and some pretty challenging rigging for those of us with less reach. Much of it was clearly bolted by an 8-foot giant who believed short people should not be rigging. Enormous Y-hangs are all over the place - the biggest being at the top of the last pitch into Oxlow West Chamber - both arms about two metres long! A lot of banter was had with me... read more

Three ropes down JH meant that trip was off so we did Giants round trip. Hard 3 due to uber hangover - ouch what a headache. Formations at the top more than made up for it though and Toby cheered me up with good banter!

Titan is one I have been looking forward to since I started caving. You can read the numbers and look at the pictures but it really doesn\'t show the scale anything like being there. First impressions was Mike beckoning me to the edge as I was second in then shouting \"HELLO!\" and hearing it echo around the whole chamber for 10 seconds. Incredible! Then the abseil.....it just goes on and on and on. Then you hit the all familiar event horizon that... read more