Trips & Reports

We bottomed it! Hardcore 3 due to forgetting wellies and wearing normal shoes, and some hard derigging. More to follow when Ive had some sleep.

Really enjoyable cave. Sidewinder was an excellent route. Best part? Being the second down the 90. I was figuring the easiest way onto the pitch head for myself.....turned out to be one of my favourite techniques - clip as much shit in as possible and then slide through the squeezy bit onto the pitch and hope everything holds

MArble steps is a great SRT cave. We ariived at the shakehole with the plan of doing a sidewinder-gully exchange but there was a team on gully so we just did sidewindrer. Rigging it was an excellent experience and so far is the best rig Iv\\\'e done. The traverse around gully route to the old fossil passage is non-trivial to rig in shoes as the sloping footholds had a generous covering of soil and leaves but it wasnt too gripping... read more

Thread a rope through metal set into rock and glide into a hidden world, stained by twinkling summer light, and the wind in the trees, for what are these? Days of mine to shoot the breeze!

Great trip! Probably the most scared I\'ve been in a cave so far. I see this as a good thing :D have a videons http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=776788727615&ref=mf

After an immense night with MUSC at the TSG. Me, George Bunyan, Christina Guam, Kevin Francis and Mandy Fu (of MUSC). Made our way into peak cavern alongside one Jim Lister of TSG and ink sump fame. After making a fool of myself in front of the tour by slipping over on some slippy rock! we made our way down to buxton water sump where Jim quickly dissapeared into the darkness and his long standing project of which we would be... read more

After a very delayed start to the rescue (during which time I'm sure "Mr Portly" would have died from suspension trauma), Toby, Maz, Marcus, Jennie, Ade and myself headed down to the bottom of the cave, where we found Andy and Laura who explained the problem. I was volunteered to do do the rescue and opted for a cut-rope. After putting my handjammer on in case my lock fell off while reaching upside down for Mr Portly's cowstails, I clipped... read more

Definitely a 3 for hardcore due to the difficulties of amputing Mr Portly\'s legs (one very heavy tacklesack) while hanging in ridiculously uncomfortable position! Overall though a definite success due to the incredible rigging and teamwork on the second pitch. Hopefully the problems we had with the casualty disintegrating wouldn\'t happen with a real person in the stretcher.....unless we were doing something very wrong. Either way, I can see why putting a human in there for hauling practice is a... read more

Haul Haul Haul it was a lot of fun setting up the hauling rig and then seeing it in work, with remote deviations and a back up rig, it was an immense sight that had quite a bit of kit holding it together must have had nearly £500 worth of metal and rope about.

Faff level of 3 was all deliberate faff. Still left before the rescue people despite trying our hardest :-p Really nice trip. All pretty easy, and mostly walking passages (nice ones). Need to go back and do the pitches when not tired/hungover. We started off by popping over to Echo Aven to rig for the top sink-pippikin team, only to find the fixed rope had been replaced and is probably fine to use for a good while now (also better placed now... read more

The classic trip in Easegill that everyone who loves Easegill should aspire to. Don\'t take my word for it, it says something similar in NFTFH. Generally the caving is relatively easy. Link Crawl was the only wet bit, and Pipikin was tiring but not horrendous. The challenge is the sheer amount and complexity of cave to navigate. I strongly recommend doing it in sections first to build up experience of the route (Top to Lancaster,... read more

It only took us over a decade to get this one done! NFTFH reckons 8-10 hours, 12-14 if you don\'t know the route. I\'ll echo what Richard said in that if you don\'t know where you\'re going then this would be quite a serious undertaking, and as such quite a lot of homework is required. It initially seemed like the amount of food we were taking was more than a little over-the-top but with hindsight it was most definitely a... read more

I thought Rescue training, whilst an exciting challenge, was quite sobering. It was reassuring that if anything did happen in Montenegro people would have an idea about what to do - but I don't think I quite appreciated quite how much effort goes into moving an injured person a very short distance in a relatively easy cave. To me, it seemed that everyone worked well together, and focused on the task at hand, which give me more confidence that we... read more

NOTE TO SELF-- DON\'T GET INJURED it will be hard work especially in wretched rabbit to get an injured person out, we only managed a distance that you could walk to in way less than 5 minutes in a couple of hours. very hard work.

A really fun short trip, scumminess would be higher, but the formations were so pretty I didn\'t notice the mud until it was all over my face. This cave is a real hidden gem - maybe this is what easgill looked like before all the tourists?

overall very funny trip, good times, the bottom is definately worth going to see very pretty, the snow was a bit odd though :P fun to de-rig aswell

As usual the TSG razzle the night before was excellent, football chants, castle assault and kitchen foil makeovers, nosediving through the hatch and Jonny on top form led to an awesome night. \"Your mums your dad, your dads your mum, youre interbred, Barnsley scum\" said Jonny. Banter on the way down was excellent with Margaret Thatcher impressions making the shaft sound like it was hosting a punch and Judy show. The snowplug at the bottom of the shaft was quite large... read more

\"You\'re into bread!\" Very funny trip, cave was excellent. The main chamber was nice and at the top of millers is the shiniest thing I have ever seen. Slightly paranoid when threading my rack on the way down \"is it this one?\" *waves rope* everyone \"yep thats definitely it!\" *waves rope more \"are you sure?\" \"yes 100%?\" ...... ... ... ... \"this one right?\" *waves rope again* \"yes that one!!!\" and so on :P

An excellent trip, hardcore 3 due to not being in very good condition in the morning, Matt G caused merriment when he woke up and declared \'Oh no Iv\'e overdone it again!\' East route is an excellent exposed but simple descent although I nearly had a heart attack when I disturbed some birds while rigging. The bottom of the shaft is scummy and in the firing line of any rockfall, best to get straight on to the main chamber or... read more

Brap Brap we lit up the chamber and took some photos. Then Curry Pizza!

After the Dachstien Expo training weekend, it was time for some real caving again. We had decent night’s sleep (or at least the human among us did) and we made a leisurely 9 o’clock start to the Dales for a trip down Trapdoor pot. This was going to be Chad’s 100th trip (and his oversuit’s 99th) and I think it’s fair to say everyone was looking forward to it. We made it to Bernies about 11, where I decided... read more

4 for faff because SOMEONE left knots in the rope from the day before........ :P

Described in NFTFH as an ‘evening trip’!!! This lead me to completely underestimate this cave in thinking that it would be similar to Jean pot, not so, turned out to be an epic in terms of strength and determination. This turned out to be horrendously difficult and extremely tight throughout. Carrying a tacklsack just made it even worse, right from the entrance, I think on the way out without Toby that tacklsack was not going to get through Bosch Rift.... read more

A physically and mentally demanding trip, containing mostly very tight, narrow rifts and large traverses. It required some creative rigging off natural formations (though most pitches were free climbable. Getting into the university challenge series was quite tiring and painful in places, once there the multiple layers of rifts above a streamway obscured the way on, and a large number of loose rocks made progress difficult, and no matter how carefully i moved while scouting for the way on there... read more

3 for hardcore because of getting a bit wedged in the rift and having to be yanked out 2 for faff because we spent ages in the rift (see above)

\"Free rope\"

Chad has often said to me that he doesn’t like being a passenger on caving trips any more. And after my first rigging trip, down marble steps, I think I can see why. Having de-rigged several caves, I expected rigging to be a similar challenge: fairly methodical work, some interesting balancing on traverses, but otherwise generally straightforward. Instead (and I think I mentioned this to Chad) I found it more of an art than a science. It combined all the... read more

5 for scum because i trod in mouldy sheep then touched my wellies :s 3 for hardcore because of an unnexpected decent halfway up the pitch ;)

find now, cave later

A huge cave :) I propose that future Berger training should be carried out here, with each person carrying three full tacklesacks of rope out of the entrance pitch ;) After \"Faff now Cave later\" and the Wales Draenen teams \"Pack now Cave later\" we decided to \"Find now Cave later\" by firstly finding the right cave then deciding it wasn\'t then walking around for ages before coming back to the original cave and deciding to go down it :S We did... read more

Pilllar holes is the most pointless \"Cave\" ever. Some holes in the ground that someone as put spits/long lifes/P-hangers down which don\'t go anywhere or have any character to them whatsoever. As it was not clear which route was which, the best bit was when I found a route down that wasn\'t hanged so I used naturals and slings, least I got some expo style rigging in ;) Tom gave up after disliking the spit :-P Worse than Tunnel cave this one.

After nearly abandoning caving all together it turned out to be a good trip :) We went to Peterson Pot, and did the first 2 pitches. Easy as pie... then the Rolly-polly passage started! Imogen went first, finding it a bit awkward but perhaps being short enough to slither through pushing her bag in-front of her. Rich went next, but found parts quite tricky that Nemo didn\'t even notice!! It was decided to turn back, because crawling backwards with a Wankle... read more