Trips & Reports 2010

A great trip down a much under-rated and under-visited cave! The entrance is a concrete pipe about 20 minute walk up the (usually dry) valley from the farm. We reached there by early afternoon after much faffing at the YSS. Gary started rigging while we all played with the snow. The short entrance pitch is rebelayed below the pipe. A couple of easy climbs down and a few wiggles soon reaches the top of an awkward descent... read more

Actually the hardcore rating needs to be changed to a 5. I didn\'t feel *too* broken after the trip, but I\'m definitely feeling it now!

This trip nearly killed me! The first half went fairly well. Got to the YSS hut in time for a quick breakfast then headed straight out, and the Echo Aven pre-rigging team (Rich and Chuck) were off by 11.30. Me and Cat followed after a little sunbathe and lovely warm change, getting to Lancaster Hole about half 12. The others arrived shortly after and we set off down. A quick stomp to Stake Pot and off down the EPC71 route to... read more

The Brown Hill Massive! An extremely demanding trip, which was well rewarded towards the end with a magnificent 60 m pitch and a fine stream passage ending at the frothy sump. Quite an easy cave to find, parking by Yordas wood, over the style, up the hill turn right at the wall, go through the gap and walk along the next wall, where you turn left, Floyds entrance is located in a shakehole 20 m from the wall marked by an oil... read more

A tiring but rewarding trip. This cave is somewhat tight in places, especially at the entry series, though the rift later on is also a bit of a squeeze, and is a little tricky to negotiate, made harder with the presence of tacklesacks which always seem to find the worst places to get stuck. De-rigging was relatively easy as most pitchheads were tight enough to wedge yourself into a stable position, though this did make packing the ropes somewhat harder. Definitely... read more

Report posted on YES. NB faff completely absent as the trip was a well organised YESpedition

Sparkling Crystals in Ireby II \"The only real treasure is in your head. Memories are better than diamonds and nobody can steal them from you\" - Rodman Philbrick Rigging the shadow route down Ireby Fell Cavern is incredible fun; firstly you traverse across the ceiling then execute a series of pendulums between intertwining rifts. There is quite a lot of work to get to the top of the main hang but once you abseil from this point you are taken a long... read more

I think Matt G\'s report sums up accurately the day but here are my own personal highlights: The cave entrance is brilliant. rcp and ladder! Shadow route looks fun to rig, lots of sound effects and pendulum action :P Lots of fun stompy stuff, a bit of a horrible wet bit of stooping An evil crawl to Ireby 2. The diggers efforts amaze me..... The water as you drop into Ireby 2 that gets deeper....and deeper.....and then reduce grown men to girly screams as cooling... read more

A lovely cave for my first rigging trip. Bit of a trek up to the cave, but well worth it. Rigging was good fun, nothing too terrifying. (My knots weren\\\'t the neatest.. but then there was Mark following me, and if all else fails Ade behind him). Tatham Wife definitely has a bit of everything to offer... nice pitches, squeezey bits on a slant and crawling parts. (All of which were made slightly more awkward with a tackle sack on the way... read more

Duckk bypass: certainly worth the effort :) A good laugh to do apart from anything as it\'s not immediately obvious how to get there!

Virtually all the faff on this trip was down to me, I\'m pretty sure I owe everyone involved a drink, regardless, definitely a cave with a lot to offer and a great trip.

woop woop more cave animals! only usurped by some other trips going on during the same day, but this was the most clear cave shrimp i have ever seen. The Duck really wasn\'t bad on this day and i have been in worst and it is good to note that having a new undersuit is great as it drys quite quickly! bit cold on the way back but it really didn\'t matter as there were plenty of drinks back in... read more

Valentines Day fun down Ireby Fell! Awesome trip down probably my favourite cave, for a team of nine people I dont think the trip could have run anymore efficiently (nine people leaving the container before 8.10 am !!!), everyone knew exactly what they were doing. Rigging Shadow route is just so much fun that its probably the best rigging experience to date. The exposed traverses, the hidden p-hangers further down, swinging into slots, and then the main shaft. Maz and Jennie got... read more

\"thigh deep water\"? Definitely waist deep for us littl\'uns!! :P

A fantastic trip with lots of variation to keep us all entertained. The group were all in high spirits, the enthusiasm and banter shared (not to mention the countless innuendos) made this trip to Ireby Fell one to remember. The route down Shadow was great fun, requiring us to show off our spider-like skills climbing up to the high traverse, before descending onto a ridge above the other team where Toby was busy rigging Ding Dong Bell, and down the big... read more

To be honest it was waist deep on me, but I didnt think much of it :-P Chuck\'s reaction was the best :s

I always enjoy wading through water in caves, the shock was a sudden dip in the floor and the water level going from knee height to waist, hence the squeals :p

It takes it\'s time along the traverse or else it gets the hose again. Lesson learnt. What a mega trip, Ireby has absolutely everything you could want from a cave in one. De-rigging shadow was off the charts. Took my time through skylight passage, just glad I didn\'t turn back 2.2m from the end! Cheers Maz :p

Ireby Insect!!!!!!!!!!! COMING SOON!!

too scarey to be fun. the entrance pitch on its own would be fun 4

I probably should have given it hard 4 as the entrance pitch was at least easy. Not sure about the rest like :-s

Its fine, I love JH and will be back soon to visit my favorite intertwining mine/cave! Here is three kisses for one of my favorite caves, see you soon babe xxx

So the third time I\'ve done Sell Gill and the third time I\'ve done that duck (hence the scumyness of three!) because Tom fancied it, I think mainly becuase to make me do it again :-P. If I keep on doing this I should at lease take a rope to have a potter down the pitch that is at the end. But as I said to the other the day I wuss out will be the day I should... read more

Tom :@

Really enjoyed the trip :) The entrance pitch was gorgeous, (lovely to abseil down in the daylight !) went across a little traverse by the side of the massive hole, then abseiled down (or for Chad swing into..) into the rift, traversed along some more - quite a bit tighter this time. We all abseiled down the longest pitch - with just enough rope!! (stupid rigging guides). But all was fine, no one disheartened at all. This chamber was very... read more

A much lower hardcore grade than I would have predicted - we were only underground 2 hours 10 mins and the squeezes while \"interesting\" generally seemed easier than when going down, mainly due to you not popping out over a big hole.

This is the third time I\'ve done this trip and I still haven\'t tired of it. Despite being short, its a great route with a lot of variety; from the sandy crawls and formations of Montague west to the beatifully formed Wilf Taylors passage and Double Decker Pot, to the awesomeness of the Main Drain and Fall Pot. Confident I knew the way, I handed the descriptions over to Sam who did a cracking job of navigating. A short detour to... read more

Feeling very much worse for wear following the saturday trip and some table traversing I was looking for something a little more straight forward an this was the perfect trip! Short but lots to see! The main pitch was fun and a nice main pitch that wasn\'t too big. The streamway was fantastic with a fun climb to fall pot. We stopped off to see the colonnades which was really impressive! Thanks to all involved, another really good trip to... read more

Girly trip! We fancied a nice short trip, and I wanted see if I really knew the way without backup from others so we decided to do the round trip that I know so well! I really enjoyed doing a trip where I knew exactly where I was and where I was going for once! I always find this route really friendly and enjoyable. Caitlin was navigating, with me occasionally helping out, but she did very well and probably could have... read more

Very fun trip :) Although there was one stupid squeezy bit into Sandy Chamber (distinct lack of sand btw..), with a stupid bit of rock digging into my back, gave me a nice bruise to show off anyway!! I enjoyed trying to navigate, and going first was definitely something to do again. Chest tapes were definitely useful for some climby bits. I think the Broadway part may have been a bit hairy without.. perhaps borderline impossible on the way up, gave us... read more

Cow pot is an amazing cave. The entrance pitch is beautiful and very enjoyable. It continues into a tight slot, in which my helmet got stuck and managed to rip one of my diveligths off. It then opens out into some very enjoyable caving passages. Eventually we reached the pitch into fall pot, which had already been rigged the day before. The pitch is probably one of the best I\'ve ever done. When I was coming down into fall pot,... read more

Felt like hardcore 3/4 but that\'s probably due to lack of sleep!

Finally down Easegill proper! That didn\'t take long :-) The traverse and final pitch out the ceiling into Fall pot are absolutely stunning. Full credit to Andy for the crazy rigging, it\'s bad enough when you\'re just hanging from the rope! Traversing through giant chambers with the roar from the main drain like a monster deep below, very cool, and the traverses/climbs out of Wretched are fantastic fun without being too high for vertigo to start kicking in. Hardcore 3 just... read more

This was another trip intended for route finding. I’d done Lancaster-Wretched Rabbit once, over a year ago, and whilst I knew the route well on paper, I wanted to get a few bits of it clearer in my head, in particular the escape route out of Wretched Rabbit. I also quite fancied doing Cow Pot so thought what the hell, lets do Cow to WR for a bit of variety! Armed with many descriptions we set off in high spirits. The... read more

A fantastic trip! The entrance to cow pot is good, along with token sheep bones. What followed was a small but worrying squeeze where my rack got stuck on a knot in the handline. A bit of wriggling and mallion undoing and I was free. Next up was the insane traverse and rigging of the cow pot main pitch. We sat and watched andy rig what is probably the most exposed and \'interesting\' pitch heads I\'ve seen. The main pitch... read more

Mostly quite tight, we went as far as we could before a sharp, very tight squeeze prevented further progress, Chad explored a little further (then a little more to find somewhere to turn around) and I attempted to follow, but progress was slow so we decided to call it there. All in all a fun trip.

Good stuff was Pegleg, after about four hours down County I was glad that we were trying to locate this cave in the light. Walking along the Beck from County it is located beyond Mistral across a few fences. The entrance is fairly obvious as there is a wall built in front of the entrance. Free climb down leads to a 90 degree bend, and with my tackle sack below me I couldn't go any further, so I had to go... read more

It had been several months since my last (and only my second) trip to County Pot. I could remember little bits of it but struggled to link any of it together so I was keen to return and try to cement it better in my mind. Following our Cow Pot - Wretched Rabbit trip, Andy and I decided we’d nip into County for a potter about, with the aim of completing the round trip. Armed with the Braemoor descriptions I set... read more

Really good trip. Nice to go off the beaten track a bit and do some SRT in Easegill (never thought i\'d say that!). Down Lancaster and Fall Pot, then found the side passage to Arson aven, near Bob\'s boss. More of a window into the first pitch, which starts about 10 m up. Slightly strange prussiking up ropes you\'ve not been down first but they all seemed good! Up the first pitch, you rebelay and enter a little gully in... read more

Well what can i say about this trip...... I know a total cock up :P. I think the day was cursed from the beginning, with Alastair being too ill to go on the trip, although spirits were high as Matt was going to document the trip. The walk to the entrance was fine and it was nice to find it already rigged, so we started to decend Josh first, then me and Matt at the back. All was good until my... read more