Trips & Reports

Bit of a short sunday trip due to lack of enthusiasm! My dad's been going on about this cave for years so its good to finally have done (some of) it. Short entrance pitch by the dry riverbed (ladder would have been better) then some crawling through muddy pools til it widens up a bit into a largeish bouldery passage, a fixed rope climb down a muddy bit (photographic evidence that the ropes have been there for at least 30... read more

A fantastic trip! Thank you very much to our guides and winchers :) and to lauren for organising it! Very efficient start as we had to be there at 9.30 (almost too efficient due to andy g putting the kettle on at half 6!), and a lovely sunny day. They had put the winch up when we arrived, so after some peering down the hole we nominated gary's car to go first and test it :) they went off to change... read more

I think Nikki has summed up most of it but I'll write some more because I'm bored! :) We arrived at the entrance which is right nice and close to the side of the road to find that the entrance scaffold had already been erected. All we knew was that the entrance was somewhere up the top of a hill and that there would be cars parked nearby. Without the cars, it would have been a right pain to find because... read more

Really efficient, quick trip. Prettier than i remember. Lots of stomping along in huge passages until stop pot, where we had tea and cheese strings and very broken crisps :) then wiggly wretched rabbit and out. Much fun. I like tea in caves.

Scummyness levels high due to the human poo by the first pitch :s apart from that its not scummy at all! Really fun little trip-ideal as a sunday trip. A bit of wandering round at the beginning before we found the way on (forgot the description), then a couple of little pitches with some crawling and passage between, then you get to the streamway which is made up of really pretty cascades. Had a little wander upstream too, and a nice... read more

We wandered up to the cave before getting changed into our caving gear and it was really easy to find. We found a few other caves that were in Northern Caves 3 on the way too and took photos of them for our ongoing Easegill Entrances Photo Collection. The poo in the cave was a bit gross (some humans really disgust me!), but aside from that the cave was fun and easy (well it would have been if I hadn't... read more

Muddy.

Overated ;-)

Well, it was good until the accident. Shame we're not going to be able to go back there again... :(

... joke :) It was of course awesome, and totally lives up to its reputation as the best decorated cave anywhere in the UK. The Hall of the Thirty is unique and much of the rest of cave outshines any formations in other caves both in quality and quantity. Pity about the crappy entrance series.

As Richard said, this was a tremendous trip. Pete the Warden was quite correct when he said we'd "know we'd been caving" when we finished! Anyway, with plenty of time on our hands we arrived at the car park where we were to meet Pete the Warden (from hereon know as PTW) and promptly scoffed ice creams which were being flogged by a suspect looking Italian guy in a less than convincing ice cream van. That done, faff ensued. PTW was late,... read more

I think Andy has summed the trip up really well so I won't repeat too much of what he's said. Basically though an ace-amazing-fantastic-fun-pretty trip! I loved it and it made me sad to have to leave. There was far too much to look at, you just didn't know where to look! I have never seen such fantsatically pretty formations. I hope it doesn't ruin my enjoyment of other supposedly pretty formations in the future! Jumping over the beautiful crystal formations... read more

Otter hole is fantastic. Pretty walk through woodland by the wye to get to it, then the first part is very very muddy and a bit tight and awkward in places (more of a problem on the way back when its slightly uphill), then after about half an hour you reach the sump. Lots of wierd booming and slurping noises as you get nearer, then sounds like a drain emptying. We sat for about 20 mins as it opened up,... read more

Small cave/mine. You can park at rowter farm camp site, from which it is only 5 min walking to rowter hole. The entrance has recently been recapped, and this makes it very easy to find. It consists of a lot of metal fence and has rusted sheets of metal across the top (of which we now know can hold a person, thanks to Adam). The entrance pitch is 69m long, with a re-belay and deviation about halfway. These are not necessary,... read more

This was quite a pleasant trip for what its worth. Defo a trip to do before or after Christmas meal. We had breakfast in Hathersage. Very nice place. We then headed to Castleton where we were witness to many many handgliders and paragliders criss crossing the sky. (Must keep eyes on road.) We got to rowter farm the same on for JH and headed for cave/mine. Nice easy rigging and abseil down. Explored around a bit. I went off climbing... read more

The surveys and descriptions make this cave sound a lot more exciting than it is! It was easy to find, the views from the entrance are stunning (looking out over the sunny valleys) but the cave itself is short and sweet, though admittedly we didn't try hypothermia passage. The pitch is good practice though, decent length, with a rebelay and a deviation. It would be good to do this cave in conjunction with something else. It was definately a refreshing change after... read more

The day started pretty early (6:30 meet at the container) which meant we were at Bernies slightly before they opened, definitely a first for me! The early start was made up for by the fact that we needed to hand in part of the permit at a farm helpfully situated on the other side of Pen-y-Ghent to where we wanted to be. After asking several people we managed to find the right place and finally drove back to where we... read more

An unexpectedly fun trip. I had been to Magnetometer twice before but not managed to get very far at all, this time though we had a crack (crap?! :p ) team of professionals and actually completed the bulk of it. I had expected it to be mostly tight and awful but once you get past the wet and dry crawl at the start its actually quite big. There's some really interesting streamway with bizarre deep holes in the floor and... read more

My first caving trip to Fountains Fell! We parked up at the farm and took a sweltering 20 min walk up the the cave, which is easily found by following the shallow valley of the (dry) stream. The entrance is a concrete pipe extending from the ground, which is rigged for an easy SRT descent to the thankful coolness of the cave. The entrance chamber was bone dry, which is unusual apparently. We made quick progress... read more

Was a plesent trip in the cave. Scariest part was getting there as I had left a party at 3am went home got up at 5am to go to work and then caving at 8am. Very tired. Back to cave. Was a fun touristy trip for me no rigging or derigging. After much arguing Andy was made the leader and so all responsibility was left with him. I love the caves in the area but hate that b*stard hill. Was... read more

Good trip with a good hour sunbathing after leaving the cave!

I really enjoyed this "experience". I didn't realise how long it took to actually rescue people in a cave. We found the casualty "Mr G" within about 10-15 minutes. It took about 5-6 hours to get him out with thirty odd people. Scary. We had a lot of fun doing it though. As would be assumed we were a bit crap to start with but after a while we got 30 people working as a coherent team. I loved the... read more

Superb cave, though we only made it to the pool. After a fairly efficient trip to Ingleton, (including a special breakfast at Bernies :) ), we set out to find Tatham Wife Hole. After parking at the layby just after white scar caves, the faffing began. After changing in the rain (not very cold fortunately), right next to the main road :), Si discovered the boot of his car wouldn't lock anymore. Some fiddling with the lock followed, and eventually the... read more

This was a really fun weekend away. Different workshops and talks happened on the saturday. This included cave photography (in a fake cave!), first aid (knowing how to feel people properly!), Mountaineering (how to use compases properly and erect group shelters), SRT, o yea and how to put people in a stretcher. We stayed the night in a climbing wall with huge green faces on some of the walls and a bit of a high ropes course thingy at the... read more

Some photos of the day: http://www.first-ade.org.uk/photos/index.php?cat=8

A fantastic trip exploring some lesser visited passages in the County / Stop Pot area. Good route descriptions for bits can be found on the Braemor website and also in Not For The Faint Hearted (though we did miss out some of the less pleasant bits). Good preparation for a return when it is drier to do the Sylvester Pot round trip in NFTFH, although probably with some variation to avoid the pointless flat out crawling bits. ... read more

(I think you mean "plain" there, Richard! :p) An excellent trip although quite a bit of it - which looked big on the survey - was crawling through over gravel! The formations in Nice Way are amazing and definitely worth a visit. White Line Chamber was also quite impressive. I need to have a good look at the survey to get my head around where we went! N.B. we crawled over the top of Easgill Aven, rather than descending it. I had a headache... read more

5 out of 6 cavers prefer carbide. Carbide gave me a headache.

Chuck would love the nutroast but wanted something containing meat. Had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact Hayley is a vegitarian

Was really good to actually do Rowten after the famous Trip Of Faff last term. We did very efficient rope packing etc, easy journey and got to the layby by about 2.15, I think? Something like that. Delighted not to see a single caver apart from us! After lots of weeing behind walls and persuading Ade to get out of the car, we all got changed at hyper speed. Thanks to Simon and Andy for lending us helmets and lights... read more