Trips & Reports

Water levels made the main streamway rather \"sporting\" (aka pretty fecking scary in places). It would have been foolish to be in there had there been much more water. Lots of fun though with the water slides and swimming across plunge pools. We kept moving quickly so I never actually got cold despite the complete soaking. Marble Showers was very pretty (but the low roof was slightly unnerving!). I was rather relieved when I recognised we had reached the... read more

Words of wisdom from Gover the night before (paraphrased): \"You won\'t make it through the boulder choke first time. I can guarantee it. I\'ve spent an hour there before trying to find the way\" Yes. We got a little bit lost round the boulder choke. Thought we\'d made it through first time (ha ha Rich - in a respectable 10 minutes too) as where we popped out had lots of footprints - clearly people had been here before so we must... read more

Not being the best at getting up in the morning, it took three alarms to wake me up at 6 in the morning in time for an early container meet at 7 to pack all the ropes we needed for Pen-y-gent pot. I was quite nervous about doing this cave after Chuck’s horror stories about flooding in the pub on Thursday night and the fact that it was a Grade V (the first one I’d attempted). Our drive over to... read more

Bottomed Pen-y-ghent Pot: Awesome :) Pen-y-ghent pot is a fine stream cave, but in the words of our president ‘should not be underestimated’. I would concur with this and probably say that for anyone intending to bottom any grade V cave should have good amount of varied caving behind them. For Pen-y-ghent pot itself I strongly advise wearing a wet suit (unless there is a drought) and go in a team of three to keep the pace reasonable, this is a... read more

Awesome caving weekend Part two: Lost John Cave Team Monastery: Chad, Tom and Sam Having done a Dome – Centipede Lost John’s exchange a few months back I was rather glad to be going down Monastery route, described as the wet route, which the other two are not. Team Dome was ahead of the other two teams rigging to the bottom as well as Shale Cavern and Sink Chamber for us to go through. Our team followed Team Centipede down the entrance to... read more

Team Centipede: Jennie, Marcus, Matt G and Maz. We arrived at Leck Fell in high spirits, with our bellies full and the sun shining. The day\'s entertainment began with Matt emphasizing the luxury of having a warm, dry undersuit as he ran up and down the road in an attempt to thaw his. The cave entrance is situated through a gate on the left, a short walk down the road. With Matt taking the lead we climbed down to the stream, entering... read more

Titan: Titan shaft – the largest natural shaft in the UK standing at 141.5 m tall. Discovered in 1999 from the bottom through connections from speedwell by a team led by Dave Nixon after careful research upon reading an account by James Plumtree written in 1793 describing cave networks beyond that of Speedwell. Access from above is a 45 m deep 2 m wide man made entrance shaft which took four years to excavate. The bottom of this shaft joins a... read more

Middle route would make a great early srt trip (the worst parrt of the wet crawl is avoided)

Since the failed exchange trip last year ( http://www.yucpc.org.uk/trips/details.php?id=865), I have been looking forward to the Big Meanie – Death’s Head permit for some time. This time the exchange successfully happened on a very enjoyable trip. Every caver in England seemed to be on Leck Fell, and with one guy in Bernies going around asking what caves people were doing I was rather suspicious as to who had permits. The eight (? in addition to ones parked by the gate, tut... read more