Mistral Hole to the Grand Cascade (and back again) - 3rd Apr 2010

Saturday April 3rd 2010

Members present: Caitlin Brumby,  Imogen Shepherd,  Kevin Francis,  Nicola Gover,  Richard Gover

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 is probably a bad idea and we didn't know if the passage got any worse (probably did). The verdict was that being tall was rubbish. We free climbed up the second pitch and passed around jammers for the first (well for me :P), and that was the end of Peterson's for us that day.

A short walk up the valley to see Rick and Nicola's future house later (and Kev, Nemo and Nicola threatening to go walking instead :O) we tootled off down Mistral entrance.
Before we knew it we were in Hall of the Mountain King, and very very muddy.
We headed up Wellington Traverse (on which at some points I'm sure we were just stepping of conveniently placed mud !!) to have a look at where the Peterson's route would connect up. Some squeezes and pole climbing ( ;) ) from Rich, Nicola and myself we got there.. 'there' being a muddy chimney, not worth climbing up to come back down again. (Unfortunately, then I managed to knock down a rock onto Imogen's back from the very very loose slope on the way back - sorry!!)
We went back to Wellington traverse and up to Hall of the Damned - a little disappointing, then back into the lower parts of the mountain king's hall to go to leck fell lane. From here we climbed up several cascades to get to the Grand Cascade. The way there is lovely- really nice streamway passage :)
Although there is quite a long crawl and then through neck deep (with some deeper bits) water for what feels like AGES because it's so cold. There was an rope at the Grand Cascade, which would probably make a nice pitch (on your own rope!!). We were all nice a clean at this point, but by the time we got out Mistral again we were all Muddy.

A lovely trip with good company, but now I'm very eager to go back and try Peterson's Pot :)
(and hoping my height deficiency will give me an advantage.)