Trapdoor Pot - 3rd May 2010
Monday May 3rd 2010
Members present: Chad B, Marcus Roby, Marion Holloway, Toby Buxton
Report by Marion Holloway
We made it to Bernies about 11, where I decided to venture beyond the basic breakfast into lasagne territory (definitely a good option) and also bought my SRT kit! After a round of shopping for everyone we hopped back in the car and headed towards the cave.
The weather looked like it was about to turn against us, spitting hail as we started to get changed, but it soon mellowed out as we walked up the hill. We found the cave almost straight away, which made a change to when we were there only a few weeks before trying to find long kin west! We didn’t even need an OS map this time.
Chad led the way, rigging off a couple of jammed rocks at the entrance pitch and headed down, closely followed by Toby and a tacklesack, then me, then Marcus. Getting into the cave was a bit of a squeeze, but the short pitch soon opened out into a small chamber. I followed Toby down a little squeeze and climb and with a few helpful foot directions I was down. Marcus soon followed. As did his gear collection, camera, SRT bag and some slings.... Apparently the gear ball was still smaller than down knackertrapper!
We scrambled down some rocks with the help of a tactically placed sling and then we were waiting in a small but comparatively roomy space to get through the ripper. I think Chad tried it once with his SRT kit on, but I can see why it wouldn’t work! Everyone but Toby got stripping and once Chad had rigged That’s Better, we followed him down. It was at the bottom of this pitch, whilst waiting for Marcus, that I think the tone was set for the trip. Apparently later on there was a squeeze called the Stripper that Chad and I wouldn’t be able to fit through with any clothes on.... and I thought he was joking...
Once Marcus was down we headed on through the FTSE choke, one at a time. I believe NFTFH described it as a “moving boulder choke” which made climbing down the scaffolding slightly perturbing... Anyway, a couple of tight squeezes and a short pitch later and we were through to another squeeze. Stupidly, I thought I could get through in my SRT kit and it took two attempts and a strip to squeeze through. At this point I decided it was so much easier just to take SRT off every time than even bother trying with it on. Marcus made a similar mistake, only he (cleverly) went head first and got stuck. After I helped him out and down again, I headed down onto what Toby described as “a false floor that’s dislodging” towards the pitch head.
At the bottom I followed down a not too tight crawl before discovering I needed to turn around and head feet first. Doh! Contortion lessons over and I went down another climb with a sling and across a mini traverse to the pitch head. Somehow as I was crossing the traverse, my foot slipped and I screamed as I slid down about a foot or so. Thankfully I was holding onto the sling at the top of the pitch head, or I would probably have made it all the way to the ground! I scrambled back up and over onto the pitch head, a bit shaky but otherwise perfectly fine.
With Marcus close behind me, it was time to descend into the Stripper: a place I thought only existed in Chad imagination... From the noises I could hear ahead of me it sounded like he wasn’t having such a fun time... We sent our SRT kits through separately and wriggled round some interesting contortions to get through. The actual squeeze wasn’t that tight, for me the gymnastics over the top of rift were much harder! Another couple of scrambles and a short crawl took us to the top of electron pitch. Chad did some speedy rigging and we followed down one at a time, attempting to dislodge as few loose rocks as possible. Not long after we were all sat staring up at the impressive Megatron pitch (one leads straight to the next), eating chocolate and taking a photo to celebrate.
We’d got down in pretty good time. I think it was only about six o’clock, so Chad suggested we head back up and try and find the extension from electron to They Think It’s All Over. We all agreed and made our way back to the little tunnel in reverse order, Chad bringing up the rear to derig Megatron and rig They Think It’s All Over. He seemed to be taking a while, so on request I told a story about a spider who wanted to travel round the world but got squashed by a bus, until we heard Chad banging and crashing bellow us. I think he’d found two possible routes and having tried the first one to no avail had moved onto the second. We shouted down to him and apparently he was struggling to do a large pendulum across to the other side of electron pitch. It probably took him about 20mins of trying before he finally made it. And it was quite an impressive swing. It was hard enough when I followed Toby down and had something to pull myself in with. I have no idea how Chad managed to rig it just by swinging! By the time I’d made it across, Chad was already down TTIAO, so I squeezed past a few pretty formations to sit with Toby and hear a story about a Viking called Hagar who liked to rape and pillage and rape and murder and rape and eat and drink and rape, and his friend Archibald the flying squirrel. Bellow us we could hear an avalanche of rock falling down on top of Chad, and we kept shouting down to check he was okay. Apparently it was quite loose down there. ..
Chad made it almost to the bottom before shouting back up that he couldn’t find anything more to rig off and that there was no shelter from the avalanche at the bottom. He came back up, getting a little stuck on the squeeze on the way out and suggested we took it in turns to go down. I was a bit scared about the sound of the loose rock, so I said I’d give it a miss, but Toby and Marcus both wanted a look, with Toby going first and Marcus agreeing to de-rig. Toby went down “gardening” a bit (he’d been a bit jealous of all the fun Chad seemed to br having rigging it...), making a bloody awful racket, occasionally shouting up to let us know he was alive. When he was back, Marcus went down. Suddenly, we heard a louder series of crashes and a yelp of pain. Then silence. We shouted down to Marcus and it probably took him a good ten seconds to shout back to say he was okay. We could still hear a lot of huffing and puffing though, and more swearing than usual. I was quite worried he’d hurt himself badly. When he got to the top, he explained that a very large boulder had fallen down from above him as he was de-rigging and hit his arm. It was hurting, but thankfully not broken or bleeding, so Toby and Chad headed off up electron.
I followed Marcus up the pitch and de-rigged electron. The swing out was quite fun, even if the slam into the wall at the other side was a bit painful. The weight of the tacklesack had swung me round, so instead of landing with my feet I hit the wall with my shoulder. Thankfully it didn’t do any damage and I headed up to join the others.
I was still a bit worried at this point. Chad was really tired after the TTIAO, probably from the swing out to reach it and Marcus was one limb down. There were also a few awkward climbs to get up and as climbing is never my strong point, I was a bit worried about getting up them without any help. With a shoulder up off Toby, I made it to the bottom of the Stripper and followed Chad out, leaving Toby and Marcus to de-rig. We climbed through and up the rift – thankfully easier than I was anticipating, though it seemed to take a while for Toby and Marcus to catch us up with the tacklesack.
Chad and I headed on out, waiting occasionally for Toby and Marcus. I got a bit stuck on the climb with the sling before the FTSE choke and it took me quite a bit of huffing and puffing and several different tactics to get up. In the end jumping and wriggling seemed to work better than anything else. I went down the not-too-tight crawl and chatted to Chad while we waited. Chad was practically falling asleep on the spot, so as soon as we heard them coming, he headed up and I had a singing session at the bottom of Ready to Rumble. I waited for Toby and Marcus and offered to take the bottom tacklesack, but the boys refused. Something along the lines of being gentlemanly...
We made slow, steady progress out until I got to the top of the FTSE choke and shouted down. I could hear Marcus and Toby gassing, but they couldn’t hear either me or Chad shouting over the sound of their voices. We thought we could hear them moving, so Chad went up the next pitch, but when he got to the top, I could hear it was all quiet from bellow. I shouted down again and thankfully this time they heard me. I waited for Marcus to stick his head out and then followed Chad up.
After this the going seemed much easier. The ripper seemed quite easy once I’d thrown my SRT kit through, though I had to climb back down and give Marcus a bit of a shove when he got his gear ball and then his foot stuck at a very strange angle. Once he was through, we were privileged to witness an historic moment – Marcus drinking water down a cave! After we’d recovered, I climbed up the slingy bit with some help from Marcus and then we were nearly out. Chad climbed up to the base of the first pitch and I threw the tacklesack up behind him, before getting a couple of shoulders off Marcus to get through the letter box above me. I followed Chad up to the surface and did some stargazing whilst we waited for the others.
It was about 2 o’clock by this time, meaning we’d been underground for 12 hours. We found our way quickly back to the car, shanked the rope, got changed and drank some coffee. We were all surprisingly awake for the beginning of the drive home, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open past Harrogate. We didn’t stop off on the way back, presuming Bodrums wasn’t open at four in the morning, and made it back to York not long after five.
Trapdoor Pot was a brilliant cave, and I would definitely love to go back there. The trip was fantastic and even on the way out, everyone seemed in good spirits, despite being tired and achey. Thanks again to Chad for an amazing trip and pushing me to do things I didn’t think I could (I had my doubts about some of those climbs...). I only hope that I’m around for trip number 200 as well!
