Bull Pot of the Witches - 16th May 2010

Sunday May 16th 2010

Members present: Adrian Turner,  Alastair Gott,  Andrew Vick,  Catherine Moody,  Chuck Holder,  Jennie Hill,  Jonathan Booth,  Laura Bennett,  Marcus Roby,  Marion Holloway,  Matthew Chubb,  Mike Rippon,  Toby Buxton

After a very delayed start to the rescue (during which time I'm sure "Mr Portly" would have died from suspension trauma), Toby, Maz, Marcus, Jennie, Ade and myself headed down to the bottom of the cave, where we found Andy and Laura who explained the problem. I was volunteered to do do the rescue and opted for a cut-rope. After putting my handjammer on in case my lock fell off while reaching upside down for Mr Portly's cowstails, I clipped in, cut his rope and abseiled down. For about a foot.... until I got myself strung up. Done on purpose of course so that the others could practice their hauling... (there was no way I could lift my weight AND 60 kilos of rock)... hmm... Anyway a little while later Mr Portly was safely on the floor and Toby followed down with the stretcher. We discovered that trying to make 4 tackle-sacks full of rocks into a person shape that would allow us to keep him on the stretcher was rather difficult but we got there eventually.

Hauling up the bottom pitch was straightforward, and with a bit of help from Marcus pulling from above we manoeuvred Mr Portly off the pitch-head, along the rift and to the foot of the next part of the pitch. Once again the hauling itself was relatively easy, until we got to the somewhat more constricted pitch-head. First of all Mr Portly's legs fell out the stretcher (which after a bit of work from Toby, were amputated and lowered down the pitch). This meant that the stretcher was bent in a weird way, and despite having a separate pulley to haul up the leg end and try to get it horizontal, we couldn't get the stretcher high enough to raise it over the outcrop that he kept getting wedged in. After exhausting all possibilities and deciding there was nothing more I could do without brute force, Andy swapped places and took over at the pitch-head while I joined the hauling team. After a few more attempts (and a thermos of tea, courtesy of Chuck and Matt C!) we decided to give up (blaming the stretcher for being too bendy) and lowered Mr Portly back down the pitch where Marcus and Laura sacrificed him to the witches of Bull Pot.

We headed back up to the second pitch where the other team had been doing an awesome bit of rigging. We constructed a new casualty, Mr Slim, made out of the bags of rope (and a few rocks/weights) which worked an awful lot better. Hauling up here worked fantastically well, with a 6:1 hauling system, a couple of releasable deviations to pass the rebelays, and a clever rig up the top to haul horizontally off the pitch-head. With Mike in control and everyone working together, all went smoothly and we were soon all back in daylight, feeling quite pleased with ourselves.