Ogof Craig y Ffynnon to Helictite Passage - 20th Sep 2010

Monday September 20th 2010

Members present: Chad B,  Imogen Shepherd,  Kevin Francis

Ogof Craig y Ffynnon is a place I've wanted to go to for some time, but have missed out due to permit timing in previous years. When we were given the opportunity to have a look around I jumped at the chance. Clive generously offered to take us and was an excellent companion as his knowledge of the system, and the history of the system is phenomenal and this trip was a truly fascinating experience.

We pulled up in the Clydach Gorge and started changing only for a highways van to pull up and ask what we were doing. Clive chatted to the bloke was told that the wall next to our car was in danger of falling down and they were due to be blocking off the parking bay that morning! Clive left us to finish fettling with our gear and went to find another parking spot. On our return several hours later some huge concrete blocks had closed off the lay-by. This is worth noting for future trips...

I had fun locking up the entrance, it shouldn't have taken anywhere near as long as I took and I regret initially sitting on the instructions! in the time it took to do Clive had filled in the visitor book. We had looked at some of the data from the visitor book in a CCC newsletter the night before. In 2009 less than 200 people visited the cave, which I thought was an extremely low number for such an interesting place - by comparison the leader led OFD 1 saw almost 600 visitors in the same period. Maybe the figure is low because of the key system, maybe it is low because not everyone signs in the book or maybe it is low because there really aren't that many people caving in the area!

Anyways, the cave is pretty from the outset. There are crystal pools near the entrance that we spent quite a long time at because Clive paused to tell us a story and spotted them for possibly his first time. The cave follows pretty much a straight line into the mountain. To get to the Hall of the Mountain King you climb through two boulder chokes and up a couple of climbs (not necessarily in that order!) and there is a bit of crawling, but it isn't too bad. I ditched my tackle sack (only containing emergency stuff and food) after the second boulder choke because it was being a bit of a pain in the arse. As soon as I ditched it the cave got big and easy. Impressively big actually.

Hall of the Mountain King was amazing. A lot of the cave had conservation tape put down at an early stage and it has really protected the cave. The formations in HotMK are varied and you just don't know what to look at. You can spend 5 minutes looking at something huge in the ceiling to then spot something small and delicate on the floor. We sat for a while and got our collective breath back. Then we headed off to the next boulder choke along a more annoying flat out crawl. I was impressed by the Severn Tunnel, completely different in characteristic to the HotMK, but equally as unique. We went headed up to find the climb that led to the Promised Land - the continuation of the cave - but instead of climbing down we took another route to find Helictite Passage. We went in two at a time and very very carefully. The passage is less than a foot wide in places and we got face to face with perhaps the most impressive helictites I had ever seen.

Clive told us the story of the find, and how he was summoned immediately to photograph and record it, perhaps being only the 5th person to view the area. He reckons that the passage now still looks the same as it did then, a remarkable feat for conservation and one I am hugely grateful for! In the evening after dinner Clive gave us a slide show of a variety of pictures and we saw the original shots he took. It really hadn't changed. When discussing whether Clive had seen better in his career he admitted that Draenen now perhaps has better, but certainly nothing outside South Wales is quite so good. After this experience we headed out, this time with Chad and myself route finding. Happily we had no problems and were out in the early afternoon to appreciate another sunny Welsh day.