County Pot - 23rd Oct 2010

Saturday October 23rd 2010

Members present: Andrew Vick,  Catherine Moody,  Jeremy Mitchell,  Jonathan Booth,  Lucia Linares,  Martin Hasted,  Toby Buxton,  Tom Gregory

Immense faff both before and after the trip due to separate car-related incidents. With Andy having destroyed his headlights and so needing to drive back to York before it got dark, I was left as the only one who knew my way round County, and hence became trip leader by default.

After we finally got underway, things went pretty smoothly. Rigging took a bit of time, as I had never rigged a ladder before so was kind of making it up as I went along (though knew what to do in principle..) Jonny was in charge of belaying on his new grigri and eventually all 7 of us were at the bottom of the pitch. Well not quite... Jeremy and Lucia had gone ahead to explore in Broadway... but we soon found them again.

Pausing to look at the flow into Spout Hall, we made quick progress to Battle of Britain and up into Splash Chamber. At the top of Whiteline Chamber, the freshers were given a crash course in traverse lines then it was down the ladder, a short traverse over the stream and then the climb into the Lower Trident Streamway with the aid of a handline.

From here we went upstream to see Whiteline Chamber from the bottom, with its impressively thundering waterfall, and then back downstream via the Whiteway oxbow to look at the pretties. The original aim had been to carry on to Eureka Junction, but in view of time we headed back out instead. The freshers all did well on the climbs and ladders and seemed to all enjoy themselves which is a bonus!

Back on the surface, everyone was in high spirits, and we were greeted by the rising moon to the east and the sun setting to the west – a great end to a great trip :) Until we got back to the car at least... but that’s a different story..

County Pot has a great variety of things to offer, and I was surprised to find out how many people from the club had never been there! I think this needs rectifying soon... :p