Eldon Hole An exchange of all four routes

Friday February 24th 2012

Members present: Jonathan Booth,  Mike Rippon

Mike and I arrived in the Peak on Friday evening with the idea of going climbing on Saterday, but we needed some Friday night entertainment and as the TSG was quiet and we just happened to have SRT kits and 300m of rope (my 200 and Mike's 100) in the car we decided to head to Eldon, getting there just as it got dark.

For the first exchange Mike rigged East route while I rigged West route (the best of the four in my opinion). Landing in the bottom of the shaft I was suprised to see that there was no snow, but apparantly this is usual and the recent snowplug was due to the last couple of freak winters. We headed out of the routes we hadnt rigged and were back on the surface pretty quickly.

We then exchanged North and South routes and this is where the faff began, as my 200 didnt have a bag so I had to coil it up on each of th many ledges down North Route and it took ages to sort out the inevitable tangles. Soon however we were back on the surface.

Although it was weird caving on your own (not so much for East/West but definatly for North/South) this kind of SRT was a nice change because there was no waiting around getting cold and bored, its just a shame that solo caving is horrible.