White Scar Cave

Saturday May 19th 2012

Members present: Alexander Stelfox,  Andy Hurlbatt,  Laurent Michaux,  Louise Bell,  Matt Gosling

The trip started out nice and early at the container as we had to get into the cave before it opened to the tourists. Having been down the cave many years ago as a tourist I was looking forward to the trip. After a drive from York straight to the cave we met up with Matt in the car park. The wind in the car park ensure we were awake as it was chilling and fairly strong. After Matt had assured us that his "Mac in a Sack" with knee pads outfit was the new revolution in caving gear we set off, through the grilled gate into the cave.

The first section was along the tourist route and included cave lighting, a cave bin and a cave bench. We wandered along the metal scaffold walkways above the stream taking in all the beautiful formations and waterfalls some of which were helpfully labeled. At the end of the show cave we found a white PVC door that led up some stairs to the battlefield chamber. From the ceiling were thousands of straws and stalagmites that were beautifully lit up with a UV light. There were also formations in the dried mud on the floor of the chamber.

Having explored the battlefield chamber, we returned to the stream level and went to the end of the tourist walkway. Here a barrier halted our progress which we easily jumped over. First up was a 'fine' swim in the freezing water for which I am glad I was wearing a wetsuit. Eventually we made it to the boulder choke and following an orange cord through the boulders we came to a point where it vanished under a large boulder which was a barely visible duck and we thought was the only way onwards, fortunately we found a route around this duck and then braved the second duck which had a little more space above the water. Once past this section we followed the main stream-way which was impressive with many formations along its length, whilst doing a bit more swimming and walking in chest deep water for certain sections.

Eventually we made it to the Straw chamber in the Phreatic Series. This involved a greasy climb up but was well worth it with the chance to see many long straws close up, some of which were over a meter in length. The route down was via a mud slide that was near vertical and ended in the stream. At this point we decided not to continue to the Sumps as it was cold and the man at the entrance was concerned that the water level could rise whilst we were in the cave.

On the way back we encountered a large group of tourists which we cheerfully greeted whilst looking completely soaked. To warm up we went to Bernies Cafe in Ingleton for a well deserved pint of Tea/Hot Chocolate.