Yordas Cave Pull-through Rigging Extravaganza
Tuesday June 5th 2012
Members present: Andy Hurlbatt, Caitlin Brumby, Catherine Moody, Sophie Hentschel, Toby Buxton
Report by Caitlin Brumby
After strapping myself up with about 40 krabs (because that's how many we had in the boot), and sliding down to the first drop some short jokes already came my way. The first bit didn't take long, although I did get a tad confused about what ropes we had, and with Mike saying we were going to drown if it rained, I deceided to just get going and let Toby worry about that.
On my way to the next decent, throught a wet crawl I started to wish I DID have a tackle sack, as carrying a shanked 77 m rope in no bag is very inconvient.
I started to rig the pitch, and on finding some masssive iron bolts I was intent on using them. Mistake! These were the pull through bolts, so when I used them I ended up abseiling into the waterfall (although that did nicely clean off some mud caked on from a previous visit to the Henslers crawls in GG). I did a mid rope change over - making special effort to keep my face dry, and came back up to rig the traverse.
I climbed up over the drop, into a partially decorated, fairly wide rift, and started the traverse - which I think is called Chapterhouse traverse (?). Rigging was so much fun, as I'm short, bridging the roof rift was very difficult (and I definetely felt the stretch) but that made it so much more fun. When I got to the first re-belay I had to take a few seconds to work out what to do next. I then realised I just had to do it, and stop being a pussy.
A few massive Y-hangs and re-belays later, I got the the hanging traverse above the last drop. That was just ridiculously awkward to rig, but again lots of fun. (Apart from the fact I had to de-tangle about 30 m of rope). I got to the bottom to be greeted my Mike, Luke and Ade!
I then waitied with the guys for everyone else to come down, and then even longer for Toby to de-rig and pull through at the same time. Needless to say he didn't think it through that well, and over-complicated things for himself. But got down eventually. I think he loved the complicated rope work, so that's ok.
The trip was lots of fun :)
