Small Mammal Pot From Small Mammal to South East Aven via Whitehall

Saturday July 14th 2012

Members present: Mandy Fu,  Marion Holloway,  Sophie Hentschel

It was Toby’s birthday weekend away and permits had been sorted out for the club for several Gaping Gill routes. Maz and I really wanted to get some SRT and rigging practice on a girls’ only trip, as we didn’t want to be an obstacle for others who intended to cover more distance with more exciting trips such as Dihedral. Also we thought that it would be good not to have the feeling of having to “perform” in front of the guys, and just being able to concentrate on working on our skills in our own speed. As I had not been to Small Mammal Pot before, Maz suggested showing me this interesting alternative route into Bar Pot. The plan was to meet at Clapham in the morning and then walk up to GG.

So on Saturday morning I cycled to the station and took the train to Clapham, and Laurent joined me at Leeds for the rest of the journey as he was to meet the others at Gaping Gill as well for Toby’s birthday Main Chamber party. On arrival at Clapham, I was pleasantly surprised that Mandy picked us up with Maz, and even more when she said she’d come with us. While we got changed in the middle of the road as always, a large group of cyclists went past – who came back just five minutes later, because they took the wrong route. How can one possibly get lost in Clapham?! Cretins.

We arrived at the entrance of Small Mammal, when we heard voices and music coming out from Bar Pot entrance. Laura, Caitlin and Mike’s group were getting ready, listening to music with Mike’s grotto blaster. Mandy had not been to Small Mammal nor South East Aven, I had not been to Small Mammal, and neither Mandy nor Maz had ever seen Whitehall. So we decided to do Small Mammal Pot, coming out on top of the Greasy Slab, turning right in Bridge Hall into Whitehall, and going through the keyhole passage into South East Aven. Distributed leadership worked really well on this trip: I wanted to get more confident in rigging, so for most of the time I went first. But in Small Mammal Maz’s great navigation skills resulted in finding our way through the small passages with ease. Mandy was by far the most proficient rigger among us and I was very grateful that she was with us, for she taught me some really useful tricks to make rigging easier, quicker and most importantly, safer. It was fantastic how relaxed this trip was: no one got impatient, bored or annoyed at each other if someone needed a bit more time, for example when I took some minutes to figure out the next rig, or Maz required some assistance and advice in a climb. The team spirit was friendly, humorous and supportive and not at all competitive. Admittedly, I did feel very nervous at first when I was standing on top of Small Mammal House, because I had not had any rigging practice since Ireby Fell a few months ago. Whilst figuring out how to get the Y-hang right, Caitlin arrived some fifteen metres below me in Small Mammal House having gone on a little solo bimble down Stile Pot. She asked for the way to Bar Pot, and disappeared.

The climb over the flowstone in the chamber named after it took us longer than expected, because it was quite slippery. Also the crawl directly after it posed some problems, especially if one had larger hips and also tacklesacks to worry about. Eventually we made it through and soon enough arrived on top of Greasy Slab, which was taken with ease. Having taken the small hole to the right when coming down Bridge Hall by mistake on a past Bar Pot trip, I knew that this would lead to some pretties such as straws and to an alternative route to Bar Pot Big Pitch through Whitehall, and I wanted to show this to the girls. When we popped out of the bedding plane crawl, we met up with Caitlin, who looked troubled and mumbled something about a camera. It turned out that Mike and her had to find out the hard way that a camera usually can’t fly, and a moment later Mike came up Big Pitch with its remains.

Whilst rigging Bar Pot Big Pitch, I noticed that I was not that scared of the sight of the massive drop right next to me anymore. With the help of Mandy I proceeded to rig the traverse into the keyhole passage. A few minutes later I came face to face with the rift leading to South East Aven where I knew that there wouldn’t be a floor beneath me anymore, but a deep black hole. I apprehended this moment and the worry that I might find it too frightening to be able to do the rigging sat in the back of my mind throughout the whole trip. However, as soon as I started to rig the traverse, I found that I was too preoccupied with my task to pay any attention to the dark nothingness below me. In fact, I quickly found it very entertaining and actually enjoyed the experience. When I finally started to abseil the South East Aven pitch, I felt satisfied and relieved that I had made it and managed to provide safe rigging for my team mates, and suddenly relaxed. It was only then that I became acutely aware of how exhausted, hungry and thirsty I actually was from the trip, and at a depth of about twelve to fifteen metres I decided to do a mid rope change and come back up in order to recuperate from the strenuous rigging experience. Mandy was keen to go down the pitch for urgent needs, so off she went and was back up after less than ten minutes. Maz and I in the meantime had been chilling on the boulder bridge jammed into the rift on top of South East Aven, eating cheese and chatting.

Mandy took care of the de-rigging here, and soon we reached Bar Pot Big Pitch again, where we ran into John and Laura. John came along with us up to Greasy Slab, which was fortunate, because we benefitted from seeing how he got up the Slab in one smooth movement. I immediately copied his technique, which, to be honest, did not look very dignified (but then: caving is never dignified!), as it involved mounting the Slab like a horse, holding the rope like reins. But it was unexpectedly efficient and fast, requiring no upper body strength at all and not sliding back down. We then split up, John continuing up Bar Pot entrance Pitch and us back through Small Mammal. Whilst ascending Small Mammal Pot, I realised that it had been a good decision not to go down South East Aven, as I suddenly felt very tired. When we arrived at the top, the sun was shining and Mark and Toby greeted us at the exit.

On the way back I gave in to the temptation of having a swim in the reservoir as I had been too hot all day. But the water looked much less inviting than it appeared to be once I was standing knee-deep in dark brown mud, worrying about leeches. Nevertheless I gave it try and plunged forwards to start swimming. I actually lay on top of a thick layer of mud, dead leaves and fudge knows, which was not so pleasant, and when I stopped and wanted to stand up, my feet sank into that matter without touching ground... Grim experience!
All in all it was a really positive experience which I hope to reproduce in the future!