Notts Pot

Sunday December 1st 2013

Members present: Chad B,  Harry Dobson,  Jonathan Rasch

Probably one of the best Notts Pot trips I’ve been on. Wanting to be back in York for a sensible time, the pace of the trip was pretty relentless, as to avoid the Notts pot time drain that too often occurs. So it was off down centre route, I still find the rigging at the top section bizarre, can’t complain though, a sling rebelay does the job nicely. As usual, I had packed light for centre route, so once again tight rigging on the y-hangs made for an interesting return, although not as tight as trying to rig it on the BT route ropes, oh how I was so tempted by BT route once again. I was even tempted to go into the ‘wrong’ chamber as to do the BT duck, but not on this occasion. Instead let’s get down to the bottom section, ones of the Jewels in the crown of SRT rigging. The traverses over the streamway leads to a fantastic tri-hang, could have easily spent all day here adjusting, but this would have led to a penalty, and not in want of this it was time to move on. Despite water levels being clearly quite low, the roar of the water heading down into the sump was a constant background from here on in. Jonathan and Harry, both of whom I’d never been caving with before were clearly enjoying the trip. With everyone down at the sump, it was time to crack out the foot jammer. Jonathan fancied some de rigging, so after I had de-rigged the bottom he set about de-rigging centre out to the entrance, all without any problems and a good pace. Once again I ended up with prussicing up with the bottom tacklesack for Notts, a beast of bag, should be added to the training log! Harry and I were having a good old moan about how annoying tacklesacks can be in caving, but we couldn’t hang around for too long as Jonathan was hot on our tales, and before we know it we were back outside heading for the car, and getting into Bodrums for tea time special is always a good sign of an efficient trip. Some good expo discussion on the journey back, get recruiting.