Gingling Hole

Saturday June 21st 2014

Members present: Andrew Gilmartin,  Andy Hurlbatt,  Mark Sims,  Sarah Jefferys,  Vicky Bailey,  Will Scott

While there’s charm a-plenty in popular p-bolted caves – clean and curvaceous, shampooed and shiny, glossy as show dogs from the polish of countless caver bums – Gingling, bolted only on spits and relatively unworn, has the ragged splendour of a feral wolf, everywhere shaggy with stalactites that look like the matted fur of an animal climbing out of a river.

Surprisingly fast-going for a team of seven, in which many of us were rigging off spits for the first time underground, there were nonetheless some chilly moments. Andy H, Mark and I, bringing up the rear in the first half of the cave, kept ourselves entertained with an ad hoc choral jam in a stretch of passage with a fun acoustic.

The cave seemed made up of two halves, before and after the appropriately named Stalactite Chamber. The first half is an entertaining meander over and around climbs, rifts, many many stalactites and some peculiar liquorice-coloured formations. The second half, after a 3m climb straight down through a hole in the chamber floor, begins similarly, with an even finer collection of stalactites – but quickly becomes much tougher.

I was leading at this point, and with some misgivings – without a route description – followed an ever-narrowing rift along its winding course, passing over the ropes for the alternative Big Pitch route and squeezing through a tight calcite hole. Feeling increasingly like Alice having eaten from the wrong side of the mushroom, I let Mark and Andy G through to look at a narrow descending rift that looked more to me like a recipe for caver sandwiches than an inviting way on. However, they found the rift was just wide enough if approached at a diagonal angle, so, in imitation, I made the 4m descent to join them at the mouth of a low canal, quickly followed by Sandy.

There was some indecision here, as we formulated plans for how to continue, weighing up the desire to explore further with our coldness, the unpleasant prospect of the canal, the awareness that the way out would be strenuous and the likely slow progress of us as a group of seven. The decision was in part made for us when Will, after several attempts, failed to find the way through the rift (I realised here just what an advantage it had been to watch someone else go first!), so we swapped a Sandy (who didn’t fancy the canal) for an Andy H (who did) and the four of us continued through the cave, while Sandy, Sarah and Will began the return to the surface.

As it turned out we didn’t get much further. The canal, surprisingly, proved the most interesting feature of this section of the cave, with a thin floor of rock which intermittently gave way to hip-deep pools of water and then reappeared exactly at the level of the water, like broken sheets of ice. However, the pitch it led to was unremarkable, muddy, and had apparently only one spit, hidden a foot and a half down the wall beneath our feet, which it took us well over 10 minutes to find. Almost to the bottom I discovered the rope was too short, and so it was there – dangling off a single spit and a lump of calcite, while my chilly comrades shouted down from the top of the pitch – that I learned to make my first knot pass. This all took so much time that by the time I reached the bottom it was time to turn around.

Tired and cold, I found myself facing the prospect of the 4m rift with shaking arms and legs and the grim realisation that the climb up was going to be much harder than the descent. The walls were damp and smooth and so close that secure wedging with the knees and back was impossible. Beyond the half-way point there were really no hand or footholds and the physical strength to make a wedge out of my elbows was, by that stage, beyond me. Eventually, after slipping down to the same point several times, and a great deal of whimpering, I was indebted to Andy H’s shoulder from below and Mark’s arm from above. I was doubly impressed with the two following for not only making it up unaided but somehow managing to bring the tacklesacks up too!

With the combination of tiredness and gravity, the way up and out proved far more strenuous than the way down, and I progressed through the cave using an advanced technique made up of diving, rolling, lurching, flopping and squeaking.

But what an adventure – and such a sense of triumph walking back along Fountains Fell, golden and glorious in the summer evening!

Hopefully one day I’ll return and reach the bottom, but I will certainly remember, and would advise anyone else, only to attempt the rift descent if confident in your – or your team’s – strength to get you out again...