Marilyn Pot - Small Mammal Pot

Tuesday August 17th 2021

Members present: Jean-luc Heath,  Joshua Young,  Rosie Marshall

(…continued from previous trip.) It was now getting on for about 4 in the afternoon. We'd planned to go down Hurnel Moss, but this plan was scuppered when we were informed it had been derigged the previous day. Not to be discouraged, we quickly came up with a plan to go from Marilyn to Small Mammal. There was some trepidation at the entrance, with Chris worried about difficulty, and Jean-Luc keen to get home at a decent time. However, we eventually, started heading down. Unfortunately, luck decided to intervene as I heard Chris's voice echoing down the first pitch... "you don't happen to have a spare 18650 do you?" Alas, that was it for Chris, who headed down to wait at the car, insisting that we should continue without him.

The descent was uneventful, eventually reaching the marvellous cascading streamway leading to the final pitch. Here we waited for a CPC group to pass, before dropping down and finding ourselves in Hensler's Master cave. After briefly scouting out the routes, we realised we should be heading upstream and were soon dragging ourselves through the cobbles of Hensler's New Crawl. At this point we began feeling slightly sorry, but mostly very impressed with Rosie, who was not only smashing through it without kneepads, but who had previously walked all the way up the hill carrying her wellies due to blisters. Before long, we were shooting up Bar Pot and into the crawls towards Small Mammal. This crawl was much lower and longer than I had remembered, which didn't inspire confidence from the others that I knew where to go. This suspicion was confirmed when I found myself at a dead end, wondering if it had already been derigged! After retracing my steps, I quickly found the rope, and we made our triumphant return to the surface at around 18:30. Now I felt like I'd been caving!

Heading down, we continued to marvel at Rosie's ability to navigate rough terrain in only wetsocks, eventually meeting up with Chris and heading for a celebratory meal at Reyman's. A classic YUCPC trip, it felt good to be back!