King Pot

Saturday June 25th 2022

Members present: Becca Hay,  Joshua Young,  Max Kellermann-stunt

Just a quick report with some useful info for future trips. We used the Black Book description. Weather was dry, and water levels were low. Entrance was relatively easy to find, it’s the shakehole without a tree in.

For rigging, the rope lengths were all fine. We did not need to use a single sling, the only deviation (Elizabeth pitch) has some in situ tat that just needed a krab. The traverse line was still in-situ. The whole cave is now equipped with resin anchors except one pitch where they were already in situ, so no need to bring spits. Several pitch heads tend to be a little exposed, only having the two anchors for the y-hang but nothing to protect the approach. However, there were always plenty of footholds etc which made it relatively easy to rig.

The only navigation issue we had was finding the way from Jane’s pitch to the main drain. From the four-ways junction we followed the water into a wet, gravelly hands-and-knees crawl which never ended, which did not match the description. Due to time and energy reasons, we did not spend extra time finding the correct way.

We removed most of our srt kit other than harnesses (for hauling bags) between the second pitch and Emma’s pitch, and this worked well.

Tacklesacks were an absolute bastard in the T-piece. They love to fall down the rift and not come back up. I found the tactic was to push the bag ahead, finding stable places for it including bridging sideways across the gap. We split gear between two bags. This meant they were a manageable weight, and if they did slip down the rift the contents could be rearranged to allow them back up. I have seen suggestions that a single, full bag would be better, but I believe this would still fall in the rift and just be heavier and more awkward to manoeuvre.