Bogg Hall Cave The Kinda Successful Trip

Wednesday May 21st 2025

Members present: Alfie Exall,  Asher Goodwin,  Dylan Kocher,  Freya Moran,  James Goldberg,  Max Kellermann-stunt,  Sophie Brazil

A couple of fateful weeks ago Dylan put an open invite out in the group chat for an evening trip to Bogg Hall to take advantage of the dry weather. As an eager and slightly stupid caver I immediately signed up without doing any research. I was informed that this cave was a 'wetsuit kind of cave' and I took this as a great chance to use my new-ish cave wetsuit; only to realise halfway there that my lovely wetsuit was only 2 millimetres, and I am a very cold person (flashbacks to having to get Freya to take off my jammers at the top of Lancs when I couldn't).

Bogg Hall begins with a very muddy slip and slide down to join the diving entrance where we met up with Mac cave diving - from there we admired the tree roots hanging from the ceiling showing how close we were to the surface. We made it maybe 5 minutes in and gathered in a small room with some very loose boulders coincidentally right above my head - from there we had a few options on how to go on. Nobody really knew the easiest route and we had only one survey that was not in my hands, so I made the fantastic decision to go on ahead and explore. There was an incredibly tight squeeze over a boulder leading to crossroads where somehow each path looked shitter than the last. Trying the least shit route I continued until the airspace got low and I could barely fit my shoulders, and deemed it the wrong way (surprisingly this ended up being the right way in the end). By this point everyone had started following me so the complicated process of backing up began. I took a different route out hoping it would lead back to the main room, which luckily it did, however managed to tear a large hole in my already thin wetsuit doing a squeeze. A few more attempts at finding the correct way led to me and 2 others being reluctant to continue.

Cue the shivering beginning. Still only 5 minutes from the entrance, I was shaking so much I couldn't think and sadly decided I had to turn back.
Somehow I still enjoyed the trip and am planning to come back with a thicker wetsuit and someone who knows where theyre going!