Valley Entrance High Traverse

Sunday September 14th 2025

Members present: Asher Goodwin,  Erika Lang,  Flynn Robertson,  Sophie Brazil,  Will Barlow

The valley entrance high traverse was something that I had been thinking about for quite a while. A video from Inglesport published a few months ago of this route in wet conditions had sparked interest from a few people about it. A very wet Craven weekend seemed like the perfect opportunity to do it. Information on the route is very hard to come by, however I did manage to find a topo, which suggested that 125m of rope and 31 crabs should do it (it didn’t).

Once breakfast was done, Sophie and I headed to the tackle store to pack some rope. We took a 80m, 47m, and 30m (rigging in that order) and every single crab we brought on the weekend (55), thinking that that might be overkill. Once two bags had been packed we loaded up the car, dealt with callout, and got in the car and drove to Kingsdale for the second time this weekend. The instant we began to get changed, the rain typical for this weekend began, however it proved to be not too bad. We watched another group enter Valley Entrance whilst changing, thinking on a wet weekend it might prove to be a popular destination for desperate cavers, just as Sell Gill was the previous day.

The roof tunnel was quite wet, thigh high water cleaned our wellies before the main event. During the walk/wade, I found a crab on the floor, thinking it might belong to the group in front of us. I took it with me with the intention of reuniting it with our suspected owner. 5-10mins of walking later, the end of the tunnel was reached. Quite nicely, the group in front of us did not share our plan of rigging the traverse, so we had it all to ourselves.

I attached a solid 30 crabs to my harness, and began rigging. The first few anchors are relatively free-hanging, but soon progress to slightly more solid ground. A couple of large shelves protected by a long traverse line provide a brief interlude to the slightly more technical sections. The traverse is very cool, looking back and seeing a traverse line as far as I can see, and the 4 behind me hanging above the streamway, definitely a different take on the Kingsdale classic. However, it just keeps on going. Those that know me know that I am a little bit of an SRT enthusiast, so I was entirely in my element here. Eventually the end of the first rope (80m) was reached. Once I had ended that rope with a rethreaded fig 8 on the next anchor and Sophie passed me the next bag, the other group appeared walking back though the streamway below us. Sophie called out to ask them about the crab I had found, it turned out that one of them had lost it. I attached it to the start of the next rope and lowered it down to its owner, mission accomplished.

The next rope was the 47m. The rigging continued, but now made even more vibey by some distant Taylor Swift singing. Some number of anchors later, we reached the infamous wire traverse. It isn’t long, probably only 2-3 metres, but none of us possessed a steel pulley. There were a couple of in-situ steel maillons. One of them was very worn, so I chose not to use it at all. The other looked quite good, so I put my short cow’s tail on that, and put my long onto a steel crab of my own. I chose to pass the wire by throwing my legs over the wire, and “walking” across it, rather than drag myself along on the steel crabs. This went fine, however, as to not make everyone else do the same thing. I rigged an umbrella (a real umbrella, in a real cave!!). However, the issue now is that I only had 1 crab left. I had made it though 54 getting past the wire traverse! I looked ahead and saw anchors as far as I could see. Relaying this information to Sophie, they began gathering up spare crabs from everyone. I managed to gather 3 crabs from my own kit, so with an additional 8 crabs in hand, I continued rigging. Up until here, all the anchors had been resin anchors (with the exception of one through bolt just before the wire). However, after the wire only a couple of resin anchors remain before transitioning entirely to through bolts. The height of the chamber lowers quite a bit in this section, and the traverse flattens off, so the traverse line becomes less and less necessary, and the anchors become really quite far apart to reflect this. Despite this they continued, so I did too. The 47m rope soon ended, so I began using the final 30m rope.

The dwindling number of crabs on my harness soon reached 0. Looking round the corner, the anchors continued, but we had no choice but to stop. A total of 63 crabs were used (plus two anchors that were rethreaded due to changing ropes), meaning we were a total of 65 anchors from the start (putting battle-axe traverse to shame). And who knows how much further it goes (the topo I had found certainly didn’t). After some brief conversation of how cool of an experience this was, we turned around.

Sophie derigged on the way out, with me being just in front to help where I could (i.e. take the bag when they swapped over). The Taylor Swift now echoing from in front, we made it back out in good time. When the traverse opened up to the large shelves mentioned earlier, I took the bag and packed the rope in front of Sophie, which worked quite well and proved to be a rather efficient method. Now that our legs had just finished drying off, we waded back though the roof tunnel to the entrance, concluding what was an incredible experience. The goal now is to go back with even more crabs, and probably a bit more rope, and see where the anchors take us.

A must do for any traversing/SRT enthusiast.