Valley Entrance High Traverse

Sunday September 14th 2025

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

let me begin by saying that valley entrance is now my favourite cave, and the roof traverse is quite possibly my favourite thing ever.

the day began (for me) at 8am, against my will, staring at the bunk above me and regretting the late night before - talks of cave began as soon as i got down the stairs and soon when everyone was eating breakfast we decided on doing what had been loosely planned the day before - valley entrance roof traverse (dun dun duuuun). completely out of the loop as always, i went after having one glance at the topo and some vague googling for reports on the trip. it turned out we were off to kingsdale which immediately filled me with dread for a horrid walk to the entrance (the walk ended up being fantastic and short though which is always great).

we got changed swiftly (not), as per usual, in the rain. the entrance was a sick plastic tunnel and the entrance series was full of beautiful features, deep cold water, and stoop walking. i already decided after the 3rd chamber that this was the best cave ever and was telling erika (who was behind me) over and over again.

at the start of the traverse line we heard the distant sound of cavers singing, echoing around the streamway indistinctively. this gave me an idea... since the entire trip was one big rigged traverse we were all reasonably close together and it was pretty slow going at times, this allowed us to really take in the lovely features of the cave and gave us a chance to fill some time.

i began my amazing plan by asking erika which early Taylor Swift songs she knew (as those are unfortunately the only songs in my repertoire). here is a non-exhaustive list of all the Taylor Swift songs we vaguely remembered and scream shouted out in the cave:

- 22
- shake it off
- red
- our song
- fearless (one line)
- love story (over 8 times, but we got all the lyrics right in the end)
- bad blood
- picture to burn
- all too well (10 minute version, most of it was erika but me and flynn chimed in with the "aaalll toooo wellll's")
- we are never getting back together
- mean
- exile
- evermore
- you belong with me (there was a lot of screaming in this one)
- welcome to new york
- teardrops on my guitar
- i knew you were trouble

this lasted us most of the way there and back, we didnt even stop when doing out first ever umbrella in an actual cave. there was a brief interlude as we scrounged together every personal crab on our harnesses as an attempt to reach the end the the traverse (i contributed 1 :D)
when we realised an encore was required we additionally sung these songs as a trio with flynn:


- dumb ways to die
- i will walk 500 miles
- the harvest festival song
- hes got the whole world in his hands
- leavers song
- give me oil in my lamp

after the singing was over and we all were losing our voices we magically had made it to the end of the traverse back.
we then began playing with the small stream of water coming from the entrance series. i would hold it back and build up the flood and then when i released it erika had to protect arendelle from the flood like in frozen 2 (we watched it the night before).

entertainment over (and deriggers back on solid ground) we made our way out of the cave, once again i thoroughly enjoyed the series of wades and caverns and we stopped for a few pictures too. once out in the sunshine (just kidding, it was about to rain again) i accidentally hit will in the face with a flying crab while picking up a tacklesack.

and that concludes the best cave day ever.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ymmqYlS0vGmmqTOvH7eZr?si=TooDmaUhR9W4NW8O2CGRmg&pi=9zkWDjiYTV
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(a Spotify playlist of all the songs)