Notts Pot 4 bag, 3 person, 2nd year, 9 hour trip - Adamson’s Route

Friday November 7th 2025

Members present: Abbie Heathcote,  Asher Goodwin,  Will Barlow

Originally planned as a trip to Nick Pot, but an uncertain forecast and need to pack the car a few days before lead to a change to Notts Pot. James suggested trying Adamson’s route, and having already done a Centre/Twilight exchange this seemed like fun. Due to Friday cave associated faff, and the fact that a full Notts trip is not the shortest trip in the world, I thought a 7:30am departure from York would be justified.

The day started with me waking up, eating breakfast number one, packing caving gear into the car, apologising to Asher for the early start, panicking about forgetting things, getting some fuel, picking Abbie up, driving to Skipton Morrisons, eating breakfast number two, eating Asher’s left over fried bread (mistake), buying cheese and dinner, driving to the NPC, dropping stuff off, setting callout, driving to Leck Fell, and finally, caving!

The drive to Skipton was quite misty, in a cool and mysterious way. Whilst at Morrisons, I noticed a birthday headband, this was notable as the main pitch of Adamson’s route is called Birthday Pot. With absolutely zero hesitation, Asher bought it. I also feel it is important to mention that fried bread is the worst thing ever, it initially tastes alright giving you a chance to eat some, then it makes you feel awful. Never get it.

Anyway, the rest of the drive was pretty vibey. Some Taylor Swift accompanied our general excitedness of us 3 second years doing our own fairly big, 4 bag trip. An efficient stop at the NPC to drop off our stuff and set callout followed, before setting off once again.

Leck Fell was really weirdly warm, the car had it at 14°C. The forecast which had spent the last week alternating between nice and sunny, and wet and cold had finally made up its mind. Once changed, and photos had been taken, we set off up the fell. The walk was warm, but not horribly far, and we found the entrance with no difficulties. Asher began rigging the way down. The climb at the bottom had a rope in-situ, so we used that as a handline. Leaving the short rope we had brought for it tied to the bottom. The pitch into 3 ways chamber follows, which Asher did an excellent job of rigging rub free.

Finding the climb up to Adamson’s route was relatively easy, it’s a little exposed so probably worth rigging. Which is quite a challenge without basically free climbing it. At the top a short climb up leads to the next pitch. This pitch is rigged as a y-hang between an anchor and initially slightly dodgy looking jammed block, but upon further inspection it was clear that many ropes/slings had been there previously.

The top of Birthday Pot follows shortly, a weirdly difficult climb round the corner leads to the pitch head, a y-hang down to a single bolt rebelay behind you. This drops into a chamber where the top of the big section of the Birthday Pot is reached. About a 3rd of the way down, a deviation can be rigged from an obvious natural. The natural is just slightly too low to avoid some rub when you’re between the deviation and a wall to position off, which is slightly annoying. Also the deviation requires an awkward length sling. A full length 120cm sling was too long, leading to the rope hanging just a bit too close to the wall mentioned above for my liking. I ended up using a 240cm sling with an adjustable sling hitch to take off some of the length, and girth hitching that to the natural. I felt the girth hitch was useful as the natural is just a spike with an open top. So it would reduce the chance it could be pulled off when someone was ascending. Anyway with that now hanging ok, I descended to the bottom and started to rig the lower part of the pitch. For some reason I was expecting this to just be a short final drop (I had Lost John’s Dome pitch in mind), but it was actually surprisingly big.

Once I got down, I witnessed Asher descend whilst wearing the birthday headband. Which he had worn for the whole of Birthday Pot. We took photos of us all individually wearing it, and a few all together. The excitement was high that we were doing proper caving all by ourselves.

A fairly exposed rift climb to the ceiling leads to the first anchors for the traverse. I began by rigging a short rope down to aid the final section of the climb up to the traverse line. The traverse is quite tight and a bit annoying in places to rig. However, all good fun. The end of the traverse is a tight pitch head, in which I carefully rigged a tri-hang (excellent fun). The only issue with the tri-hang, is that it places the start of the descending rope right in the tight part of the rift. Making it an interesting pitch to get on and off of. Descending this leads to a nice ledge where an ascending traverse line leads to the next rift traverse.

This one begins slightly nicer, but shortly presents its own piece of rigging excitement. Reaching the next anchor involves a fairly significant climb up into a chamber above the rift. This is then shortly followed by the pitch head, which took a good minute of me staring at to figure out how to rig. The issue is that the anchors for the y-hang are really quite far away. The closer one isn’t too bad, but the far one required me to lean forward on one leg a scary distance over the probably 20-30m drop to reach the anchor. I rigged this y-hang quite offset to bring the rope closer to the ledge, allowing easier getting on and off. This was perfectly possible due to the quite open and exposed pitch head. A nice descent, and a deviation from an anchor dropped into a very loud and wet chamber.

Due to the noise, I wasted no time rigging the final pitch, a nice traverse around a big circular hole leading to the anchors for the final drop. A short drop and swing into the final chamber, where the sump is met. Shortly joined by Asher, then Abbie we sat and ate some chocolate, all so happy we made it here ourselves. Some photos were taken with the birthday headband, then we began our journey out.

Not wanting anyone to wait near the bottom of the thundering pitch, we formed a plan to not call rope free until well underway with the big pitch. Asher went first, a few minutes later we heard his double whistle, indicating rope free. Abbie set off next, shortly followed by me. Going up the big pitch was quite fun, a good bit of near waterfall exciting prussiking. Derigging the pitch involved the same one legged big reach as rigging it, followed by some tight rift derigging. The rest of the way out the lower steamway was quite smooth, we regrouped at the bottom of Birthday Pot, enjoyed a sneaky extra bit of chocolate, then began to head back out. Asher and I swapped here, so I headed out first to leave him to derig.

Another pitch later, we all met back up at the top of Birthday Pot. I headed back though the even more annoying corner on the way back, to take one of Asher’s two bags. The next pitch of the jammed block was ascended, and derigged. Whilst waiting for Asher to finish derigging, Abbie and I had a bat fly right in front of us! The way up and out of 3 ways chamber was just as smooth as the rest of the trip. Once we got to the roped climb up, we decided to actually rig it with our rope to allow prussiking out. I climbed up and rigged it backed up to a jammed block. All the bags were passed up so no one had to carry them up.
A final bit of prussiking later, we made it out. Approximately 9 hours after we entered. It was dark, but not too cold. A much quicker walk down the fell, some quick changing, and a drive back to the well populated and very warm NPC concluded the epic trip. The epicness was then continued by eating cheese!