Ogof Ffynnon Ddu 2 (top) Fresher's Prokofiev

Thursday April 2nd 2026

Members present: Ben Wellington,  Charlie Wookey,  Tyler Hudson

To give a bit of context, this trip was dreamed up at a much too early hour of the morning, after all the other trip leaders abandoned us to our own devices. While Tyler and I were looking at the Big OFD, we noticed a small group of passages called the Prokofiev Series at the top right of OFD II, and decided it'd be fun to go and have a look the following day. Ben had no input on this whatsoever, as he had been asleep for the last 6 hours and would be for another 9 yet.

The next morning, having done a bit of research into what the Prokofiev Series was, we changed our plans slightly. The entrance to the passages is simply labelled as a traverse on the survey, but we had heard it was a rather nasty one - and as this was the day that Alfie, Elliot, and Viki were doing the 3 Traverses, we didn't fancy doing our own horrible one. At this point I also discovered that not only had Tyler not been to the Frozen River before, he had also been passed the legendary Shatty Pills twice and NOT NOTICED IT. Thus the plan was amended to fix these travesties, with me hoping to leave reasonably quickly.

What then proceeded was a quantity of faff only rivalled by the previous day. Our first ETA was 5pm, hopefully leaving around 12pm due a late rise. Both me and Tyler managed to get changed in a fairly faffless manner, but Ben had managed to sit on the bench for about 15 minutes doing absolutely nothing, watching us get changed. He soon started getting changed albeit gradually and with many attempts at stalling. We left to sign out the key and do the callout, hoping to leave once we returned. Upon entering the changing room we found Benjamin halfway through putting on the first of his wetsocks. This did not go down well. Following a great deal of "Lock the fuck in!", we simply had to leave the room or else risk a cardiac event. Once he eventually emerged, we changed our callout for an hour later and set off at a rather hasty pace up the hill, getting into the cave at 1:00, which was admittedly not as bad as we were expecting. A quick run down down to Gnome Passage was only interrupted by me briefly getting lost in the Brickyard (somehow), before we entered Edwards Shortcut. After the slippery climb and a short detour to see some crystal pools courtesy of Ben, we started the traverse which I had been bigging up since we entered the cave. It turned out to be a breeze, as all of us were of a decent enough size that it wasn't a concern. Tyler took the opportunity to reming how awful the 3 Traverses were. Having then continued on to the entrance to the Frozen River Ben tried his hardest to throw himself down a death pit, much to my horror. Once we were actually in the Frozen River suitable ogling took place, as well as a few photos. We then made for Shatty Pills, via the ladder and very impressive crystal pool.

It's hard to describe Tylers feelings on the pillar. "Meh" would probably be the best summary, although it did seem to grow on him as we sat there, having our snack and discussing our old teachers for some reason (did you know Tyler went to the 7th best secondary school in the country?). After making very sure that he had noticed the massive fucking shattered pillar this time, we headed off down Selenite Passage to Presidents Leap, then Salubrious Passage. It was here where we tried a new caving strategy that we had been discussing as we caved. The Xylel-Pfftt Caving Technique (XPCT) is simply staying as high as possible and traversing even when it is utterly silly to do so, employed here along the majority of Salubrious. Once reaching where the passage up to the Corkscrew diverges, we entered new passage for the first time.

We took a left, up the climbs to Arête Chamber. These weren't too bad, but I don't think Tyler was a fan as he "roly-polyed" up one. Arête was impressive, but we quickly made for Bagpipe Chamber with Tyler in the lead. We made good time through the narrow streamways, avoiding the helictites in the upper portions, coming at last to Timo's Table. This felt like quite a big thing, as not only was it the first time we had navigated entirely alone, we had also not been to any of the passages before. Being able to fairly confidently navigate a cave as confusing as OFD is quite cool. Following the consumption of snacks and a quick threesome on the table, Tyler headed for the turn off to Prokofiev but turned back as he heard voices and didn't want to be alone with the cave gremlins. These cave gremlins in fact turned out to be the party returning from the 3 Traverses, alive!!! Much hugging then ensued, and an account of how underwhelming and chill the traverses were (Warning:they're still pretty high up though, just not technically difficult). We then left them to their own threesome, and to have a gander at our own horrible traverse. Following some "tight squeezy bullshit" we soon came to the splitting point of the Prokofiev Series.

However. Having looked at some photos of the actual traverse, and the squeeze we were meant to have done, I have come to the conclusion that we actually went somewhere entirely different and never saw the traverse we were aiming for. Guess you got baited. Despite that, we did find something equally as horrifying. Entering a sandy chamber, we noticed a small crawl at ground level, and assumed it was the entrance to the traverse so Tyler went in to have a look. He quickly came out, and I had a look. The crawl was rather loose, sandy, and quickly sloped downwards. It lead to a rather sheer drop into a very echoey, rather wide chasm that had the look of a traverse, and no visible bottom. This was a bit of a surprise and definitely not a pleasant one. A point to also make here is just how isolated we all felt in these passages, a feeling I have never felt in any other bit of OFD. There really is so little traffic here that it makes the passages almost eerie in nature. Benjamin then took a look, and we came to the agreement that maybe it actually wouldn't be too bad and we could definitely do it next time. A quick selfie ensued, and then Ben led the way back through the lovely open passages to Bagpipe Chamber, Arête Chamber, and up the Corkscrew. Luckily not getting lost this time, we exited the cave at almost exactly half five, giving us plenty of time to meander back from a very fun exploration trip to Viki's phenomenal risotto.