Ogof Ffynnon Ddu 2 (top) afternoon northen lights

Monday March 30th 2026

Members present: Alfie Exall,  Erika Lang

Alfie paid me £10 to go to Northern Lights with him :)

It was Monday afternoon and I was enjoying my hot chocolate in the SWCC kitchen after a lovely Top Round that morning, happy to be out of my stinky caving gear and in comfy clothes once again. Then Alfie wandered in, still in his undersuit, and announced that his morning trip had not been quite enough caving for him that day, and he wished to go to Northern Lights. Looking around eagerly, he met each of our blank stares and seemed quite baffled by the lack of volunteers to join him.
"Come on Erika, you know you want to."
"I just changed out of my caving gear, this is like the worst time of the day to ask me."
"How about I pay you £10."
"...fine."

It was pretty vibey, and Alfie only had to push me up like three climbs! And the chute, which I have decided is actually more evil than the climb into Northern Lights. Turns out that climb doesn’t have to take 15 minutes of abs-shredding if you just bring an Alfie with you to stand on the slippy ledge below and shove you up. Much easier than the ordeal I had last year. Anyways, I think I found the real Northern Lights formation in Northern Lights which I didn’t see last year even though it’s huge, and we went up the Northern Inlet which I also hadn’t seen before. We tried the second duck which was awful and not worth it because I couldn’t get up the climb at the end. Alfie managed it and had a quick explore before we both turned around and headed out. I filmed Alfie crawling out of the first duck and upon standing up he spotted a peanut-shaped rock which was pretty cool.