Titan Shaft - JH Over-Engine Mine

Sunday April 19th 2026

Members present: Abbie Heathcote,  Elliot Rushton,  Erika Lang,  Sophie Brazil,  Tyler Hudson

As a fair warning, I have a lot to say... so I've very thoughtfully split this into two parts, so you can have a little break or a cup of tea or something in between (for strength).

Part 1: Descending Titan and the Connection.

The day began with relative efficiency: I wandered over to the hut for breakfast, checked with Sophie that the trip plan was still running smoothly and settled down to await the arrival of Rosie and Chris (joining us from York for a day trip, bringing the JH ropes and some thoughtfully selected tacklesacks to pack them in, lovely!)

It was something like 10:30am when they arrived, and we had a quick five minutes of hellos etc. I was mostly very excited to tell Rosie that just two nights before I had rigged Titan on a midnight bounce of the shaft with Will (I had to then crush her delight by adding that we had also de-rigged it, so someone else could have a stab at rigging it today for the exchange).

Around 10:45am we got ourselves together and headed out. James and Will benevolently provided lifts to the Titan parking spot, while Chris would drive his own team up to Rowter Farm. As we left the hut, Will asked if I had the Titan key (to nobody’s surprise it had been forgotten for the second time this weekend, but thankfully Will had picked it up for us). I jokingly asked Sophie if they had it, to which they replied “wait, we need a key for Titan??” I digress.

Before driving off I caught up with Rosie to fill her in on where I would leave the Titan key, along with the padlock and metal stopper for the hatch; one of the rungs just inside the hatch is the perfect size for the last one down to wedge it in, just don’t drop it down the pitch. I also sent parking and cave entrance coordinates to Erika, as neither she nor anyone being given a lift by James had any idea where to aim for. A bit of amusement.

At the parking spot we had a somewhat efficient change (well, I did) while Will hung out with us to wave us off. We took a before picture with the intention of getting an after one too, oh how optimistic we were.

Soon we were off, we jumped the gate and followed the wall until the dip of Cave Dale, then I led us with staggering confidence and swagger straight to the entrance hatch up the slope. I was incredibly proud of myself for this, but really I’ve been there enough times that it would be a bit embarrassing if I’d missed it. The weather was lovely, and with the sun shining down on us we were soon all gathered at the hatch. I spent a lot of time sitting by the hatch over the summer, thinking about the incredible shaft that was just meters below. It's a beautiful spot, even better when a plan to actually descend Titan has been made.

Erika had no problem reaching through the slot and unlocking the hatch (Will must just have massive hands that make it hard) and heaved it open. Sophie confidently said the red bag had the entrance rope and so with a bit of moral support Erika commenced the rig. It’s something like 45m down the entrance shaft and it truly is a spectacular feat of engineering, one by one I waved the others off and enjoyed laying around in the sun a while waiting for my turn. I offered Elliot some words of wisdom for his descent, and then following his rope free I clipped in my own cowstails and rigged my simple.

Lowering myself down was a lot less scary than the first time I did it last year, which was pretty cool. I then faced the task of carefully slotting the metal stopper, padlock and key in the ladder rung without dropping it (achieved!) and then the rather more difficult task of closing the hatch.

It’s a huge sliding metal door that is very heavy and stiff and very hard to shift from the inside. I tried a few methods, having learned from my midnight escapade where I had been first up and therefore needed to open it alone (with 109m of rope dangling beneath me and very much weighing me down). The best strategy was a high foot against the opposite wall of the shaft, and another uncomfortably high on a rung and my head braced against the metal bar that runs across the shaft. At first it moved just centimetres at a time but eventually I got enough momentum to heave it closed with a few yanks. Very pleased with my competency I flicked my light on, tested my descender (Asher!) and descended to join the others. I did a chunk of the descent with my light off for fun, to see if I could work out what level of the shaft I was at in the dark: very fun. But of course I didn’t entirely resist looking around me.

On the ground I did a cursory poking my head round to say hello to the dig, before wading through the water to the others. Erika had already begun her descent but I greeted the others before slinking into the darkness away from the window.

Sophie passed me their rescue kit as I would be at the back (what the hell I was going to do with it without an additional rope, I had no idea - down prussick Titan Shaft?? So I mulled on this silently while I watched the others descend). I passed Elliot my emergency whistle just in case, resolving that I would just use my big girl voice should I need any help myself.

Eventually it was just myself and Elliot left at the pitch head, and I settled in for a long wait. I periodically checked my watch, expecting the rigging to take a little while; but then 20 minutes, 45minutes, 1 hour passed and there had been no communication from below. I was starting to get a little concerned. But then raucous echoes of laughter reverberated around the shaft, it seemed that whatever the delay was the three below us were in high spirits. I tried not to dwell too much.

A bit more time passed and Elliot became a little concerned too, I did my best to assure him it was probably just classic YUCPC faff and nothing scary… I think he believed me. I tried to keep us entertained by suggesting a round of the alphabet cave game (between you, alternate naming a cave beginning with ABCD etc) but this quickly just became me whispering caves alphabetically to myself to keep my mind off the cold and the wait.

Alum, Boxhead, Crackpot, Diccan…

I got through the whole alphabet (maybe not U, X and Z) and began again.

Aquamole, Bogg Hall, Convenience, Deathshead…

Still we could just hear laughter echoing from below.

Elliot went off for a wander, while I took a seat at the window ledge; one of my favourite places to perch ever. It’s a beautiful feeling, to be just a tiny person on the edge of something so massive and beautiful, I love it.

More importantly it took my mind off the delay, Elliot and I had been there for well over an hour now.

That’s when I noticed the rope on the pitch moving, and heard distinct prussicking sounds. I cautiously peered over the edge to see Sophie rapidly prussiking towards the pitch head.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Are you all coming back?”

I would’ve been a quite sad if we had turned around (accepting and understanding, but sad all the same) but thankfully this wasn’t the case.
Sophie explained that it was just them coming up, and passed me the bag they’d hauled up as they caught their breath.

It transpired that there had been a bit of a mix up with the ropes: the rope we had used for the entrance pitch should have been the third rope used, not the first. Erika had descended from the Event Horizon to find herself alarmingly close to the stopper knot of the 52m rope, speedily locked off, completed a mid-rope changeover and prussicked back to the Event Horizon.

** somewhere 70m below me **

Tyler and Sophie are giggling at the Event Horizon, talking about zebras and the silly faff that ensued from trying to fix Tyler’s sketchy helmet.
Meanwhile Erika was ferociously prussicking back up her too short rope, listening to the wild cackles above her.

“I’ll give them something to laugh about,” she seethed, continuing her rapid prussicking.

So Erika reappears at the Event Horizon…

“Erika?” They’re confused at her reappearance.

“I. Have. The. Wrong. Rope,” she yells.

… Stares and disbelief from Tyler and Sophie.

“What?”

“I. Have. The. 52!”

Their laughter echoes, I can hear it from way above but have no clue what’s going on.

For all I know they’re just having a merry old time, how wrong I was.

** returning from somewhere 70m below me **

The rope situation was not ideal. In fact, significantly not ideal.

Maybe we shouldn’t all have blindly trusted Sophie’s confident claim that the entrance rope was in the red bag, maybe someone should have actually checked the tag on the rope.

Alas, nobody had and here we were.

So we return to Sophie, having prussicked back up to me at the window.

They briefed me on the plan: Sophie would bomb it up the entrance pitch with the rope they had, de-rig, chuck the rope down to me, I would speed pack it while Sophie re-rigged the entrance with the correct rope. I would then hastily descend from the window to pass the correct rope to Erika at the Event Horizon, where she and Tyler were waiting for me.

Now, was it a bit sketchy that Sophie de-rigged the entrance before rigging it with the correct rope… yes. It was a good job Sophie didn’t spontaneously combust up at the hatch, because we would have been trapped. No rope to exit Titan, no rope to get to the bottom of the shaft to exit through JH (would Chris and Rosie have scaled the shaft to rescue us? I’ll choose to think so… the alternative would have been not great). But! Sophie lived to safely re-rig the entrance, not that I would have known, I had done the most efficient rope packing of my life and commenced my descent to the ledge.

I left Sophie’s rescue kit and my emergency whistle with Elliot at the pitch head, telling him to wait for Sophie before following me down the pitch… and off I went.

The drama of this mix up should not overshadow the majestic descent that is Titan Shaft. It is so incredibly pretty and I think the scale of the shaft makes you forget that. When descending you should make sure to look around and appreciate the pretties, it’s really worth it.
As I admired the shaft, the two lights below me got gradually bigger and clearer until I reached the ledge and the company of the companions that I hadn’t seen in TWO HOURS.

It had been a very long time, and I was ready to get moving.

We exchanged pleasantries, and I heard their side of the story as I passed Erika the bag and she scurried down to rig the final hang.
I told Tyler about the alphabet cave game and we played our own little round of it.

Alderly Edge Mines, Black Shiver, Carlswark Cavern, Dan yr Ogof…

Then Erika was off, braving the scary rope rub (feet against the wall for going over the edge), and Tyler soon followed - “Oh God, now I have to do the bit even Will is scared of!” - with no issues at all.

As I began my own descent I was at the ledge alone, Elliot and Sophie 70m above and Tyler and Erika 60m below; strangely I wasn’t scared by this, in fact it was with a calm sense of composure that I descended to the free hanging rebelay. Hanging from my cowstails I breathed a sigh of relief as the rub ended and took a moment to look around me, spectacular.

I then rigged my descender and began the second descent of the shaft.

I greeted the two at the bottom, called rope free and began immediately scrabbling around to see if I could spot any Blue John. After living in Castleton for two years I’m pretty good at spotting it and had a lovely time placing tiny chunks on a big rock.

Erika was getting chilly so we did the welly dance to keep warm (I’m rubbish but her and Tyler are very good), I took myself off to perch on a rock and wait for another intrepid caver to join us.

By the time Elliot and Sophie arrived at the bottom of the pitch it was 5pm. That’s right, over 4 hours since the trip had begun, because Erika had begun rigging well before 1pm. All good fun though!

Just as Sophie touched the ground, we saw a light emerging from underneath a slab of rock.

It was Chris.

The JH team had set off from the hut after us, they had rigged all of JH, made it through the connection and emerged at the bottom of Titan Shaft before the 5 of us had even made it down - this boded well.

My friend Sarah says that this is where we should have turned around and called it a day, but dear reader we were far too committed. Famously, we’re cavers, and we’re going to keep on caving, no matter what Mama (or our concerned friends) say.

We greeted Chris, Rosie, Jed, Joe and Ben; we waited until all five were assembled to relay our silly tale. They were suitably confused as to why we hadn’t already made our way through the connection, and agreed that we had been a little silly. Golden Doyle awards were subsequently given to Sophie and Erika for the spectacular feat of mixing up the ropes.

We asked about the seemingly flawless JH - Titan end of the exchange and Rosie said with a giggle that all had been well, good for them! Soon we left the other team to prepare for their own ascents.

Our own team had lost enough time and so began to crack on with the next leg of the trip: the connection. The others went first, while I filled Rosie in on some of the rigging details of Titan (how many bags and where etc). I then waved the JH - Titan team goodbye and followed on through the crawl.

It’s a short crawl under a large slab of rock which takes you down to a small chamber. There’s then a semi-tight handlined climb down (Sophie and I reminisced about Skinny Legend) and then another short crawl brings you out in Macca Pacca’s lair (named this by us for the stack of pebbles we found there). We joked that emerging into this chamber was a re-birth of sorts (I think this was mid-trip delirium) and thus issued each other new names of: Eriksha, Sophred, Abbstar, Elinator, Tylerion. What a team!

We pushed on, shortly arriving at some pretty mud foundations. This didn’t much impress the freshers but Erika and I thought they were awesome.

A sharp left here through a stretch of shin deep water takes you to the bottom of a series of ladder climbs, each getting progressively more vertical and exposed - nothing too unstable though. People should keep well back from the bottom of the ladder as others ascend, as they go round a bit of a corner and things could easily tumble down. (I totally followed my own advice here).

Straight ahead is a traverse lined Big Hole. Turning back on yourself is a series of high level rotten wooden stemples that lead… somewhere. Sophie was totally ready to head off up there (I think mistaking this for Stemple Highway) until Erika suggesting looking at the way that wouldn’t lead to certain death. Because I seriously doubt those stemples would have held much weight at all.

I was at the back, and when I reached the top of the final ladder, Sophie was on the other side of the straight ahead Big Hole with Tyler and Elliot, while Erika was waiting for me by the ladder. Upon assessing the in-situ traverse line it was decided that it alone shouldn’t be trusted, so at either side Sophie and Erika clipped a cowstail through the rope and bolt (bypassing the rusty sketchy way too worn maillons) for some extra security. Still, I wouldn’t advise weighting the rope at all if you can avoid it. It’s a slightly awkward stretched out shuffle of a traverse above the ominous drop, but good fun really. Erika took one for the team by traversing after me without the cowstail-in-bolt additional protection.

Immediately after is another Big Hole.

I bypassed the freshers to assess what was going on (mostly to make some space for Erika to get off the traverse line). It gets muddy and slippy and it’s tempting to go low down a slope but you should stay high and clipped into another traverse line.

There’s a metal stemple on your left for a foot and you then make your way over (I had to do some bracing and shuffling as I’m not as tall as the others) to a ledge where another ladder climb commences. I went over first, as a sacrifice, and immediately clocked the incredibly worn and rusty maillon holding up the traverse line; I put a cowstail in the bolt at my side, and Sophie put a crab in the other end as the others gradually made their way over.

Before Sophie crossed over they looked back, to see that Big Hole 1 was literally just behind us, like barely 1m behind us and we had actually made zero progress since. Our time was really slipping away, but in good spirits we just laughed this off.

Erika then headed up the unstable ladder first - not attached to anything on the left side, which is of course near a drop, weighting the more reliable right side is a good strategy. I held the ladder steady for the others and then did my best not to die as I followed them up. You have to shuffle to another ladder a few metres up, and there’s a knotted hand line to then help you up and over a slightly awkward and exposed climb to some higher level passage on your right. We carried on walking for a few moments before Erika and Sophie recognised the start of the crawl that would take us to Cow Arse Worms.

Advantage: close to JH (a famously tremendous place).

Disadvantage: would be muddy, wet, squelchy, disgusting and cover us in goop.

We paused for a quick snack break, tucked hair up into our buffs and proceeded. The order became Erika, me, Elliot, Tyler, Sophie as Sophie was faffing and we needed to keep moving.

We made it through a wet crawl then the fake out CAW (vegan CAW - the baby version of the real thing) then through the gravelly bit to the real thing. Erika and I sang some Alessi Rose and Taylor Swift to keep morale high and our minds off the goop and celebrated when we spied the sandbags that signify you’re almost at the bottom of JH. So at the sandbags you emerge from the crawl to a short ladder to the JH/Titan/Peak threeway connection chamber.

Wasting zero time, I sped up the slope to the hatch which reveals a series of ladder climbs to the Peak streamway - our plan (my genius idea) was to wash off the excess mud to do as little damage to the ropes as possible. The hatch was a pain to open, and I empathised with Paulina’s struggle the last time I was there. It kind of has to fold back on itself to open as a lip of rock is in the way otherwise, but is incredibly stiff to move which makes that tricky. Ultimately I wrenched the hatch about a third open, turned to Erika and declared:

“Well, it’ll just have to be a squeeze, we don’t have time for this.”

With a shimmy, hope and a dream I squeezed myself through the gap and swung down to grab the ladder. Then down maybe 5 more to reach a little crawl to the streamway. The others followed me down the ladders and washed themselves off with varied levels of enthusiasm. Erika and I committed to the water much more than the others.

Looking at the time, already somehow nearing 7:30pm, we decided to send Erika and Elliot out as a runner team to push our call out from 11pm to midnight. Sophie and I would share the de-rig and Tyler would help us carry out one of the five bags we were lumbered with. With minimal faff the runners scurried off and I shortly followed them back up the hatch to see that Elliot made it up the pitch with no dramas.
Once certain of which of the THREE ropes rigged on JH’s final pitch was ours, he ascended while Sophie, Tyler and I gathered to keep warm and await our own ascents.

Sophie and I chatted a little about going on expo and other interesting things to pass the time. As I was still pretty warm I was happy to hang around till last and start the de-rig. And let me tell you, it was definitely an interesting de-rig.

*** This is your opportunity for a break ***

Part 2: Ascending JH.

*Kicks a tacklesack in despair, incoherent cursing and swearing*

This just about sums up my ascent of JH on Sunday evening. I love Chris and Rosie very much, but it will take a while for me to forgive their selection of tacklesacks for their rigging of JH earlier that day.

The amount of ropes currently in JH make for a monumental faff and generally unpleasant de-rig. Taking note of an unfortunate 3 ropes on the final pitch, I attached the hauling cord of the blue bag to myself and began my ascent. After a little while I stopped to pack some rope: as usual I clipped the bag to my hand jammer, only to find that this tightened the inner drawstring of the bag to the point that it was impossible to actually pack any rope, annoying. But no problem, I wedged the bag between my knees and packed what I could. I then continued prussicking a little more, then paused again for more packing… only to look down and see the monumental clusterfuck of a knot that the three ropes had managed to tangle themselves into below me.

About a third of the way up the pitch, I pushed my frustration aside and pulled up the knot to take a crack and untangling it. Alas, whatever way I pulled or manoeuvred the knot it did not want to come undone, to make it worse the rope I had already packed came tumbling out of the bag… great.

With a fair amount of grumbling and kicking of the useless tacklesack I resigned myself to down-prussicking back to the bottom of the pitch so that I could take a proper look at the knot of doom. A lot of swearing later I was on the ground, took a few moments to detangle the ropes, re-tie our rope to the bag with an indomitable knot, give the bag another kick for good measure and then began ascending once more.
As I continued prussicking (bag braced between knees every 20 steps or so…) it took a lot of effort to prevent the ropes from tangling again, but I managed it… until the pitch head. Somehow they got tangled again, unsurprising really but I was getting properly fed up of it by this point. I greeted Sophred and relayed my sorry tale; with my feet against the wall to reduce the scary rub at this pitch head I set about trying to detangle but it wasn’t to be. In the end I got off the rope, clipped into the traverse line, undid the fig 8 and handed off the useless blue bag to Sophie, so they could pull up the rest of the rope. My god was it a delight to hand that one off.

I commenced the packing of bag number two, which went fairly well (lovely respite). Tyler sped off with the blue bag and I then handed off this lovely uneventful red bag to Sophie after the little traverse line that takes you to the loose balcony. I was reminded about the look and scream of terror that Tyler and Rosie had directed at me the last time I was there (maybe I’d taken out all my protection but I was being safe about it so no harm reallllly).

Sophie packed some rope while I undid knots and extracted some crabs to add to the clusterfuck of metalwork on my harness. Most of the de-rig was expo style, but I tried to do what I could to reduce the chances of Sqwill banging his head against the wall later.

Then a reassuring “Oh God, that’s an interesting hauling cord… I don’t even really know how that’s going to work” from Sophie as they properly registered the stupid yellow fucker that was waiting for me at the bottom of the pitch. I didn’t dare to look for a moment but when I did, I hung my head once again in despair.

But anyway, I had a mine to keep de-rigging. So Sophie sped up the pitch, while I readied for my own ascent. When Sophie passed the rebelay I headed up. At least I could pack the rope as normal with this one, but it was still clunky and annoying. I made it up to the Workshop without too much stressing (though the diggers’ choice to use a triact on the lower devo was… something). I found the climb into the Workshop a lot less annoying time, probably because I put my ego aside and passed my bag up to Sophie (for efficiency). I had gritted my way up last time because I am super tough and hardcore, but I didn't really have time for that today.

With both of our brains a little… unmedicated… between us we’d forgotten to offload any crabs from my harness to either of the first two bags, but agreed that I should probably dispense some into the yellow bag once in the Workshop. However in classic Titan-JH fashion this was where we had agreed to swap the order so that Sophie took over de-rigging. So I had to keep going with the yellow bag anyway, only now it was full of crabs. Ah well.

As I was getting on the pitch one of us said: "What are the odds that Will is pacing anxiously next to the hatch, waiting?" to which the other replied "Almost 100%" - the thought of him panicking spurred us on.

We were racing against call out, so with no time to dilly dally I darted past the selection of old mining equipment in the Workshop to the next pitch.

Bitch Pitch. What a bitch.

If we weren’t on such a tight time constraint I would have been having an excellent time, but this is not an efficient pitch and nor is it an easy ascent so it was taking its toll a little. We were getting alarmingly close to missing call out and I was pretty tired as we’d been underground for over 9 hours at this point. The pitch is narrow and batters your every limb as you ascend - but genuinely good fun if not in a rush.

I got past the first devo, then a re-belay. Then I felt the tacklesack get wedged, delightful… and as I craned my neck to take a look at the situation, disaster struck.

Sophie was at the bottom of the pitch and (for some reason, not yet ascertained) had given the rope a tug: this was the final straw for the shoddy hauling cord and shoddier attachment point of the tacklesack I was hauling. Before I could register what was happening - just about managing a “WATCH OUT!” - the bag detached itself from the cord and plummeted a scary distance to the bottom of the pitch.

Sophie thought I’d fucking died.

I thought the bag had killed Sophie.

Were we murderers????

No. Victims of Chris and Rosie’s silly choices of tacklesacks. You’ll find them SHAMED as Silver Doyles for this crime in the newsletter that followed the weekend.

The tacklesack falling is up there with the scariest moments experienced underground for me (still below Jama za Teglovko at least). But alas, I had no time to stop and cry about that.

After a bit of panicked yelling and assuring each other that we were alive, Sophie waved off my offer of coming back down the pitch to get the bag (we seriously did not have time for that) and agreed to bring it up while they de-rigged Bitch Pitch.

So up I went, past the final devo and re-belays to find Tyler at the pitch head. We talked about how much of a bitch the pitch was, as I hauled myself over the sketchy stemples and wooden beams to some actual solid ground… well as solid as you get in JH.

We already had a runner team pushing our call out to midnight, but Sophie and I agreed it would be wise to send Tyler ahead of us to push it to 1am as the two of us finished the de-rig. It’s straightforward to the entrance pitch and if he had any trouble with the hatch, we wouldn’t be far behind.

So Tyler went on with one bag, I took one from Sophie. Once they were off the pitch we pushed on, the series of climbs pushed us to shuffle the bags so we had one ahead of me, one between us and one with Sophie at the back.

I did a lot of launching and kicking the stupid yellow fucker ahead of me.

“I don’t even care if it falls down a death hole, stupid thing,” I grumbled.

“It deserves it,” agreed Sophie, also fed up with the volume of bags and their annoying qualities. “Can we burn it afterwards?”

“Will would be sad, but honestly I think we should.”

But annoyingly the bag didn’t fall down a death hole, so I lugged it along with me over the flooded holes of woe, up the stupid metal beam climb (somebody PLEASE put some rungs on that thing), along the blissful conveyer passage and eventually to the bottom of the entrance pitch.

The Cartgate level felt like it went on forever, so we both celebrated when we saw the rope. The others were already up.

I took a deep breath, Sophie inhaled a penguin bar.

I began my ascent, putting every last scrap of energy into prussicking. The time was 11:25pm, we thought we had until 1am but still didn’t want to dally.

I was 10m in the air when I realised I’d forgotten to take another bag from Sophie, leaving them with two plus the one they’d be de-rigging the entrance with.

Profuse apologies from me and a fair amount of despair. But Sophie was very chill about it.

“Honestly, that yellow one is worse than these three combined, don’t stress it, I can take three up.”

So wracked with guilt I continued up the pitch. I looked up at the hatch and could see two lights, but got no response to a “Who is that?” so kept prussicking to the re-belay.

Then they called out to us, a man’s voice.

I was anticipating a panicked Will at the hatch, but the voice was very low and it really didn’t sound like him.

“Maybe it’s Chris?” I called to Sophie. “God if it’s him and Rosie up there I’ll feel so bad.”

“Maybe… maybe it’s CRO?” suggested Sophie, prompting some stressed out groaning from both of us.

Then the voice called again, this time it was definitely Will’s voice and I reasoned the second light must have been Tyler just after exiting the shaft.

As I passed the re-belay and called rope free to Sophie, Will momentarily disappeared to fetch his SRT kit from the car in case we needed a hauling rig set up for the bags. Sophie and I had discussed this at the bottom of the pitch but by the time Will had returned with the gear, Sophie had decided to just crack on with hauling them up on their own.

At the hatch, I girth hitched a 120cm sling (the ‘hauling cord’ that had been on the yellow bag before the attachment point failed) to the belay bar and clambered out, the square of scaf bars felt more unstable than last time, and this was also just the efficient thing to do. On the surface I received the gifts of: a big relieved hug from Sqwill, the use of a pack-a-mac, dry gloves and a lot of dried cranberries. All fairly needed. I was informed that Elliot, Erika and Tyler were waiting in the car over at Rowter Farm.

Sophie followed shortly, de-rigging the last pitch and emerging triumphantly having dragged all three bags up. The time was 11:50pm. Which would have been fine… only the call out never got moved to 1am, so we only made it with just 10 minutes to spare - exciting stuff…

It transpired that the runner team had only made it out at 10:50pm themselves, just 10 minutes before our original call out, so it was a bloody good job that we had sent them ahead when we did.

Will alerted everyone that we were all out safe, so they could stop worrying about us. The three of us stumbled our way back to the car for a not too chilly change out of gear. Angel that he is, Will had cooked the leftover garlic bread from last night’s tea at the TSG before he drove to nervously wait by the farm for us at 10pm - devoured gratefully.

After agreeing that Will would first drive myself, Elliot and Erika back to the hut I provided instructions to Tyler and Sophie on how to start making their way to the main road. A speedy drop off at the TSG and Will went back to collect the other two. At the hut we polished off the last of the hot chocolate, consumed copious amounts of bread, crumpets and chocolate spread and packed the last of our belongings. The lovely Erika even provided wet wipes so that me and Tyler could get at some of the mud off our faces - I’d done a classic me and gotten properly cavey. (Doesn't count if you don't end up covered in mud, unless it's Diccan).

I had long missed the last train, and so decided to stay another night at my friends’ house in Castleton. The other 5 set off for York after 1am, and survived a very sleepy drive home.

An excellent trip, if a long one - I’m excited to do it again but with the correct ropes, less faff and the inclusion of the Far Sump Extensions. I fear doing this trip on the Sunday of a TSG weekend may be a little cursed though..: Saturdays only from now on?

***

Bonus Feature, the Cow Arse Worms Sing-a-long playlist:
'Get Around' - Alessi Rose
'First Original Thought' - Alessi Rose
'Getaway Car' - Taylor Swift