Knotlow Cavern - Waterfall Chamber to Four Ways Chamber - 16 Jun 2006

Friday June 16th 2006

Members present: Andrew Vick,  Dominic Galliano,  Gary Douthwaite,  Matt Ewles

Really worth heading down to the Peaks early for (especially as it avoided us being caught up in the seven-seater-saga ;-p)

A rather large 50-60m entrance pitch (I think this is the 210 entrance) leads down to the waterfall chamber, where an apparantly bottomless pool of crystal clear water awaits. You have to swing away from it, as falling in would probably be rather deadly! A passageway leads off one way, within 5m arriving at a hole in the floor, also filled with water. Very eerie, like one of those horror films, you expect a hand to suddenly reach up and grab you. Scary!

The other way is a long coffin level passage, varying between 3-4ft tall, and barely body-width, with water (muddy slurry) up to waist deep. At one point we were walking bent forward at 90 degrees with out face almost in the water. Nasty! We had a fun game of musical people attempting to rearrange everyone when Gary reckoned it was too nasty to proceed (it wasn't), but after probably 100m we reached four-ways chamber, another entrance, which had been rigged before we came down.

A short crawl leads off into a stompy-stompy passage with 1-2ft water. I followed it along for at least 100m and then summoned the others along. We must have stomped at least 500m down the passage, through water, passing various evidence of mining activity. On the right hand side we passed a small chute leading off which we believe to be part of the round trip and certainly warrents a return.

As we had no idea how far this stompy passage would actually go, and we were hungry and had people waiting for us at the campsite, we turned around and called it a day. A tiring prussik out (preparing us for Titan the next day) reached the surface. Gary and I came out the Four Ways Chamber to be greeted by some very inquisitive cows, who wanted to lick me, but then one of them started licking the backup rope at the top of the shaft, so I had to get them away.

As we were changing we learned of Neil losing his keys back in York, and the seven seater breaking down 10 miles short of the campsite. However all was well (eventually) and we settled down to a nice BBQ, confident that there were to be no more cock-ups this weekend...