Bar Pot & Camping in Sandy Cavern - 01 Jan 2007

Monday January 1st 2007

Members present: Chris Ward,  Chuck Holder,  Imogen Shepherd,  James Gregory,  Kevin Francis

Spent New Year's underground this year... 'twas great fun, and should provide some great photos of champagne at midnight. Even found some crazy cave ninja down there...

Learnt a few lessons, though, which I'll stick down here so as not to forget them.

* Don't take too much stuff. On a normal caving trip a group of five people take two (maybe three) tacklesacks of gear. This is mostly rope and metalwork to allow you to actually get down the cave. On an overnight trip you obviously need more stuff, but ten tacklesacks plus a binbag full of rollmats was pushing it too far. To keep the amount of stuff down:
o Make sure everyone has small warm sleeping bags that will easily fit into tacklesacks and ideally have an integral waterproof cover.
o Tank up with fluids right up to the point of entering the cave and take minimal fluids with you. Leave some water at the cave exit for rehydrating upon leaving and for the walk back, don't take it with you. Ten litres was far to much to take down.
o Don't take needless additional clothes. We all took an extra undersuit with us to change into, some of us didn't even use them. If you are worried of the cold, a sleeping bag liner will be lighter, smaller and more effective at adding warmth.
o If taking a stereo with you (actually a really great idea...watching James disappear down the main pitch with it slung under him belting out happy hardcore was an experience not soon to be forgotten), make sure it's smaller than the torso of a grown man and doesn't require ten D cells to run.
o Work out what you will definitely need for camp lighting and take little else. Kev's helmet aimed at the camp and personal head lights worked very well, leaving a gas lantern and long burning candle unused.
o Repackage things where necessary. We were all terrified of breaking the bulky bottle of champagne, and leaving the three litre box of wine in its box when it has a much more flexible bag inside was unneccesary.

* Plan in and out times more carefully. We arrived at the cave as most groups would be trying to leave, and as you can only have one person going up or down a pitch at a time this causes problems. Cause of this we had to wait at the entrance for half an hour for one group of five to exit, and at the head of the main pitch for another group. If we had met anyone on our way out in the morning, we probably would have missed our callout.We should of got in before people were leaving, and out before people would be entering.

* Make sure to take a watch with an alarm which can be used. Due to caves being lightless and having unpredictable traffic, there is very little to wake you up in the morning. This can lead to panic as you realise you might not get out in time.

* Cook food in the evening, have cold food in the morning. Trying to cook noodles for breakfast while hurriedly packing up the camp was not a great plan.

* Have something to do in camp other than drink and chat. Obviously I'm not very interesting, or caving is tiring, cos some of us barely made it to midnight. A pack of cards would be more than enough.

Every caving trip is a learning experience, a lot of the fun is trying to work around whatever goes wrong. As you can see by the sizeable list above, this was a *very* fun trip.