Jingling Pot - 04 Mar 2007

Sunday March 4th 2007

Members present: Adam Wilkinson,  Adrian Turner,  Chris Ward,  Chuck Holder,  Josh Vale,  Matthew Chubb

I loved this trip far to much... we're thinking of running off to Gretna Green together.

My plan to take Jimothy (my unicycle) with me was vetoed by the others, due to one of them having to drag it down the cave since I would be rigging. Tackle sacks were packed, slings retied, and the journey to Ingleton made, where huge breakfasts were had by all, and I managed to get free light hire from Steve. Off to the cave.

The walk up Kingsdale is always far more pleasant without carrying a tacklesack. Reached the cave as it began raining a bit, and began rigging my first cave. I was expecting to be terrified of hanging on a line which I had tied, but the only truly scary bit was going off the first edge... Couldn't get my head round the idea of moving from standing on the edge with my rack being pulled down by the anchored rope, to stepping over the edge and having my rack holding my weight. Took a while to do that. After that, my biggest worry was dropping kit down the pitch, which led me to clip a cow's tail into each sling or krab before unclipping it from my person. Slowly gained more and more confidence rigging as I went along, until I rigged the last (of five!!) y-hangs pretty quickly and effectively.

Adam had already reached the bottom by the time I got there, and had began rigging the traverse to the final pitch. Having done Jingling before, I knew to free climb this bit and got to the ground plane first. By the time everyone had reached this point, it was only 1420, so we decided to explore the dig a bit. This proved to be a bit of a one-at-a-time thing (but not for Ade and Adam... oh so very much innuendo), so the rest of us occupied ourselves with free climbing up and around the walls.

The dig consists of a relatively constricted shaft, then a very short crawl, then a second even more constricted pitch, reached through a letterbox opening. At the top of the second shaft is a scaffolding pole with actual hemp rope tied off it. HEMP! I squeezed myself through the letterbox and started descending this second shaft, but it got pretty tight very quickly, and I was worried about getting back through the letterbox so I made my way back up.

When I reached the top of the dig, it turned out Adam, Matt and Chuck had already started out, so I made for the main pitch, going faster up the free climbed last pitch than Ade went up the rope. :p

The 60m main pitch was a bit of an annoyance due to bounce, but after only 20m it was bright enough to turn off my light. The sheer joy of emerging in daylight, even if it was raining a bit! Passed Adam who was waiting in the crevice which is the top of the lateral route, decided it would be best if we alternated between teams coming up the last pitch (One from my team, one from Adam's team etc.) so that people didn't get too cold and we didn't over load the tree anchor. (Chuck ignored this idea a bit ;)). Wasn't long before both both Adam and I were on the surface, and we decided that Jingling Pot is far to dry.

After nearly emptying the pool next to the cave lip over the edge with repeated kicking, it was realised that the nearby stream could probably be dammed, raising the water level enough behind the dam to force it down a channel leading to the aforementioned pool. Gleefully Adam and I started work.

Results were not quick in coming, due to rocks having to be brought from some distance, but as each caver emerged over the edge they called us evil bastards,and then promptly joined in the dam building, speeding things up immensely. By the time Chuck emerged (with Josh still to come), a fairly impressive dam had materialised, and an appreciable percentage of the stream was being sent down the cave, on top of the unsuspecting cavers below. :) :) :) Felt a bit bad when I realised that Josh was having to sit under our new waterfall to derig... well, not that bad.

Once everyone was out and had been shown the glory of our collective efforts, we buggered off downthe hill to get changed, have some fish and chips and get back to York. I'm a bit worried by the fact that we left the dam intact, seeing as moving one stone would have stopped it working at all, but would have been easily fixable. Who knows the effect making Jingling Pot an active system again could have? One heavy storm will probably destroy our handiwork though.

Paid reparations to the two dampest cavers. Josh got a Mars bar, and Chuck got to come back to mine and watch the last two episodes of Top Gear.