Uamh Nan Claig-Ionn (Cave of the Skulls) - 29 Mar 2008

Saturday March 29th 2008

Members present: Debbie Flowers,  Simon Herrod

We spent quite a while trying to figure out where the entrance was, and finally stumbled across it in a nicely fenced off square just outside the foresty area. We asked a nice bnb lady to borrow her phone to set callout, but when nobody was answering, she offered to leave it with her, so we did.

The entrance had p-hangers but the book hadnt described any ropes for this so we just climbed down. The first few metres was just flat out crawling, reaching a 4ish metre climb down. Again there were p-hangers, but again there wasnt mentioned a rope. It was possible to free climb, but it wasn't easy and I was being rubbish! Eventually did it, and got to another mini climb down into the streamway. (Upstream it says is another entrance that silts up so followed it for a bit on the way out, and then realised we most likely wouldnt fit.) The first pitch was next to a waterfall into a large chamber that was round and that was pretty cool. Then there was a flat out crawl underneath what they called the "house of cards" - if you looked up you could see why! The next few pitches including a traverse were quite wet and also loose (rocks falling near my head!), and led us to the end of the cave. There was a little bit further mentioned in the description, but it involved a crawl in the smallest wettest passage ever that we decided not to. Would definitely have involved de-harnessing and de-helmeting, as well as getting f.f.f.freezing! We went out again, quite a short trip but fun, and emerged in the light of rain, with the full satisfaction of caving in scotland :-)

Unofrtunately the nice lady at the bnb neither offered to cook us dinner nor wash our gear for us. cuh!