Penyghent Pot - 17 May 2008
Saturday May 17th 2008
Members present: Andrew Gilmartin, Charlie Dixon, Debbie Flowers, Kevin Francis, Lauren Ellis, Luke Brownbridge, Mark Sims, Simon Herrod
Report by Mark Sims
The early start was made up for by the fact that we needed to hand in part of the permit at a farm helpfully situated on the other side of Pen-y-Ghent to where we wanted to be. After asking several people we managed to find the right place and finally drove back to where we needed to park. A nice sunny change was followed by a brief stop admiring the birds of prey in a garden (with a very impressive white-tailed sea eagle) and a pleasant walk up to the cave. The directions in Selected Caves were very easy to follow & the entance was found with no difficulty.
Having read a few of the descriptions of the entrance crawl and mentions of "Pen-y-Ghent knees", I was somewhat apprehensive (thoughts of the Daren entrance were fairly prominent!), but my worries turned out to be fairly unnecessary. The water level was low and the floor was smooth pretty much all the way, making it kind on the hands & knees and meaning tackle sacks caused next to no problems. Even the "flat out" section was high enough for only arms and legs to have to get wet.
The first pitch followed, providing ample opportunity for a soaking, but a quick descent made this just a brief shower! More stooping passageway follewed to pitch 2, another short drop, leading straight to the head of the third & fourth pitches. In contrast to the first two, these were fairly long, completely dry and opened out quite impressively into the chamber at the bottom.
The next section, the rift, was for me definitely the best part of the cave, mainly involving traversing & the odd free climb this section also contained pitches 5 to 8. Rigging these was interesting in parts though as traverse lines were non existant, so some of the pitch heads (despite only being fairly short drops) felt somewhat exposed! I guess that added to the fun though really! For me at least they also involved some intersting routes down (in the knowledge that I seem to be very good at getting cold in caves) trying to keep as dry as possible.
By the end of the rift I was losing count of the pitches, which was again a first for me! With Andy taking over the rigging again we headed down the next pitch into the bottom section of the cave, another stream passage. This was interesting in parts with the water varying suddenly from a few cm deep to chest deep...slightly annoyingly this seemed to be the prettiest section of the cave too, but my attention was mainly focussed on the placing of my feet!
The last couple of pitches then lead to the final stooping streamway passage, ending at the very uninspiring sump. After a brief look it was straight back up again before passing the other team on their way down at around the 8th pitch.
The trip out was relatively straight forward (although I was happy not to be carrying a tackle sack!) but during the second half I was beginning to get pretty cold. This wasn't helped by pitch 1 which I didn't ascend quite as quick as I'd descended, resulting in me finally being soaked through and colder than I've been in a long time!
The entrance crawl was, for me at least, quite welcome at this point to give me a chance to warm up a bit and although it was fairly effective at this, the wind outside was equally effective at making me even colder than before! This meant that the walk down wasn't quite as nice as the walk up & a pretty cold change followed.
Overall I thought this was a great trip - one of the most varied caves I've done and one of the longest times I've spent underground (about 10 hours I think) but I still felt surprisingly good by the end which was a pleasant surprise! I'd love to have a chance to do this again, maybe with a go at some of the extensions in the bottom next time.
