Lathkill Head Cave - 10 Jan 2009

Saturday January 10th 2009

Members present: Andrew Vick,  Imogen Shepherd,  Kevin Francis,  Laura Bennett

This was a good trip. We started off late as we had no need to get going early, we left York after 9, headed south and cooked ourselves a breakfast. After chatting to some stragglers at the TSG we headed (late afternoon) to the cave.

The change was nippy, but not too bad, and the walk to the cave was brisk. We noted the 2nd (or 3rd?) entrance in the field before our entrance. Andy stuck his head in but it was locked, questions afterwards revealed that to get the key you need a present a genuine scientific reason for gaining access (to the DCA, not the lock). Luckily our entrance just needed a spanner to open. Laura rigged and was followed down by Imogen as Andy and I tried to keep warm on the surface (it was bloody cold) The situation was so severe that Andy resorted to resituating the molehills. The pitches were fun, with plenty of rub and it was easy to sent small loose stones down. There were nowhere near as many spiders as I could remember when the trip was attempted last year (not that I went underground then!)

Once at the bottom of the pitches we came into a rather impressive and pretty chamber. Following the tape we hit boulders and wormed our way through, down a climb and into a small crawl which led into another chamber, Lathkiller Hall, with a large aven. From here the way through to the resurgence was in a hole in the floor. Andy encouraged me to go first, which I did. It was pretty squalid. I reversed through, not knowing what to expect and got wetter and wetter. The further I went the more I had to twist and turn and the wetter I got! Following the water I got to a small (!) chamber where water was appearing from. This didn't seem right, we were meant to be heading downhill to a resurgence. Not wanting Andy to miss the glory of my wet crawl I coaxed Andy in. We decided it most definitely not correct. On the way out Andy tried the right hand side of the passage and noticed it dropped down quite rapidly. Underwater. We concluded that the Handshake Chamber we were after would only be achieved with diving gear!

Having spent relatively little time underground we decided to chance the large bedding planes leading of from the Chamber we were in. The bedding plane was fairly wide with a range of options, however the height was the major issue. Andy headed down to the right where he could hear water. I went central, found a decent sized formation in a small chamber. Then I dashed to the far left where things seemed bigger. A shift in the angle of the bedding plane made this more fun and eventually, despite tentatively bigger stuff ahead it just got too cramped and silly. In the meantime Andy had returned and promptly disappeared. We heard shouts "I'm in a big chamber! There's room to swing a cat" Dubiously I squeezed off down another (much more polished and rounded) route to find him. Some headfirst acrobatics led me to him where he was perched on a rock in a chamber. The sound of water was greater and Andy explained that he had gone on, followed the water for a bit and then headed back. I wasn't feeling the crawly love. Imogen and Laura then joined us in the chamber and we decided to head out. The journey out was pretty uneventful and fairly rapid. Andy and Laura went out first and headed for the car. Imo derigged whilst I shivered.

We were pretty optimistic that the weather had been dry enough to let us pass through (it hadn't rained in ages) but it wasn't to be this time. I would not like to be here in any wetter conditions, the beddings did look like they filled up quite happily. One for the summer??