Long Churn - 04 Jan 2009

Sunday January 4th 2009

Members present: Adrian Turner,  Catherine Moody,  Chuck Holder,  Jaydene Halliday

I was quite excited at the prospect of this trip, having missed out on the first visit to Long Churn but hearing from the others about how much fun it was! It was a great start… Ade said he’d be round to pick me up just before 9am, however at 9.15 there was still no sign of him and when I called to find out where he was I got a response of “oh shit” as I’d actually just woken him up… Eventually he turned up and after skimming some rocks on the iced-over lake, we all left the container in Chuck’s car at 10 (delayed slightly further by Ade forgetting to lock his own car).

From thereon in it was a fairly efficient trip. We all wandered up to Alum Pot together, then split into 2 teams: Ade taking Jaydene and Kyle on the “usual” trip, whilst me and Chuck entered through the stream way at the top of Diccan into Lower Long Churn.

We by-passed the cheese press, round and down the climb into the pool where I was told most people fall in (thankfully I didn’t!), then on to the top of Dolly Tubs. We eventually spotted some p-hangers (which it turned out later were the wrong ones, oh well!) and Chuck set about rigging with me watching. From where the rope started, a deviation would’ve been handy but there were no visible rigging points so we just had to try to keep the rope away from the rock to prevent rubbing. The bottom of the pitch opened out part way down Alum Pot. The waterfall into the pitch on the far side was partly frozen and every now and then there was a huge noise as a big lump of icicles went crashing down to the bottom – it was quite scary and I hope noone was down there! I double-checked there was nothing above us about to do the same then off we went. There was a short traverse before a descent down to a large ledge. It felt a bit weird caving out in the open, especially as most was free-climbable (though rope clearly advised due to the large drop below!) Then another traverse around the edge of Alum before dropping down to the bridge, a large angled rock wedged across the middle of the Pot. From here we could get a good view down into the pitch, and I personally didn’t envy the guy who was prussicking up to the very top.

At the bottom of the bridge I got a quick lesson in derigging and off Chuck went with me following behind. Apparently when we got back to the traverse the others had already made it out and were at the top of Alum Pot waving to us but I was too busy packing the ropes to notice. Removing the final crabs at the top of Dolly Tubs was a little scary, but yay! I’d derigged my first cave! 8)

When we got back to the Cheese Press I made Chuck go through first to “show me the way”, which he was entirely unimpressed with firstly because it meant his plan to cheat and go around had been foiled, secondly because he had to take his harness off to actually fit. I chose to keep mine on, and after unclipping everything from the gear loops, made it through on the second attempt.

Climbing up all the waterfalls in Upper Long Churn was great fun and I decided that sliding down them would be even more fun (I gave it a try, it was!) though Chuck was mean and wouldn’t let me go back down the one into the big pool at the end. Mind you, as Ade had taken the rope it probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to try and free-climb it a second time..

It was dark when we emerged and I didn’t even notice we were back in the open until I nearly walked into a tree root… clearly we’d been having too much fun and were a bit longer than we thought! A leisurely walk back to the car and a fairly pleasant change despite the sub-zero temperature and we were off, Chuck nearly destroying his car again on the way back down the lane… Dinner in Bodrams and back to the Waggon for about 9 – a very enjoyable day!