Vesper Pot - 28 Feb 2009

Saturday February 28th 2009

Members present: Chad B,  Jonathan Booth,  Max Spicer,  Steve Gilbert,  Thomas Blakey

Absolutely awesome days caving in Vesper pot. The cave entrance was a head first on the side crawl through a tight hole, this wasn’t too bad as gravity was on our side. There was plenty of crawling (hand, knees, sideways) and squatting, some parts were quite awkward. I might as well have just gone though a juice blender! Some really nice formations started to pop up the closer we got to the first pitch, made me feel like I was in Ireby Fell. The first pitch was quite short only a little tight at the top, then some more crawling towards the second pitch, at this point the cave turned into a epic SRT adventure. A little bit of traversing (surprised that it doesn’t start a bit earlier), a short abseil to a rebelay and then a longer abseil. The third pitch starts almost immediately after with a couple of metres of traverse that didn’t have many foot holds, so it was use your weight against the walls time. I seemed to be at the end of the traverse waiting for the ‘rope free’ call for ages, has to happen when you are basically sitting over a large shaft! When the call came I shouted ‘Ok, Thank God’ lol. A brilliant abseil down via a deviation. The final pitch wasn’t p-hangered and was rigged on spits – hats off to Steve for rigging this especially with the sling over a slit in the cave rock. So a little bit of traversing to the Y-hang, plenty of opportunity to get strung up here but thankfully plenty of loops and krabs were rigged to help out. A spectacular final decent down past a deviation where a large pile of rubble was staked up to about 45 degrees (which was very unstable under foot) where at the top was the rest of the team waiting. The prussic out good fun with all the deviations, rebelays and traversing, the water falls made for a nice cooling shower. The really exposed traverse was particularly exciting. The tightness of the first pitch made it harder work to get out, I do enjoy the challenge of the tight pitches, however this was nothing compared to the top of Bar Pot and Big Meanie. The crawl out was a lot more difficult than on the way in especially when your metal work decides to hold on to a rock and you can’t get your hand round, the outside world was so tantalisingly close at this point. We came out into twilight, it amazing just how quiet and serene Kingsdale was, beautiful.

A great days caving! Tom, John and I took part in some ‘nessun norma’ cave humming and some random whistling providing amusement. Thanks to Steve and Max for there rigging/de-rigging effort. :) Really efficient and faff free trip. 8)