Ireby Fell Cavern - 01 Mar 2009

Sunday March 1st 2009

Members present: Adrian Turner,  Alastair Gott,  Andrew Vick,  Anna Barnard,  Catherine Moody,  Chuck Holder,  George Bunyan,  Jennie Hill,  Luke Brownbridge,  Mark Sims

The faff rating started low for this trip with Chuck arriving at my house at about 7:40. Sadly I couldn't match Chuck's efficiency & spent the next 15 minutes sorting my gear out, but we did manage to be ar the container before 8. The biggest surprise of the day came next when Ade arrived before (yes, before!) 8 as well! All 10 of us were there within about 10 minutes and by half past we had the ropes packed for all three routes...so far so good! We couldn't find any rigging guides, though, but reckoned we knew Ireby well enough that we could get away with it.

An uneventful trip to Ingleton later and we were all enjoying breakfast in Bernies, and despite kneepad/sling/rope/krab buying by various people we were out fairly quickly and parked up ready to get underground. Again, more efficiency followed (I was beginning to really enjoy myself by this point!) and we decided we'd split into three groups, Ade myself and Anna heading down shadow with the ropes for the bottom few pitches too, Chuck, Luke and George heading down Bubbles, and Andy, Cat, Alastair and Jennie going via Ding Dong Bell with Cat rigging for the first time.

By the time I got to the start of the rope Ade had already rigged the whole of the top traverse and was off down the pitch (how does he rig that fast?!) and Anna was just heading down. Having done the same route the previous week I was quite surprised to find the bottom pitch under a significant waterfall below the deviation, so after some very swift descending later (aided by my simple :)) we were at Pussy pitch. With only 1mm or so of rain forecast we decided water-wise we'd be fine, so headed down this pitch and made hasty progress down the streamway. After Ade had negotiated the calcite duck Anna and I followed into the chamber preceding it, but having got absolutely soaked on shadow and being a non PVC-wearer Anna decided that the passage back upstream was much more appealing than the duck. After a brief bit of decision making we decided to head back to meet some of the others and decide what to do from there.

On reaching the junction with Bubbles route, we could hear Chuck's group fast approaching and within no time they were down. Their group decided they also didn't fancy the duck (Chuck & George having been there with me the previous week), but having wanted to get to Ireby 2 for quite some time I wasn't prepared to head straight out. After a fairly short amount of persuading (bullying?!) later Ade was convinced to continue towards Duke Street, so off we headed to the duck once again. Now in a two we were much faster, and Ade continued his lightning rigging on Well pitch and the rope climb at the bottom.

I found it slightly worryingly that there was a fairly long section of cave I'd completely forgotten from a year previously, but before long we were in Duke Street, just as impressive as I'd remembered it. Before heading into Whirlpool dig we stopped for a much needed hot cross bun and water stop, studied the Ireby 2 survey on my camera, left out SRT bags at the bottom and prussiked up into the dig. I headed up first and was a little concerned to find the bolt at the top wasn't even finger tight, but at least it was backed up well. I didn't have my spanner with me, but tightened it as best I could before Ade followed. The last time I'd been here there was about 20m of crawling before the end of the dig, but it was clear how much work had gone in since! What was 20m to a dead end had turned into a 135m crawl - it was obvious where the huge pile of sand in Duke Street had come from. Abseiling down into the stream at the end was interesting with the grit and mud in the rope: I reckon my descender probably got a few trips worth of wear in that few metres of descent! Heading upstream we endured the less than pleasant waist-deep wading towards Duke Street 2, but once we got there it was well worth it. It makes Duke Street 1 look distinctly unimpressive in comparison, both in terms of size and formations (don't forget to look at the ceiling!).

From here we headed upstream passing some of the most impressive mud formations I've ever seen. Along the true right bank were a huge number of layers in the mud, the most impressive section being where a large amount had broken off and all the layers had peeled back. It's quite difficult to describe here but it really was impressive, honest! On reaching the upstream junction we met another group who had had a brief look around and thought they were possibly already in Jupiter Cavern! Jupiter Cavern was in fact where we at least wanted to head towards so turning left at this junction we headed towards where Ade had remembered the rope climbs to be. We headed up the one he thought was the way on, but having since looked at the detailed survey I didn't have a photo of, I'm not sure the way on here is a rope climb. Nevertheless, without this knowledge, upwards we went past one deviation to the next rope, after which several more ropes followed (one of which with an auto-locking krab on a deviation...why?!) until just when I thought we might break out on to the surface the ropes ended. Throughout the ascent the formations had become more numerous, and from the top of the rope there was an impressive calcite flow to the left. The way on, however, seemed to be a crawl on the right, so I headed on through, not sure what to expect. Whatever I had thought might be through there was definitely far exceeded by what I actually found - this was one of the prettiest and impressive sections of cave I'd ever seen! OK, there wasn't as much calcite as the Hall of Thirteen, and it wasn't as awe inspiring as Titan, but there were formations absolutely everywhere! Great care was needed in the crawl to avoid damaging the formations and long time was spent just looking around, and even longer time spent once I got my camera out! At the time we were also conscious of how long we'd been there and a quick time check told us it was nearing our turn around time of 5:15. We decided due to time that sadly it was time to turn around, so after much care we both managed to squeeze round in the passage and crawl cautiously back to the top of the ropes.

It's fair to say that the trip back through Ireby 2 was somewhat faster than the way in - I was conscious that the others who had turned back at the Bubbles junction would be some way ahead of us and despite having more people in their team, they'd easily beat us out of the cave and wanted to minimise the time they were waiting outside for. It was on arriving back at the Whirlpool dig that Ade remembered he'd left his glove on a shelf by the streamway, but much to his relief they were there on our return¡Kor so he thought - one glove was still there, but one must have slipped off and had been washed away, but there wasn't time for searching so back through the dig we headed. This time I thought I'd try and get through a bit faster than I'd come through, but regretted it slightly afterwards with the pain in my shoulders. I'm not quite sure which muscles are used for crawling on your elbows, but I am sure I don't have them! Once again we stopped for refreshments in Duke Street, this time polishing of the second of my hot cross buns.

Kindly the other team had left us a creative message saying to de-rig Bubbles, so from here we (I?!) decided we'd speed things up a little. We sped our way back up to the rope climb and after a brief stop to remove stones/grit from our wellies I was nominated as de-rigger and up we went. This whole section up to the bottom of Bubbles seemed to fly by - I always forget how brilliantly efficient it is to cave in a pair! Not knowing what to expect we entered the Bubbles crawl and soon found the rope. Again we were quickly up to the top of the rope and had the rope packed before Ade realised that he now only had one kneepad! Not knowing where he had lost it (we suspected on the pitch, but weren't prepared to re-rig to have a look!) we didn't hang around and we pushed on towards the exit. By this point we'd not had a break for a while and had really been pushing it all the way out which made some of the squeezes and tight climbs really quite awkward, but very soon we emerged at the scaffold entrance to find all the other routes had been de-rigged. When we surfaced a minute or so later we checked the time to find it was now 6:30 - we'd taken just one and a quarter hours to the surface from the far end of Ireby 2 - no wonder we were feeling tired!! This should go some way to explaining the high hard ratings Ade and I gave this trip!

The moor was now in thick mist, but thanks to some handy reflectors we had no problems finding our way back to the cars where great food (thanks Anna!) awaited. Whilst we were changing, the others kindly shanked our ropes for us and we were soon heading to Bodrums accompanied by Dire Straits.

Back at the container, we had packed away all the gear by 10:30 and could head home to be for a reasonable time.

All in all it was a fantastic day's caving - definitely one of my top 3 trips :)