Peak Cavern - 15 Mar 2009

Sunday March 15th 2009

Members present: Ben Scothern,  Chad B,  Chuck Holder,  George Bunyan,  Jonathan Booth,  Kevin Francis,  Thomas Blakey

After a sensible early night and a prompt start we found ourselves in the impressive entrance to Peak Cavern. Leaving the showcave behind us we slid down a wooden chute and followed a passage to a sandy crawl, followed a wet seriese of arches before a semi-stomp brought us down a ladder to the main streamway. An easy passage led us to Squaw's junction where we explored a strange jacusi crawl. From here we crawled around for a bit and messed around with buckets of water before rejoining the streamway and making our way to the far sump, where we made and then sadly left Sandrine the sand woman.

We then visited several sumps, Lake, Ink, Buxton and another one I can't remember, and explored a few intresting side passages, a very muddy slope led up from Ink sump, past some pretty formations to a grotty loose crawl that went nowhere, the descent saw some long mudslides onto cowstails (mainly from me) and the near destruction of a diver's brewup area. After a nice bath in the Buxton stream so as not to give the obviously false impression to the visitors that caves can be muddy, we climbed the steps to the show cave, Kev emerging just as the tour guide was explaining how people used to believe that the steps led down to Hell. Passing the gawping crowds and trying to appear suitably sombre and non-threatening we exited the cave before making our way to a pleasant indoor change and thence to the chippy.

Maybe it could have done with some pitches and waterfalls, but a good intresting cave nontheless, full of pretty stallies and it was nice to be able to explore where we wanted instead of following a rope.