Lancaster Hole round trip - 4th Apr 2009

Saturday April 4th 2009

Members present: Adrian Turner,  Angela Ballantyne,  Catherine Moody,  Chad B,  Chuck Holder

Lancaster hole is my second trip in the Easgill system and certainly less confusing that the County pot side. This was Angela’s first trip! Cat was leading.

Lancaster hole SRT was fairly straightforward; Cat rigged all of this and then it was off to the Colonnades first (I think those on the process of cleaning this section appreciate people who go here while they are clean i.e. not after going into slug world), after Wales week it was nice to see some pretty stuff in the dales. It was then off to Kath’s way – Bill Taylor’s passage going past the downstream sump to Montague West (if I remember there was what we thought was a silly little ladder, but the joke was on us as we actually did need it to get into the passage. Climb down to Waterfall Passage round to Wilf Taylor’s passage where we then had good fun at Double Decker Pot, Cat rigged normal SRT then a pull through for herself, meanwhile Ade and Chuck tried out some cave-bathing, there was also a very dodgy in-situ rope which I suppose you would have to use if you went the other way round. This actually came into play when the rope got snagged on the p-hanger when pulling our rope through. Ade started going up this rope – predictable our rope finally came through, quite funny. We then dropped into the main stream way (drop being the right description) to Fall Pot – a very muddy place. Ade, Chuck and Cat climbed up and around to rig a rope for myself and Angela to prussic up, I was happy to have some bonus SRT and a spot of de-rigging to do. Then all of a sudden we were back where we started Cat and I went crawling off to Slug world while the others went out and got nice and muddy! I got to de-rig which I managed to do really quickly so I was happy with that. So much fun the trip didn’t seem like 6 hours, looking forward to my next Easgill adventure

Also the route up to the entrance is now sign posted so people walk around the edge of the field for conservation and Bull Pot farm seems to be double glazed now!