Bar Pot - down to see gaping gill - 3rd May 2009

Sunday May 3rd 2009

Members present: Alastair Gott,  Anna Barnard,  Catherine Moody,  Chuck Holder,  Jonathan Booth

a big and enjoyable, sunny, walk past tourists heading for ingleborough cave or mountain brought us to the canyon of death, a wall of darkness ensued as the sunlight passed the tip of the rock climbers paridise and the first of the dead bunny rabbit's. sunlight could be seen at the other end of the canyon...... to be continued

.... waiting by the entrance to some unknown pot was quite funny as we were describing to families of people why we actually WANTED to go down these potholes, chuck descended, along with anna and cat to assess this unknown pot and came out saying it wasn't, next one looked quite yerky to go down judging by the dripping moss outside.
we then went round the corner to a big depression in the ground and wandered down to find guess what another hole but this one had another dead rabbitt on the way down (another ominous sign of things to come??)
we gave up trying to find wades/flood entrance and opted for bar pot the very first hole you see when you walk into the field, while chuck, anna and cat were setting up the first pitch, me and jonny were outside watching a chaved up beatle with two tone colours impress us by walking in circles.

it was time to descend the first pitch and what a pitch it was, quite tight at the top but you just had to wriggle and you were down into the main body of the pitch, letting off your rack and descending into the first cavern and then wandering down to the greasy slab, be careful, treat it as if you were vertical by lowering yourself down on your arms, looks like a super happy fun slide but its made of rock!!!

one traverse later and we were at the second pitch head 35m of glory the decent of this was rather pleasent, following the descent was another traverse and then some crawling, much crawling for someone without gloves, doh why did i leave them in my flat.

arrivng in the hall of dihedral was amazing i have never seen anything so pretty in my life as the water coming from the heavens was tinted by a golden light, i had the dying urge to stand underneath it which i would have done, definately if i was given the chance and didn't have the threat of falling rocks on my head.

we then returned but not before seeing where chuck spent last new years, in a very dry passage way, with relatively no breeze, but according to chuck it's earie as when you sleep in their you expect no noise but you get the drips of some water from the ceiling.

we then returned, as always going up the 35m pitch was much harder than coming up it and it is my longest pitch to date, what can i say i havn't been caving much, but i have done the long prussik now and am still showing the signs on my shins!!

and the first pitch was also much harder but we had been warned about this before and chuck gave us pointers to "put your foot here and there etc".

long walk back saw us get back to the car at about the same time as some people we saw before going down the cave, consisting of two young kids who proceeded to stare at us when we were getting changed, i didn't see this but was told about it when we got back to bodrums.