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

The walk up Inglebrough was baking, but at least there was a nice breeze…

Turns out we did find Wades, just didn’t realise it at the time, as it didn’t look like the description (first pitch looked like only 4m so we assumed this was Flood – but actually what we saw wasn’t the floor, just a shelf). Oh well, we’ll be back!

In Bar Pot, Chuck knew where he was going whereas I’d never been so I let him lead between pitches and just overtook him to do all the rigging - a bit odd but it worked!

At the start of the crawl though he couldn’t remember the way so there were a couple of points where Chuck and I went off in separate directions in search of the sound of water. When eventually I heard the waterfall I shouted back to the others to follow then speeded ahead. The noise got louder very quickly. On reaching the main chamber I turned my light off and sat for a few minutes in awe, watching the spectacle of the Fell Beck falling to the ground – lit from above by a shaft of sunlight. Amazing :) When the others arrived we went for a bit of a potter around and looked up at the sun before heading back out again.

I stayed behind with Anna to help her derig – she did a great job. Getting back off the first pitch-head was entertaining as I kept getting wedged in by my tackle sack, got there eventually though. A very pleasant sunny walk back down the hill, happy that after months of wanting to, I'd finally seen Gaping Gill.