Washfold Pot - 27th Jun 2009

Saturday June 27th 2009

Members present: Andrew Vick,  Catherine Moody,  Mark Sims

The plan for the day, as always, was super-efficiency :) With 6 people wanting to go we decided to split into 2 groups of 3 as 6 is never a good number to have in one group. The early bird team (Me, Cat & Andy) aimed to leave at 7:30 (we settled for 8!) whilst Ade, Chuck and Chad were to follow at 9.

Our early team were doing well, in Bernies at 10ish in time for our Yorkshire puds, although no fried bread this morning to their surprise! We were gone by 11 which must have been some kind of record and after following several thousand cavers (it may have been fewer) heading to Longchurn we soon found the Washfold entrance exactly as described in NFTFH.

The scent of rotting sheep added to the horsefly-rich atmosphere at the entrance, but soon we were in the streamway away from all the unpleasantries of the outside world. We sped through to the calcite squeeze in the roof which really didn’t prove to be a squeeze at all – I only took my helmet off because I went the wrong way…

This quickly led us to the 1st pitch and despite the low water levels we went for the dry hang…it would seem that to go down the wetter way without getting drenched would require no water at all. There was an interesting moment at the pitch head where the complete absence of footholds combined with a sudden fall from the tacklesack left me hanging by one hand above the pitch. In hindsight it would have been a lot less scary to have just fallen straight on my cowstails rather than to have stopped myself beforehand, but at the time that didn’t really cross my mind.

Down we all were and the way on lead into a strange section of cave. It was all pretty vertical but just not vertical enough to need rigging. The 3 main sections were climbs of about 10m each, two of them protected (?!) by some sort of twine. The best tactic here seemed to be to avoid holding the twine at any point for fear of actually trusting it!

We were doing well time-wise, although the digital and analogue displays on my watch were both showing different times which was a bit puzzling, but even assuming we were on the later time (since found to be +45mins from real time) we were still making good progress.

The lowest of these climbs was followed shortly by the 2nd, 3rd & 4th pitches which are pretty much one. The top pitch really didn’t need rigging, but having found a decent flake for a sling it seemed a shame not to. After some searching around, Andy soon found the spits for various rebelays and deviations and we quickly followed him down. According to the description we should now have been, “in a roomy chamber close to the final sump”. A more accurate description would have been “thigh-deep in the sump”, so leaving the other two to perch on the only dry ledge accessible I headed straight back up towards the rift section expecting for the second team to catch up any moment.

We were soon all up these pitches enjoying the unusual luxury of having no tackle sacks to take with us. In fact I think Cat pretty much managed the whole cave entirely tackle sack free…I should take some tips!

Onwards we went, the twine seeming even more tempting on the ascent, but the potential result of trusting it proved to be enough of a deterrent! At the top of one of the climbs I noticed one of the pieces of protective string was tied with a bowline…I couldn’t resist putting in the stopper knot that was absent, but I can’t help thinking it was a bit academic!

By this time we were really puzzled by the fact that we still hadn’t met the others so we decided to stop and contemplate things over some rice salad  mmm. Having finished the tub of food and speculated wildly on what may have become of the others we pushed on and quickly found ourselves at the bottom of the big pitch. Decision time. We could either head back down to the bottom again to derig or we could head straight out, leaving the ropes. Bearing in mind we were less than an hour from the surface it would have been hard to justify heading all the way back down, so out we went. In no time we were emerging back out into sunlight, although this proved to be a bit more of a struggle for me as I mistakenly chose one of the harder of the three exits. Never mind. I got out in the end!

Still continuing to speculate on the fate of the derigging team and hoping they were at least going to come up with a half decent excuse, we wandered back in the sunshine past the now deserted Longchurn to find the others standing by the car.

Turns out that they’d headed towards the cave with no description and surprisingly enough had struggled to fine the well described entrance. After wandering around the hillside for approaching 4 hours they had given up and gone down Longchurn. Having moaned at them sufficiently we all headed to the pub in Kirkby Malham to sample the food to see if it would be up to Christmas meal standards. It passed with flying colours. Lasagne…mmm :)