Aquamole Pot - 4th Jul 2009

Saturday July 4th 2009

Members present: Alastair Gott,  Anna Barnard,  Chad B,  Hayley Clamp,  Josh Vale

I’m not very good at writing trip reports as I can never remember what came where regarding routes. So instead I’m gona take a different approach and explain why I voted the way I did!

Faff;
High level of faff on the way due to a road being closed. Luckily I keep a map book in my car and so with the aid of my sat navs (Anna, Josh and Christian) I was instructed to take various exits at roundabouts and junctions until we were back on track- to which Christain exclaimed “win!” every time he got a direction right…it was a relief when he fell asleep :p
We also took a while at Bernies due to various purchases; I got a shiny light and helmet, it’s very pretty! Then when we set off for the caves- we went the wrong way- oops! Quick call to Ade and we were once again back on track and finally at the cave. The rest was all good progress.
But then there was more faff later on as the rope from the last series of pitches got ridiculously tangled whilst Anna was de-rigging it. Despite hers and Josh’s best efforts it was not coming free, and we were soon joined on the surface by Matt G and John from the other team wondering what was going on. Eventually Chad was able to free the rope and we headed down to the cars to find Christian in his boxers…he’d been this way for hours as he’d managed to leave his clothes locked in my car!

Change;
The change was fine apart from the midges, nasty little things!

Scum;
The cave was pretty much dry and not muddy. I got wet on one pitch due to it raining outside, which managed to find the gap down the back of my suits- brrrrr!

Hardcore;
There’s a fair amount of SRT, with plenty of rebelays and deviations which is fun. I had issues with a tight deviation on the first set of pitches due to me having no muscle whatsoever, and my tip for anyone who has a problem with this in future is yell at it- it seems to work! If this fails push off the rock behind you (kindly pointed out to me by Josh!).

Fun;
I really enjoyed this trip as it’s been ages since I’ve done a stringy cave. The aven is really impressive, and great to descend…though just a little tiring going back up ;) We also saw cave fish in the sump at the bottom, much to Alastair’s delight! I didn’t even mind the faff as I was with a great bunch of people, though I was pretty tired driving home past midnight.

All in all, a great day out :)