Peak Cavern - 11th Jul 2009

Saturday July 11th 2009

Members present: Imogen Shepherd,  Kevin Francis,  Laz Abbott,  Nicola Gover,  Richard Gover

After a few beers, Kev made me think that it would be a good idea to go for a potter about in Peak Cavern at the weekend. This was to be the first time Nikki and Gover had been caving in a long while and so it was intended to be a slow wander around some stompy passages...

We headed down to the TSG making good time, and sat about chatting while we made a monster breakfast. A few cups of tea later, we thought we'd better start getting changed. A quick change followed by a stomp past lots of tourists and we were in. We did have to "blend into the background" whilst a group passed us in the cave but then headed through the gate and down the slidey thing.

We stomped along quickly through the various pools and the Mucky Ducks to The Treasury, squeezed through the gate, and up the ladder. We slogged it through the Trenches and then Collostomy Crawl, which is OK for a bit but then gets quite tedious!

Eventually, we reached the end and climbed down the ladders in Egnaro Aven, which was even more fun than it could have been due to the copious amounts of slippery mud all over our hands! At the bottom, we headed off in the direction of the Lower Bung Streamway.

On the survey, the Lower Bung Streamway is "interesting" because the first bit contains lots of hidden pools in the floor of the streamway. If you are not careful with every step, you end up going up to your waist or deeper in a small pool with every other step! Quite annoying walking along here...

At the end of the main streamway is a T-junction where we first turned right and headed to the far end of Treasury Sump. Sump seen, it was back to the T-junction and down the other way to the Lower Bung Streamway Sump. This passage is drawn on the survey as wide as the main streamway. Maybe it is. However, it is crawling height, and has lots of water flowing down it! Heading to the sump was relatively easy, just going with the flow. Crawling back was pretty knackering against the flow!

We returned to the ladder at Egnaro Aven and Anne left us here. The rest of us carried on past it but Imogen decided pretty quickly to sit and wait for us to return. We had a quick look in Block Hall and then went to the Bunghole which had absolutely no TP, and also no water flowing down it at all. Climbing up the ladder into Speedwell Cavern, I was amused by the dodgy looking electrics at the top of the ladder! We stomped along for a bit, and had a quick play on the shiny new wire rope traverse line thingy at The Whirlpool. At this point, we thought we'd better head back to find Imogen.

We headed back to Egnaro Aven, collected Imogen, and headed up and back into the joys of Collostomy Crawl. The return journey through here was maybe slightly easier than on the way in because it was downhill but we were all pretty tired after the Lower Bung Streamway. Finally we reached the end and climbed back down the ladder and returned to The Treasury.

Kev, Gover, and I wanted to have a quick look at the main streamway but Nikki and Imogen decided to head straight out (this also meant that they could put the kettle on for our return!). The three of us stomped along and Kev convinced Gover to climb down the narrow rift to have a look at Surprise View Sump. (I don't think we was overly impressed by it!) We then headed down the ladder into the main streamway and stomped quickly to Buxton Water Sump, where we had a quick wash!

We returned up the ladder, and back to the entrance, stopping at the other end of Buxton Water Sump for another scrub down, before heading back to the TSG for a quick shower, tea, and toast.

A fun trip, even if most of it was scrotting about in mud, crawling through a fast-flowing streamway, or continually falling in hidden waist-deep pools! We even stopped off at The Balti King for curry on the way back.

Bonus!