Wretched Rabbit To Stop Pot - 8th Nov 2009

Sunday November 8th 2009

Members present: Alastair Gott,  Chuck Holder,  Laura Bennett,  Luke Gardiner,  Marina Theodoropoulou

I was warned that i was route finding when i arrived at the container and found the original giants hole trip was off (too much water) bugger must get to do some derbyshire/peaks caving soon!
after 1 week inbetween trips i didn't think i would be able to forget the route and with a little encouragement from chuck and laura "we will hit you if you get lost" i was filled with confidence when this soon changed to "we will hit you if you get lost and we will also hit you in the same place so that you will get a double bruise".

All in jest i took the burden on my shoulders and trudged to the cave; water levels being much lower this week. route finding was no real problem i got us down to eureka passage with no problems and also managed to give the other group that were in a little encouragement, having met them in bernies and given them one of our surveys (of little use in that area due to the close vertical proximity of stop pot and eureka), i managed to tell them they were much further on than they thought they were and were actually in eureka now.

now for stop pot having seen eureka in less water than the week previous, bloody hell i didn't realise on my last trip its such a rabbit warren up there so many holes going off, anyway i climbed up the bit that we climbed up last week from the streamway and then promptly climbed back into the streamway thinking 'this looks vaguely familiar' oh cock!! climbed back into the bit that we were in and then spent a while looking at descriptions and having a gander round then i decided to go back to the bit that i knew i climbed up last week and low and behold i was being a blind fool, grrr. i did my squeezy bit while some did the climb, the smaller of us just did the squeeze as it's the easier of the options. stop pot looked much the same as the week before!! except i'm sure there was a waterfall last week, oh well.

we started the way out, mostly uneventful till luke did a brilliant job of using his arse as a dam and golushed the water down, this was pretty cool but then he was leading and chuck was following. Needless to say with chuck even close to the front we got lost! hehe! serves you right chuck i should have hit you for that but seeing you climbing 10m above us trying to find the way on in the rift was too much fun when i knew the way on :-) (i did only find the way on after i saw chuck disappear down a passage for the rift i didn't just send him up there while i was sniggering).
so with me back steering us back home we got out with no hassles.

this was my very first time route finding, if i have any tips for anyone, learn easegill so you can do it without a description cos its much funner and much better so you don't have to look at descriptions and messy surveys; and this was my very first ever return to any cave but i only did this last week so it wasn't too bad for remembering the route.

p.s. went to pub in Austwick (for pizza and drinks) its brilliant for meeting YSS cavers. John from the TSG (EDIT YSS) is awesome and he makes montenegro or cma gora sound amazing with locals just feeding you and filling you with homemade hooch if you go down their cave.