Juniper Gulf - 3rd Jan 2010
Sunday January 3rd 2010
Members present: Adrian Turner, Caitlin Brumby, Catherine Moody, Chad B, Chuck Holder, Marion Holloway, Mark Sims
Report by Mark Sims
We had a long look through selected caves pondering what’d be best, and come 8 o’clock on the Sunday we were packing ropes for Marble Steps. Juniper Gulf was off, but we were still optimistic about a good day’s caving. On our way to the Dales the roads were certainly clearer than we were all expecting (although we did have to stop a few times for windscreen wash refills/windscreen wiper de-icing…for the record, de-icer isn’t great in the eyes... :s ). When we reached Bernies there was definitely less snow than two weeks earlier, and the temptation was to give Juniper Gulf a go after all. We spoke to Steve & Andy about it and they reckoned it’d be fine, so given the forecast for no snow until Monday we thought we’d just go for it. Cue efficient re-planning! Team navigation sorted out where we were parking/how we were getting there… aka Chuck bought an aquapack for his i-whatsit with a GPS(!) whilst team repacking sorted what ropes we needed thanks to a generously donated rigging guide from Steve.
A surprisingly short time later we were parked up at Selside and raring to go…but at least 3 of us had fallen over in the snow before we even set off! We soon warmed up on the way and the view from the walk was fantastic! The going got pretty hard on the allotment though, carefully walking on the frozen crust of the snow before falling knee deep (or more!) every 3 steps or so. This got pretty annoying pretty quickly…but stopping and watching everyone else struggling along was pretty amusing so made it more tolerable! The brief pauses for a go on the YUCPC sledge were a good laugh too!
When we reached the entrance, it looked interesting to say the least! Cat & I got there first, but really didn’t want to go too close to the edge, as it was difficult to say what was rock and what was just overhanging snow. After a bit of a discussion and after spotting a p-hanger poking out through the snow on the far side of the rift, we came up with a master plan, largely of Ade’s doing: having come this far it seemed a real shame to turn around…
Chuck, Cat, Caitlin & Maz all dug themselves into trenches in the snow and clipped into one of the spare ropes we’d brought along (having foreseen issues along these lines after what the guys had said about the day before!). I threaded my rack and off I headed towards the rift, digging as I went with the sledge we’d brought along! It turned out there was more snow than I thought, and it seemed like a metre or so down before I hit grass, but progress was relatively swift and I’d soon reached the edge of the rift.
The next bit was interesting to say the least…the only place I could really chuck the snow while I was digging was down the rift…so now there was a nice thick false floor of snow below me! I knew there was some rock there to stand on as well, so I fished around with my feet for a bit and found some solid bits to stand on and finally clipped in to that p-hanger we’d spotted earlier. Now the fun really started! Ade came down the line rigged off the other guys to dig a safer path to the entrance for the way out (there’s no way we’d have carried on if there had been more snow forecast!) and I set about searching for more p hangers and some solid floor to stand on! I struggle to see p hangers at the best of times, so underneath large amounts of snow and ice, I really wasn’t doing too well…kicking snow down as I moved, I cleared the walls with the bolting hammer we’d brought along. Thankfully I soon hit a p-hanger amongst all the ice that was flying off, and soon after I’d reached the Y-hang. The climb up to reach it was probably a bit trickier than usual, with the footholds having to be smashed free of ice before I could climb up(!) but soon I was down and enjoying the rush of warm air at the bottom of the entrance pitch.
I’d been trying to rig pretty tightly (even more than usual!), as I knew the rope we had was 1m shorter than on the rigging guide, but I thought we’d be fine. On my way down the next pitch, though, I was surprised to reach the first knot a few metres above the floor! Luckily Ade had chosen to climb down the pitch so when he was at the bottom I could properly judge the distance down. As it was pretty easily climbable I wedged myself in and lowered myself down, undoing the knots as I went, and perfect! The rope ended about 4 feet above the floor, just low enough to be useable!
The caving from here on in was a lot more orthadox than our day had been so far! The traverses were pretty good fun, and soon we were at the penultimate pitch – as far as we had taken rope for as getting to the entrance pitch had taken so much time! I rigged the Y-hang and off I went. The pitch seemed to open out quite impressively below me and looking down I saw the knot come out of the tackle sack…d’oh! Jammers on and up I went. Turns out I’d ignored the rigging guide and forgotten to change to the next rope at the top of the pitch. Never mind though, I’d been most of the way down, so Caitlin and I set off up, leaving the others to derig. We all waited in the warm breeze to try and minimize the time spent freezing outside and in no time we were all stood out on the snowy allotment again after an absolutely fantastic, if slightly odd, day’s caving!
Yay for digging snow and smashing ice to get to p-hangers!
