Pegleg Pot - 23rd Jan 2010

Saturday January 23rd 2010

Members present: Chad B,  George Bunyan,  Marcus Roby,  Matthijs Bouwman

Good stuff was Pegleg, after about four hours down County I was glad that we were trying to locate this cave in the light. Walking along the Beck from County it is located beyond Mistral across a few fences. The entrance is fairly obvious as there is a wall built in front of the entrance.

Free climb down leads to a 90 degree bend, and with my tackle sack below me I couldn't go any further, so I had to go back up a little and alas gear got stuck against the side and one of my gear loops broke. Fortunately for me there was no hole for all my metal work to fall. Then it was off through a very nice drainpipe crawl, more 90 degree bend meant that I need the tackle sack I was hauling though pushing from behind. I was having a great time! Not sure the others were. I eventually reached a roomy chamber where the way on is a not very obvious pool of water, which leads onto a daunting 5 m free climb, fortunately there were some nice footholds that you couldn’t actually see from above. It was then off through a narrow rift to the top of the 30 m pitch. I looked around and saw no spits whatsoever, but some nice natural. As I wasn’t clipped into anything I was rather glad when George shouted and said that he could start a traverse line around a natural. So I through the rope back and set about rigging a rather nice Y-hang off two natural using a couple of slings. A fantastic descent down a fantastic rift followed. I knew that from there it would be off down to a sump, leaving the tacklesack behind I started to crawl down a very tight passage. I was going thought regretting not taking my SRT kit off, the wall were quite sharp and constrictive. Marcus started to follow, George and Matt were simply too big. The passage got narrower and narrower. I called back to Marcus to turn as he was still in part of the passage that was relatively open. Unfortunately I physically could not shuffle back or turn around, so I carried on until I could turn around and it was insane. There was a large bit of wood that go wraped up around my SRT kit, eventually on glimpsing the sump I managed to turn around. Very energy sapping stuff, I was glad to be out eventually. Back up the pitch, it seemed like everyone was about done for the day. Before letting everyone go though I wanted to go and have a look at the next 10 m pitch which traversing over the pitch we had just gone down was down another winding passage. At the pitch head was a spit and a natural, happy to see the pitch, we all headed off out back to the hut after a pretty intense day of caving. Great fun :)

Who is going to join me for a Cow Pot to Woodhouse Way trip next BPF??? :-p