Bull Pot - 21st Feb 2010

Sunday February 21st 2010

Members present: Alastair Gott,  Caitlin Brumby,  Chad B,  Thomas Blakey

This trip was awesome fun, I think the fact my stomach muscles are hurting so much today is more from trying to rig whilst in hysterics rather than from cave crunches.

After a very quick change from myself (slightly less so from other team members :P) we set off up the snowy hill in search of the cave entrance. It did take a while to find, Chad beating me there by about a minute I reckon. After rounding up Alistair, the cave experience began !

First I rigged the first deviation (as you could reach the P hanger from the surface) and then rigged in the right order from then on. The first pitch went fine.. I then went on a bit of a P hanger search... finding them quite a few feet above reaching distance. We deviated (no pun intended) a bit from the rigging guide as there was very very little water. Rigging this cave was a bit out of my comfort zone as it involved climbing up to little sloped ledges and traversing along without something in front of me to clip into! Good for me though. After the second Y hang was rigged I descended onto a rock bridge with a choice of two routes to rig... we'd already planned to rig the dry route.. (when I say dry.. I'm sure it\'s dry with PVC.. but the walls are dripping wet... so it isn't actually that dry.) It took me a fair few attempts to rig the next part... adding a while onto the trip. Alistair, Chad and Tom seemed to keep themselves amused though. As there was little water, I could also join in the conversation that often left me incapable of doing much from random fits of laughter. After several attempts at a re-belay (due to there being so many P hangers to choose from.. and probably from my general confused state) and a MASSIVE Y hang I popped off down the 'dry' slot which, opened up into a small chamber thing.
The next traverse was a bit more tricky to rig for me, again though good for me I'm sure. The last pitch we did was nice, and as water was't an issue we only rigged one deviation. I tried for the second, but alas... my swinging out abilities aren't quite up to the standard required for Bull Pot.
Once all at the bottom (where there are quite a few fossils - even an ammonoid. Although this was not enough to get Alistair excited.) we had a quick trip to look further into the cave...
We got to what looked like a water slide, where Chad and myself went to look at the next P hanger.. (at this point I was glad we didn't bring rope for the last pitch.. it looked unreachable!!)

Chad and myself came out of the cave in about half an hour.. waited for the de-riggers for like an hour. Although it did not at all seem that long.. time flies when you are having fun huh?? Unfortunately for Tom though, we were feeling quite mischievous. So when Tom got to the bottom of the top pitch.. it started 'snowing' down the cave entrance. Which also made the rope lift about 5m higher - just out of reach... oh dear. We got bored so gave Tom the rope back. Perhaps our mood spread onto Tom as he spent the walk down either throwing snowballs at us or rolling down the hill :)
After a few falls and trips we got back to the road to see a team heading up to Yordas, a YMCA gesture series was exchanged before we heading back to the car and the cold change!!

I gave the faff a 3 because my rigging wasn't the most efficient.!