Hope Level Four Fathom Cave
Monday, 25th of February 2019
Cavers: Chris Scaife, Ben Coult, Janet Kent
This cave is reached via a mine level with a very interesting entrance, the mine portal being situated just beside a house – I’d put it third in the league table of entrances’ proximity to houses, after Robinson’s Pot and Bruntscar Cave. We had permission from the home owner and left him a bottle of wine.
We had a quick walk down the mine passage, as far as the mineral vein, then turned back. The upstream cave passage is entered by a short, easy climb up, about 650m from the mine entrance. At first this was a tall rift with an ankle-deep stream, very much like the first bit of Fairy Holes. There were then a few short climbs, up and down. I put a ladder on the last of these climbs.
From the top of that ladder, the cave changed in character and the ceiling became much lower, although still mostly walking until near the end. There were a couple of wet crawls and ducks to slide through before we reached the Glory Hole. This was a final chamber with some very impressive formations. We emerged in warm sunshine.
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