.Duncan Jones, Alex Ritchie, Rob Sanctus
After looking at the dreadful forecast of thunderstorms and torrential rain, this trip almost never happened and it would have been a boring trip down Sell gill for some much needed rigging practice.
However once when we got there, there was only a little bit of drizzle. The clouds were also breaking up so no more rain, and game on.
We arrived at Hull pot, and the rope was quickly rigged by Rob. Midges were everywhere and Rob and Dunc practically jumped down the hole, not bothering with their SRT kits. I had not seen the drop was climbable so had fully kitted up in the midge cloud, not pleasant. (The climb is graded V-diff in climbing books and opens up a little at the bottom and is greasy).
We entered the lower cave, Rob had a look up stream and called it horrible. Down stream looked sumped, except for a very small air space on the left that was not really big enough to fit your head in. We went to the upper cave and diverted the water, however this only had limited success. Try as we might we could not stop at least half of the water dropping down the hole. There was quite a bit off it, we can only guess the recent rain and perhaps yesterdays and todays rain had increased the water levels, but I doubt it? After a good half hour damn building we eventually sacked it off, but not before I managed to crush my finger under one of the rocks. Got a nice bruise from that one.
We went over to High Hull pot and I began rigging, while Dunc and Rob set off ferreting for High Hull cave. High Hull pot has in-situ Dmm bolts and hangers so no need to bring spits and spanner. The entrance pitch was rather wet, but luckily the main hang is down a side rift. I spent a while trying to rig a deviation here off what looked like quite a dodgy bolt, but in the end I had to change it to a re-belay to avoid horrible rope rub above me, despite not trusting 100% what I rigged off. (The hanger was loose, but there was no obvious rust).
Down the first pitch, I was surprised at how technical the second was, lots of re-belays and a y-hang made it good rigging practice for me, having not rigged in a while.
At the bottom I waited for Rob to turn up as he had the bag for the last pitch. Once we were re-united I set off rigging the last one. This only had one in-situ hanger. I got down the first few meters and Rob spotted how bad the rope rub would be, so I traversed along the ledge. However, there was nothing else to rig off here, I think in the past people would continue the traverse out and use an old dodgy iron angle bracket but it did not inspire confidence, it wobbled a lot. So I found a natural instead to make a kind of y-hang much closer to the pitch head. Unfortunately this was where the water was going down and created it’s own rub which was mitigated by using the bag. The pitch was refreshing as it was in the waterfall but it was possible to stay out of the main flow. There was no way on at the bottom so up we came, Rob de-rigged. Dunc never came far into the cave and preferred to sun-bathe in the midges.
We were back at the cars by 11pm so no time for a swift one unfortunately.
Rigging
Hull
SE pitch, 15m rope, 2 crabs. (in-situ dmm bolts and hangers).
Big pitch – unknown.
High Hull
Pitch 1 & 2 80m (70 might reach) rope, 9 crabs, 1 snap gate (for devi, cord in-situ).
Pitch 3 20m rope, 2 crabs, 1 sling. (bag/rope protector useful)
P.s. we forget there was also a damn for High-hull but the water-levels were not desperate, showing how dry things are.
