After the cold and wet excitement of the Alum Pot – Diccan Pot trip (only Mike and Dan did the exchange), rather than head to the pub with the others (Mike, Chris Kelly and Dan)Alex and I decided to check out a few of the other smaller caves in the Alum Pot area. Mike told Alex about a cave called November Hole, an inlet located in Upper Long Churn just down from Dr. Bannister’s Hand basin (or whatever it’s called), which Alex had only been partway through. The only information we had about the cave was a) that there were a few ducks, b) that there were a few flat out bits, and c) that Mike had completed the trip. Game on.
We quickly located the flat-out bedding plane that marked the start of November Hole, which is roughly 170m long. Alex led the way. The first part of the cave consisted of a bit of flat out crawling in shallow pools, followed by a long section of rift passage. The rift passage consisted of a combination of sideways walking through several squeezy bits, and sideways crawling at floor level through several squeezes through water about a foot deep. There were three or four ducks along the way. Eventually this leads to a tight upwards squeeze (even Alex said it was tight), which leads to slightly roomier passage (meaning that you could actually walk forward rather than sideways), ending in a small chamber with an inlet about 12 feet up. Getting in to the inlet itself was quite a task as there were no handholds and the walls were very slippery. It was very much a back and knees job.
Once in the inlet the remainder of the cave is best described as a ‘torturous fissure’ (the term used in the description in NC2). With the exception of the last 20m or so, it consists of a sideways crawl at floor level in a very narrow rift. The crawl itself seemed to last forever. There were numerous bends along the way and only a few places where one could roll over onto one’s other side. For most of the crawl we stayed on our left sides, though there were a few bends that could only be done on one’s right side because of the severe angle. To my memory there were possibly two or three places at most along this section of rift where there was enough room to turn around if one wanted to retreat. Although progress through the majority of the rift was at floor level, there was one section where the lower part of the rift got too small, so we had to climb over this section via the top of the rift. There was no one particular section of the rift that was particularly terrible. It was all very constricted, much like Roly Poly passage, without the narrow rift below, but apart from that there were only a few small, easy squeezes. My only concern in this section was that if we did reach a squeeze that I or Alex wasn’t able to fit through, it would be very difficult to reverse this section of passage. Knowing that Mike had made it through pushed us on though.
Eventually the rift opens up a bit and from this point to the end it’s mainly hands and knees crawling to the daylight entrance of November Hole, which consists of an easy free climb up a shaft roughly 15 feet high.
We didn’t time how long the trip took, but my guess would be about an hour. It was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it to anyone in the Alum Pot area who wants a challenging trip with a bit of everything – flat-out crawling, squeezes (one tight), ducks, climbs, and lots of sideways crawling in a narrow rift. Daz would love it. I don’t know why the cave is only given a Grade 3 rating in NC2, presumably because there’s no SRT involved. It’s definitely a Grade 4 trip.
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