Saturday - 30th June 2001
People present - Pete Dale, Duncan Jones, Sam Carradice, Andy Whitney

The plan was to go and have a look round Coniston Copper Mines but upon reaching the track up to them we found the track closed! (Bugger) Not wanting to walk all the way up there a quick discussion with Sam and Andy another trip was arranged to a place called Hodge Close quarry which was just a short drive away.

Arriving at the quarry we parked our cars in a car park and strolled over to have a look at the quarry. Peering over the edge we admired the sheer size of the quarrying one side was over 100ft high and following the wall round there was a great stone arch which looked out over a menacingly deep lake. It was at this point that we realised we had enough rope to abseil down to the bottom and looking around further still we found lots of trees to belay off. A quick change later we were back at the top of the cliff rigging an intricate network of knots to make the pitch safe. Pitch rigged and for some reason everybody volunteered me to go first so I clipped my descender jumped over the side and started to descend upon reaching the bottom I shouted for Dunc to come down.

Once at the bottom he informed that Andy and Sam had chickened out of the abseil and had disappeared off into the distance for a quickie. Look around. Searching around the base of the cliff we found a ladder up into an old mine so lights on and off we splashed along the passage towards the daylight at the other end, reaching the other end we met up with Andy and Sam who then followed us back to the ladder. We all followed the shore of the lake to another opening in the rock. Following the passage it eventually ended at a ladder which seemed to float in thin air, Sam inspected it and said he wasn't going down as the bottom of the ladder wasn't touching the bottom of the pool it was in and since Sam can't see at the best of times for him not wanting to do it is good enough reason for me not to either.

Back in daylight on the shore of the lake we admired the view as I followed the far shore round with my eyes I noticed a faint traverse so without any hesitation Dunc and me made our way round to inspect. From what we could see it looked possible to make our way across the cliff face, which incidentally plunged into the lake with no shoreline visible above water. The challenge was set Duncan inspected the first obstacle and said he couldn't do it so yours truly had a look and passed the easy scramble to the next ledge from where I then beckoned Duncan across. Together again we followed the very dodgy sloping ledge to an even dodgier step onto a steel foothold this time.

Duncan was going first as it didn't look too safe after a few attempts and some unnerving smells he made it, it was then my turn. Frankly I couldn't see what all the fuss was about I found no problem with the step whatsoever (honest) the next problem we faced was getting to the iron spikes which would keep you out of the water but Dunc's bottle was starting to go as the look on the face gave it away however much I tried to persuade him that he could do it he wouldn't budge and in the end we had to turn back. (The shame!) So after we made our way back to safety we donned our SRT kit and prusiked back up the pitch. As I was nearing the top I noticed the roots of the tree I had belayed to weren't actually in the ground and that what I thought was rope bounce was actually tree bounce needless to say I was soon off the rope. We then got changed and headed to Coniston to find a chippy to satisfy our hunger.