27th July 2008
People present - Chris Scaife, Pete Dale, Duncan Jones

Weather - Unbelievably hot

On what has surely been one of the hottest days of the year so far, I met Dunc and Pete at the Chapel-le-Dale car park for a trip into Knacker Trapper Hole. I’d never been in this cave before but Pete and Dunc dipped their toes in it a few years ago (Ed: it was back in September 2001!) and Pete joined Rob part way in earlier this month. As we set off a strange mist shrouded the valley and much of the Southerscales limestone pavement. This quickly disappeared beneath us as we headed up Ingleborough into the tropical sunshine.

Inside the oil drum entrance we were instantly met by a narrow winding crawl, mostly flat out, with some straightforward squeezes, but enough to warrant keeping the SRT kits packed away. At the end of this crawl is an easy climb down, which apparently is considered the 1st pitch. I can’t really imagine anybody using rope for this. We treated the 2nd pitch as a handline, mainly because the top is pretty narrow and jammers would only get in the way. Pretty soon after this is the 14m section known as the Bosch Rift. I’d heard a few horror stories about this, but apart from getting the tackle bag wedged every few centimetres, and very briefly feeling that my knacker may have been trapped, it was actually refreshingly simple, probably no harder than the entrance crawl.

After this we got out our SRT kits for the 3rd pitch, rigged, as are all Knacker Trapper pitches, from a natural belay. Shortly after this, we entered University Challenge, a high rift that continues until the end of the cave. There are several ledges at varying heights so route finding could be puzzling but getting back up or down to the required height was never impossible. The last 3 pitches were passed and each involved a few minutes looking for a suitable knob. Of rock. Just after the final pitch a short traverse leads to the sump, which quite frankly I wouldn’t touch with a fifty foot pole, but if Alex is looking for an adventurous dig…

For some reason, Knacker Trapper is only given Grade 3, the same grade as Barkin Cave, a short walk down into a large chamber, followed by another easy walk down.(Ed: the nearby Sunset Hole is also a grade 3, similar - hmmm..) Now I don’t want to sound overly dramatic, but I think it’s a little harder than that. There isn’t really a single part of the cave that was particularly hard, but it is quite sustained and demands commitment. Good trip though.