.An easier trip (for me) for once, but one that required a heck of a lot of rope, crabs and mallons. The main idea of the trip was to give a visiting, friendly American, Andrew Field a decent trip down one of the finer trips in the Dales, the apparently world renowned Lost Johns. Having acquired a permit several months in advance and getting a weather permit that day the 3 of us me, Andrew and Chris Shaman were ready to set off up to Lost Johns. Andrew had caved with me before two years ago down Lancaster hole, so today’s trip had to beat that.
Sorting the gear
At first we thought we would not have enough gear to do Lost Johns, with Don being forced to stay at home, but luckily Chris came up trumps and had brought 10 or so mallons, and I had the foresight to the bring extra rope regardless. A bit of faffing and 3 full tackle sacks were packed. Up at Leck fell while I was getting changed all was going well until I realised I did not have my helmet! It had fallen out the top of the bag in my living room without my notice. This is despite me returning Shaman’s helmet.
”
Starting to get ready on Leck Fell
I let them two get underground and start rigging while I rushed back to Inglesport (in full caving gear), when I say rushed I drove slowly due to the 40mph drivers, wagons and road works! Thankfully Inglesport still rent helmets so our trip was not off as I had one of the rope bags with me. Helmet acquired I returned. Thankfully the un-intended round trip only took me half an hour so I soon caught up with them at the bottom of Centipede, which Chris had rigged.
Rigging of Centipede
Andrew rigged Candle and Shistol with us looking on and then I set off rigging Valhalla. Crab after crab the thing went on forever and was quite awkward in places but finally we reached the end and dropped down. All in all I think we used about 15 crabs.
Me rigging Valhalla
On the last pitch we avoided all the faffing about with the traverse as the water was barely a dribble and went straight down. Once down at bottom we discussed where to go next. I had wanted to do the round trip (Up Lyle cavern rope, through the ducks, down Box head and back through the tube). However this was dismissed partly due to time constraints, and partly as Andrew was not too keen on the ducks. We asked Andrew if he had seen that video of the “tube” on “You tube” and he told us he had. It appears that the video has got just about everywhere! So we had plan we were to take Andrew to the famous/infamous spot so he could give it a go.
Decorated passage on the way to the tube
There was some nicely decorated passage on the way which was a bonus, and after a bit of crawling we reached the tube. Despite needing to get wet none of us had too much trouble, the hardest bit was getting the legs around the corner, it was not really tight in any way.
Me exiting the tube
The climbs for me were more interesting one being about 20 – 30ft deep, quite a difficult climb as none of us trusted the in-situ rope and climbed up following the water. Above the climbs a short easier tube brought us out into the large aven chambers of Boxhead hole.
We mooched about a bit and found a muddy crawl that just kept going but as time was short we did not follow it to it’s conclusion, it was interesting the passage looked like it had been washed out rather than dug out, I guess that was what that huge pipe was for 10m up, I will have to read the descent article to check.
Heading out was uneventful, Shaman did most of the de-rigging. Andrew really enjoyed the trip and I found it fun too, Lost Johh’s despite being mainly an SRT affair is a nice trip, without most of the squall-er I come to expect on my more recent trips. Chris went home while me and Andrew went to the Marton arms. Andrew wanted to treat me to a “pudding” but all the tables were reserved and it would be a long wait so we said our fair wells and went our separate ways.
Chris smiling to the camera after an excellent trip
Photo’s by Andrew Field
