28th April 2018
Chris Scaife, Alex Ritchie, Don Miller
Don and Chriss Shaman had been here a while ago and been repelled by a climb, described in Not For the Faint-Hearted as “an awkward 3.5m climb”. Don was sure that we’d find a way up the climb this time though, so we went to take a look. Some of us Black Rose cavers helped dig out the entrance a couple of years ago and it was good to see that it looks pretty stable for the time being. There’s a bit of crawling to get to a hole in the floor, which is pretty deep as the First Pitch is at the bottom. Fortunately the climb down is just a bit further ahead in the rift, and this leads down to the pitch. Down this pitch, then a flat-out crawl to the Second Pitch. We free-climbed this without too much trouble, although it is slightly loose and slippery in places.
We then climbed down into a wet rift and found what we assume is the 3.5m climb. It looked extremely difficult – a loose, vertical blank face with a corner crack that started about 1.5m off the floor and was also pretty loose. Perhaps some useful holds have broken off since the book was written, perhaps we were looking in the wrong place, or perhaps we’ve just all become faint-hearted of late; but Suffering Succotash, that climb looked hard.
We instead went to have a look down the free-climbable Third Pitch and into San Andreas Fault Passage, where Xaaaaaaaaaaaaaaandah did some digging to find a small chamber that seems never to have been entered before. We also had a look downstream towards the climbs down into Clough’s Passage. We headed back out and at 3:30pm Don wanted to do a big trip in County Pot, Xaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaandah wanted to curl up and die through lack of sleep, and I wanted something short because I was going to the UNCC Annual Dinner at 8pm. Don ultimately decided he should go home and see his flatmate, while the X Man and I looked in some of Ease Gill’s minor caves, which are henceforth described in the order in which we visited them:
County Cave 2 – After a little stooping in the entrance, this opens into a large chamber. We climbed up at the back of the chamber on to a ledge, with two passages leading off – one into a small aven. On the way out of the cave, we climbed down near the entrance to find a tight pitch head. We both managed to fit down the pitch head, but not being able to see below us was a little unsettling and there was loose rock.
County Cave 3 – Just a couple of metres to the left of Cave 2, this was an entertaining little traverse in quite a tall rift.
Oxford Cave 2 – This was our favourite, 15 minutes of NFTFH caving. Some flat-out and then sideways crawling led to a small chamber with enough room to turn around.
County Cave 1 – There was a short cave next to this one, which contained a sheep skeleton, but Cave 1 has a crawl to some choked passages, one of which is reached by an entertaining climb.
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