XandarAye I can… Once you have put them up I can either link a couple and add to the report or I can just add a link.
EDIT: Okay I got your photos and uploaded them onto the BRCC website, not sure how much space we have Dunc?
One limitation is that it’s restricted to 2mb and I don’t have any software to compress the images so I coulden’t include your last two Ales.
XandarAs requested, some English changed by the person least qualified to do it. I also added photos to the trip report.
XandarMy growling? I don’t recall growling, I guess Ales means “groaning” or “grunting”, but yes entertaining report. I guess you could not describe any of it between Fall pot and Wretched. We had sing-alongs, Matienzo committee meetings along the way.
XandarWas it really 25 minutes? I guess it could have been, but it probably just felt that from where you were. I spent the first 10 minutes getting the knots out of the rope in the tackle sack, quite how they got in the middle of the rope I don’t know. Then all my stuff fell out and my stop went down the pitch, just because it likes doing that (Luckily it did not continue down Vulcan!). I got quite distressed with it all and a bit of the old me came out.
Like you say I should have just free climbed down it, it was not bad on the return, just from above it looked like I was about to climb into open space. Not my best day. I don’t like free climbing down knotted ropes that don’t reach the floor ever since I stranded myself on that ledge in Knacker trapper.
And for Don’s benefit, I actually did not want to rig and was happy to let Dan rig it all, only due to various factors as described above he did not want to.
The re-belay, well by this point my heart was only half in it, first ending up a few meters lower, then after changing over back at the other side of the shaft I then prussiced up too far, not being able to see the bolt. I gave up after failing to do a change over to go down again whilst at the same time as trying to not swing back to the other side of the shaft! The biggest kick in the teeth was I could have just carried on going down, if we had a sling left for the deviation, which I had used as a re-belay for the other route.
I had not forgotten my pantin I just was not arsed in putting it on and went traditional.
On the good side it was one heck of a shaft and the view of everyone involved makes the Vulcan route a spectacular way down!
Top tip:
Wear a blooming belay belt, to italian hitch the first pitch! (Or free climb it).
XandarI guess I need to make a visit there then.
XandarEdited your report to add in a couple of photo’s and updated my bag contents :)
Fantastic report, however, I thought I did well not telling you where to crawl/walk this time, unless you asked. (And sometimes not even then!)
XandarI was stuck for about a minute as my stop had jammed me in the rift, I wanted a foothold to get back out again. I ended up just wriggling some more and squeezed down. Rigging squabble was about who does the most rigging so who should rig what, Don was saying he never ends up rigging and wouldn’t let me do the last pitch. We all know it’s Mike who normally does all the rigging lol.
Funny I never have this squabble in the YSS, I guess that’s because half of them can’t rig in the first place lol (despite the SRT wall).
XandarWell at least I wrote one…. Still waiting on the one for the previous weekend.
XandarNew Goyden & Goyden.
Being a Sunday trip, I wanted something without the need for tackle to give me a break from carry lots of heavy tackle through very small passages, these caves fitted that bill. Chris met me at my house and I drove him up to the caves.
New Goyden first. I knew of a none SRT entrance but had no idea what it was like. It started off as an careful climb down scaffolding directly below the dry stream bed before it reaches a horizontal passage at about 8m depth. Beyond the passage opened out with many sizeable holes, where a climb meanders downwards between them. An old hand-line protects us from a potentially rather nasty fall. The final part of the climb is about 15 ft deep, with the last 5 feet being free-hanging. From here we followed the water down cascades into ‘South Avens’. and a short slope brought us down to the main stream, or should I say river!
The water was strong, not strong enough to push you off your feet but strong enough to make moving through it a challenge. Inspecting an inlet along the way, we slowly progressed to the Planeterium were we ascended a very slippery, high slope into a bit of walking passage known as Astronomers’ Passage. It soon closed down but was interesting non-the-less. We then returned to the planetarium and entered Hardy Pools Passage, turning left to explore more interesting passage with several high, muddy inlet passages whivh were full of worms, one of these passages led into another smaller version of the Planeterium which is strangely not described in Northern caves. Another inlet led through some static pools before terminating at a 5m deep climb/pitch, that Chris explored.
Reaching the stream we thought our way up river to Middle Sump before returning back through Jupiter cavern, going back up river again. Chris spotted a hand line climb which led to some crawl traversing along a passage known as Wath inlet. At the end of which was a sizeable waterfall and a pitch up through it, equipped with an SRT rope. As our SRT gear was in the car we left that for another time. This I believe led to the old original entrance, as my Northern caves is way out of date it may be an entrance again? We finished the trip by heading upstream where we were quickly stopped by a sump, which I read is normally a duck. It was not a duck today!
Back out we headed upstream to Goyden where the fun really began. It was the first time I had seen water flow into this entrance and there was quite a lot of it. Northern caves says that your not suppose to go in if water flowing into the entrance. Well I had not read that entry yet. We carefully followed the torrent into the cave. Part way along we looked up to see the ceiling plastered white with foam 20 feet about our heads eventually after slow water-filled progress we reached the downstream sump. From the sump we turned left (twice), crawled through some tubes and then followed a walking passage and reached what we thought was the main stream again, I had missed the turn off for the intended round trip. This torrent was not the water in the main passage to the left was the window pitch that had a large waterfall tumbling over the edge while ahead, lay a knotted rope climb up only it was mostly under a maelstrom of water. I managed to climb up fine, keeping out of the main flow but as the hand-line was anchored on the other side of the passage I almost got washed off at the top, it was certainly a struggle! Following the pounding water and finding a way around the sump it made at one point we reached larger passage which we left to collect some firewood!
Literally tons and tons of wood, so much, we had to dig through it to get into the passage beyond. Quite easy going passage led upstream to a small hole full of clear water (Pillar pot). Not a round trip that way, but just back from the hole was a low passage. A short ways in progress was stopped by a large tree stump that had somehow got washed in there, scary place! I managed to move it to enter passage which got lower and lower, with tight bends. This passage {Pillar Crawl or Pillar pot passage?} was going downhill in both senses of the word but by now neither of us wanted to reverse it, so our only hope was to keep going towards the rumbling of water we could hear in the distance. Each corner we came to we wondered if the passage would end here, but somehow, as if by design the passage was just big enough to let us both progress. After a final squeeze around a corner we entered into deeper water where a 20 foot long canal/duck (probably normally dry) brought us through falling water into bigger passage. (bigger as it was hands and knees). A short way on there was an easy climb down and we were back in the main stream surrounded by waterfalls. With that bit of excitement we headed out and called it a day, it was certainly good fun with high water levels but its not for the faint-hearted, and you really do have to trust the forecast when its this wet (both wind and rain), any more water in there and we could have been in trouble.
XandarJust finishing off the report, a few things of note in New Goyden I read in Northern caves, Chris. I was right that sump up stream, is normally a duck there was about 400ft of more passage beyond it. Even if it was short there was no way we could have dived it with the force of the water.
That pitch was saw going up was to an old collapsed entrance, was collapsed 40 years ago, so may be open now.
XandarThat’s just a blank post Mike? Moved your reply into club matters.
XandarDefinitely a trip for a day when it hasn’t rained for at least a week beforehand.
Or when you are a little braver ;) (and own a neo hood)
XandarWater levels were particularly high.
XandarAt a guess I would think it would be Dan and Chriss kelly.
XandarCool, you wrote a lot more then I was going to do.
That waterfall was 11m, there is another pitch above it too (8m), quite a bit up there. Guess we need a maypole to explore…
http://www.brcc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/lib/NC1/Penyghent%20Gill/SwanDikePot.png
The bit I dug out in the stream to connect upstream to downstream is not connected on the survey either, so I guess we did the first ever through trip, that way! Also that passage I squirmed my way along, is new passage on that survey. (The rocks in the way sort of indicated no one had been up there either). It still goes btw, just very tight. (Its the inlet just north of the canal).
Finally, I should say for anyone else we were in normal clothes when going into Sleets gill, which was why we did not go further on.
