A dry Sunday, after a wet Saturday. Rob had mentioned Dentdale a number of times but owing to time and the rather flood prone nature of the area, we never made it, until now that is.

I’d long wanted to visit Upper Hackergill Cave but (circa 2006) on UKC there were suggestions that it was blocked, which dampened my desire to pay a visit.

Fast forward 9 years, strolling up the streambed, we found a low entrance, then an entrance that looked blocked. Low it is. This starts as it means to go on, faffy. Narrow twisting rift, too tight in places so traverse up, faffy! Eventually we reached a junction with a larger passage. Upstream to a split, I went left and reached a crawl with a few muddy looking chokes about, then a split. I retraced to join Rob on the right passage (and another split). In one of those splits was the other entrance, not blocked, cheekily hidden behind a tree to the side of the obvious looking blocked cave!
A quick nip downstream to where it got low and back out.

On to the River Dee. We soon found ourselves at Black Dub and the obvious resurgence of Hackergill Cave. A quick crawl in and out of this pleasant passage before we headed up the gorge. Missed the entrance to Nirvana, we stopped in the open cobbly river-bed, got attacked by midges, had a think and decided to revisit the gorge to try and find the cave. Rob inspected something downstream whilst I spotted a pile of twigs down to the right, behind which it looked briefly small, then big. I removed the debris and could feel cave air! It looked very small though.
Soon through (not as bad as it looks) and faced with a tricky climb. We stepped right and climbed down. Nice passage to a further climb and spacious chamber. At the far end Rob found a rope draped over some calcite, which he duly peeled off (we guess it doesn’t get much traffic). We poked our heads up a muddy slope and headed out, a return will be made one day..
For future reference; from Ibbeth follow river bed, when you reach the start of the gorge clamber down to ledge above pool. Over on the true right side, just before the ledge narrows, at foot level is a small opening – might need clearing of debris. It’s only very low for a metre or so and quickly opens out.
After this short visit we headed to Ibbeth where the entrance was obscured, it was hidden behind a mass of flood debris. Luckily I had an idea where it was and just spotted the top of the wooden ‘gate’ peeping above the debris. Soon cleared, we headed in and Rob went off exploring whilst I suffered the misery of failing batteries with the camera and flash

We exited and made a quick change (midges, again) and headed for refreshments in the Sun. The pub that is, although we did enjoy our pint in the sun too..

A few snaps on FB, if you haven’t already seen them.