Aqueous Aquamole 29/02/2020

[skyrmy]

The other trip of the day.

Present: Chris Kelly, Neil Harrison, Mike Skyrme

With Scaife and Alex opting for a photography trip in Lancaster Hole, the three of us left them in Ingleton and headed into Kingsdale where the beck was something to behold! This was going to be a damp trip lol.

The usual parking spot was already taken by three from Morley Pothole Club but we managed to squeeze in behind before asking their plans – Aquamole. We discussed sharing rigging and opted to rig the main pitch. As they were still sorting ropes, we headed up the fell to the entrance.

Finding this rigged and not wanting things confusing we decided to use the insitu ropes (thanks Rupert) for the dribbly entrance series leaving the way clear for MPC to rig.

Reaching Rabbits Graveyard we could hear the other party behind us but we pressed on and were soon at the head of the (rather damp on the day) main pitch.

The original intent was to rig the main pitch as rebelays to speed things up but couldn’t get the krabs to lay right over the insitu slings so reverted to the deviations for an uneventful, if somewhat damp descent.

With three of us down and no sign of the other party, we began our return journey.

On reaching Rabbits Graveyard we came across two of the MPC party, one of whom had unfortunately fallen on the last pitch of the entrance series. We offered assistance if he wished to try and exit but he wasn’t confident due to back and leg pain. The other member of the party had already exited to call for help.

As there was nothing further we could do, we decided to exit the cave before it got busy.

On the surface, we met members of CRO and again offered assistance but they said they had sufficient numbers, thanked us for the offer and told us to go get changed.

A quick change and we headed to the Marton Arms for warmth and beer.

Hats off to CRO for their speedy response and The BRCC wish the MPC casualty a speedy recovery.

[Xandar]

Phew so you guys were not the ones being rescued in this one. They must have had enough members like you said as UWFRA was not invovled. Well done in trying to help anyway.

Interestingly water levels were not too bad in Lanc, or wretched. The stream was barely flowing on the outside of the cave as well. It was flowing past mystral but it was easily crossable, all the water seemed to come from the going stream on the right, as the water all sank at cow dubs.

[Xandar]

Oh so there was a second call out from the cave on the same day, blooming heck!

This I guess is the incident you were involved in.

[CRO Facebook post]

We had a busy day yesterday, busy but very successful. More on the other shouts later.

We received a call to assist an injured caver who had fallen down a pitch in Aquamole Pot in Kingsdale. A hasty party of team members went underground with first aid and emergency equipment to assess the casualty and report back as to what additional kit was required and also the extraction plan. Additional cavers followed with extra equipment and a surface team prepared a hauling system at the cave entrance.

The casualty was treated for leg, pelvic and possible lumbar injuries before being packaged in a drag stretcher. Due to space restrictions in the cave, the casualty was initially hauled using a counter balance technique where a team member is effectively attached to the same rope as the casualty and is used as ‘ballast’ to assist the other team members hauling the stretcher up the pitch of the cave. Once the casualty was suitably far enough towards the surface, he was attached to the surface hauling system which utilised a tripod over the cave entrance to assist in bringing the casualty up the final vertical entrance pitch.

Due to the nature of the casualty’s injuries, we requested the assistance of our friends at Yorkshire Air Ambulance who performed some superb flying in very tough conditions and some equally superb casualty care. After an initial assessment on the fell, the casualty was loaded into Helimed 98 and transported to LGI for further treatment.

The weather was a bit on the grim side towards the end of the incident so we didn’t waste much time de-rigging our kit and getting off the fell as soon as we possibly could.

We would also like to thank Louise and John, two Nottingham University Caving Club members who stopped their planned trip and came to assist us in hauling the casualty to the surface, as promised you’ve both got free rescues for life – we hope you never have to cash them in👍

https://cro.org.uk/incident-11-2020-feb-29th-sat-12-50hrs-…/

[Scaife]

There were three CRO callouts – Aquamole, Alum (alert only) and Rowten. The rebelay incident was Rowten.

[Xandar]

Ahh yes I was getting Rowton and Aqua mole mixed up.

[Scaife]

Someone from Morley Pothole Club has posted this on ukcaving:

“For anyone interested, our friend was transported to LGI where it was found he had fractured vertebrae and brusing to the leg and ankle. He was discharged later in the evening.”

[Author]

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