13th of December 2015
Cavers: Chris Scaife, Chris Sharman, Alex Ritchie, Tom Howard, Andy Farrow
Weather: another wet weekend, with Storm Desmond not forgotten
To get away from the often photogenic (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-35026529) but cave-filling effects of the recent storms, we decided to go to North Wales for a change. Xander and I went mountain biking in Llandegla on Saturday and stayed overnight in Llangollen, then on Sunday met Tom and Andy at the end of the road to Minera quarry. Sharman had been misdirected by a local dog walker (I say local, I didn’t ask) and was innocently twiddling his thumbs over by the Minera lead mines, but we found him and, anyway, on with the trip report.
The 10m entrance pitch led into a fairly confusing network of passages and we initially headed to Boundary shaft, which Andy descended with a 60m rope and found no way on at the bottom. While he was doing this, we were exploring alternative passages, some winding down quite close to the foot of the pitch, with Alex making particular efforts to touch the base of his shaft, as it were.
We then went down a small pitch and into a tall, narrow rift where Indiana Jones fan fiction author Xander got chased by a boulder. When I saw this happen I thought, as I often do, that Xander was falling to his death but he assures me he was in full control and simply running down the slope.
After a brief wander down a pitch and up a scaffolded shaft, we headed towards the passages above the lake for some SRT fun. The journey there involved a couple of short drops, climbs and traverses, an easy squeeze and a crawl over sharp rocks. The SRT section featured a few short ascending pitches and traverses, with loose rock everywhere. The rope for the top pitch was strangely taut, necessitating a diagonal prusiking approach. I was busy cursing this ridiculous rigging when I got to the top of the pitch, just as Tom and Sharman were coming back saying the way on was too loose. At that point a huge amount of loose rock crashed down the pitch. Had the rope not been taut the rock would have fallen onto the hapless, but handsome, caver below. Oh my ACTUAL God. It’s probably best not to think about these things too much. We headed out without further ado, a fun trip.
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