Cavers: Chris Scaife, Chris Sharman, Don Miller, Alex Ritchie
Weather: warm and sunny, but a bit of rain during the week
We went up to Gaping Gill to make use of the fixed ropes laid out by our friends at the BPC. Disappointment was not rigged, but Marilyn, which joins Disappointment after the second pitch, was, so we took a 25m rope to pull through the first two pitches and rig Echo Rift.
We were quickly through the thrutchy entrance series and into the short duck, the Portcullis. As a nod to history, club historian Dr R.Don offered to pull all of our pants down at this point, but we fought back and passed the duck in the more modern fashion, in neoprene hoods and on our backs.
The first pitch was rigged carelessly for a pull through and I, as last man down, must take the blame. The rope got tangled into a Gordian knot as I was pulling it, and R.Don had to save the day with his Herculean untangling, heroically ignoring Alexander’s ruthless suggestion from below. Once that unpleasantness had been dealt with, we swiftly descended the next pull through pitch, which Sharman and Xaaaaandah had free climbed, and were onto the fixed ropes from Marilyn into Hensler’s Master Cave.
This huge passage gave us a few minutes of joy, then after a stoopy section we went up a rickety old ladder to Far Country. At the Blowhole squeeze, Sharman turned back around and headed out Marilyn, leaving the three musketeers to soldier on. We got to Echo Rift pitch and it was rigged, so we’d brought the rope all this way for nothing. Not to worry. We put our hoods back on for the 3m, low airspace Southgate Duck. There’s a fair bit of crawling from here, which we interrupted with a worthwhile detour into the very well-decorated Northgate.
Slipping down a hole in the floor of Clay Cavern led into Far Waters, starting as more crawling and finishing walking through neck deep water. There were a few low sections towards the end requiring facial immersions, and the last few metres of Far Waters were sumped. None of us felt like a blind free dive so we stopped at the sump and began the long return journey.
At the foot of Echo Rift pitch we got back into our SRT kits with difficulty, barely able to use our frozen hands. A minor injury I had inflicted upon myself in Far Country on the inward journey was not getting any less painful, but inspired by R.Don’s earlier bravery I persevered and about seven hours after going down together, we came out together, emerging from a loose, unstable Marilyn in bright sunshine.
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