Easegill

[Xandar]

We had a bit of a mess up with regards to gear, we had intended to do Boggarts but as each person thought the other person was bringing the gear. This was made worse when the other person became too ill to attend so it was just me and Chris Scaif scratching our heads with the two ropes I brought just in-case Don was short. Our other issue was the weather being for-casted to be poor (what a surprise) we were limited.

However in the end we decided to go to County with a view to exploring.

We used my short rope to drop the county pitch and then explored upstream, its quite an interesting passage not sure why I had never been up there before. It included a nice stream way and a few crawls and climbs but we were stopped by a large waterfall coming out of a very small rift high up near Innominate Sink.

We then headed downstream and pushed inlets on the left as we came to them. The first one (Green Passage) started off well decorated but soon deteriorated to a muddy crawl which eventually ended at a boulder choke. The second inlet (Butterfield’s passage) was more interesting starting with a very wet rope climb into a very wet passage. After an almost flat out section in water we were stopped at a water filled tube. If there was less water we could have continued but due to the passages size the water just filled up round your body and pushed you out again. Just before the climb there was another inlet which led to a very tight squeeze which only Chris braved led. This led into a small aven chamber we thought may have been unexplored, but sorry Chris it’s on the survey, so those sore ribs were for nothing.

We then wandered down to Platypus and then back up stream via the other route and took the normal route to Wretched through Battle of Britain chamber. On the way there I decided to look at a very tight crawl which bypasses the 5m ladder pitch (Cono crawl). The crawl is reached by an exposed traverse across the chamber on the right. Once in the crawl I found it was indeed tight. The first section had an awkward verticle bend squeeze where finding your place in the rift was important. This was followed by a less awkward but far tighter squeeze down a narrow reach the floor. Lots of wriggling ensued for me to get through this one, I only did it once Chris had confirmed I would emerge in larger passage from the other side. Thankfully unlike Chris’s squeeze this one was on smooth rock so did not end up with any bruising.

On-wards to monster cavern which we followed until we dropped down on the left to reach Lower Snail cavern. After a bit of poking in boulders I noticed a hole that was not there last time I was here. So gingerly we explored it. It dropped into what looked like solider passage down a slope until we could see the water, filtering up through rocks. To the left was a very loose looking crawl between more boulders which emerged into a small chamber in boulders. There was a way down to reach the stream proper but upon initial testing of the rocks, Chris managed to drop the floor by about foot, as several large boulders moved. There was a way around these looser boulders which I was semi happy with. So I volunteered to drop down and have a look at the stream passage we could see (rather foolishly) after a short distance in now solid passage I reached a sump where the water welled up from. This may be dry in drier weather so may be worth a revisit, but the passage might close off again. We left and congratulated each other on not dyeing. Now this section is not on the survey so it could very well be unexplored though its just heading to the main stream.

We returned and exited via county having left our SRT kits at the bottom of the pitch. We needed to do some rope work though, so we grabbed my other rope from the car (40m) and rigged Cow. Which we went up and down 3 times until we got bored.

A varied day out with some “exciting” exploration, topped off with Berger training.

[Scaife]

An excellent trip.
In that boulder choke I was standing on something I thought was solid, but I had mentioned a loose boulder nearby. Alex asked me which boulder was the loose one and I tapped it with my foot, which caused that boulder and the one I was standing on to slide a worrying distance.

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