Grey Wife Hole 08/07/2017
Attending: Darren, Chris Sharman, Alex, Chris Scaife, Carol Smith
At last, the opportunity to do my first NFTFH trip had arrived. A not too long trip with only a short section of water on a sunny summer’s day to warm me up afterwards. I couldn’t let this opportunity pass.
As always, we met at Inglesport: Darren, Chris Sharman, Alex, Chris Scaife and I. And we got to see Mike and Marie too!
After the inevitable faffing (trying to buy some hangers and failing at the first attempt), we drove to the parking spot, got changed and walked up to the cave, guided by Darren and his GPS (once he found out how to use it).
As promised by the description, the cave is narrow right from the beginning, but I decided to be brave (or lazy) and wore the harness from the start. A climb down, a flat-out crawl and a very narrow stream passage, where we said goodbye to Darren only a few metres before the pitch, as he turned back.
After the pitch, the sump and its bypass. The description said there was a ledge to help you avoid having a swim, but none of us could find it, so we just bridged across to the other side of the bypass. (I panicked for a second almost at the end of this section thinking I was going to slip and fall head-first but luckily the splash was averted. I did scream a bit when I got in the water, but you know I always do that).
After that, another thrutchy section of streamway before arriving to Jim’s Traverse, which was unrigged. We had the rope but none of us fancied going up that flaky and exposed wall (Alex and Sharman had a good look at it, and I did wonder why Chris wasn’t bothering, I guess he had something big planned for the next day and didn’t want to risk getting injured…).
So we headed back the way we came, and after having a bit of an argument with the tight pitchhead, Sharman’s light failing and picking up the harness Darren had left behind, we were out in the sun.
Newby Moss or beer in the sun?
You guessed right, dear reader, we went for the latter.
All in all, a fun and tiring trip. And even though we didn’t get to the end, I still consider it my first NFTFH trip.
.
