16/04/2016 Guscett pot, frog pot – Thrope pot & Low Eglins

[Xandar]

As no one else was available for Saturday, me and Don arranged our own trip which was to join the aptly named Black Sheep diggers, despite the lack of digging today.

First we dropped into Guscett having a look at a lot of narrow, tubular crawls, quite squalid but Don seemed to enjoy them.

Then off into Frog to do the through trip. First we went down some very wet scaffolding before some crawls led us to the pitch. We abseiled this though I had free-climbed it in an upwards direction some weeks earlier (not recommend as its 21 meters I found out!). At the bottom me and Ralf dug out the shale to lower the water in the upstream passage to dig at a later date while Don went up a rope in a rift full of sticks and rocks, as we wanted to check what it did. Not much it seems

We then went downstream, before leaving the water behind and climbing up 4m then a high chimney of about 10m before tackling the 30m long flat out blasted crawl (by the Blacksheep diggers). Shortly we were at another pitch. However we took the bypass which was a narrow passage leading down a few climbs the second to bottom of which is very greasy and difficult to reverse I found in the past. We picked up a stream and followed that for a short distance via a crawl traverse before we emerged at the head of a knotted rope climb in the main stream-way. We exited by Thorpe, and showed Ralf the hole in the roof opened up at the dig end. I then had the bright idea of crawling past the entrance shaft into the continuing passage and made a strong voice connection with the end of the dig and was even able to throw some stones at him, so seems a bit pointless digging there any-more.

We then went to Low Eglins (locked), this was a long walk but the weather was sunnyish. The cave is about 600 – 800m long and largely consists of sideways walking passage and some nice formations, but it was not very sporting, with the exception to a roped climb early on. All was left was a long walk back to the cars when we got hailed on for good measure.

[Don]

It was a fun day. Guscott, though very short, is still well worth a visit. I think we spent a total of about 25 minutes in there. The tubular crawls are actually quite fun in their own way.

The Frog Pot – New Goyden – Thrope Pot through trip was fantastic. Very enjoyable with a bit of everything – squeezes, flat out crawls, free climbs both up and down, a decent sized pitch, a big stomping streamway, and a somewhat scary exit from the cave under large, loose boulders. Not a long trip though. Only took us about an hour and a half. Still a lot of fun though. Combining the through trip with an exploration of the many side passages would make an excellent day’s caving and take several hours.

As for the Low Eglin’s Hole trip, not worth it in my opinion. The entire trip consists walking/stooping/crawling in a small stream passage that is rarely any taller than 2m. It’s very boring and monotonous. The only (marginal) excitement is the very brief crawl traverse just beneath the entrance, and the two climbs, both of which are relatively short (around 3m or so). Otherwise, not really worth the trek as far as I’m concerned.

[Author]

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