Ireby Fell Cavern (Cripple Creek Round Trip)

[Don]

This is an excellent trip and one that would no doubt have been included in NFTFH had the route been discovered/excavated fully before the publication of the former in 2006. The trip includes an amazing variety of challenges: a decent sized pitch in the entrance series (Bubbles), low crawls, flat-out crawls, numerous squeezes, narrow rift passages, free-climbs, numerous pitches up and down on electron/rope ladders, a memorable squeeze in a duck, a traverse rigged above a ~13m deep pit, and several route finding issues (though these are relatively minor). The overwhelming majority of the trip consists of low to flat-out crawls. These weren’t too bad on the knees though as many of the crawls are on either hard packed dirt or else loose dirt and/or sand. It was one of the most enjoyable caving trips that I’ve done so far and one that requires a good deal of stamina – it took us a total of seven hours to complete. Rather than post a full description of the route here, it makes more sense to point those interested in discovering more details to the most excellent trip report written by Dunc and Pete following their trip there in 2009 (see the link below). It has all the pertinent details.

http://www.brcc.org.uk/reports/north/IrebyFellCavern3.pdf

[Chris Sharman]

Well done Don.
As you say, an excellent trip (me, Don, Alex)

[Xandar]

We did a little extra than the normal trip as we went downstream to check on the rigging first braving the duck twice before finally doing it a 3rd time on the way out, by that time we were soaked to the bone anyway.

We did not have to rig them as Well pitch still had Euro speleo rope on it for some reason, we left our rigging bag on it so we were not de-rigged on (The other route was rigged as an emergency anyway, though of dubious vintage).

[Don]

I had such a good time on the trip that I obviously forgot that there were other people on it apart from myself.

[Chris Sharman]

I guess it’s worth mentioning that the fixed ropes we found were in good condition, having apparently been replaced since Alex was last down there.

[Xandar]

Yeh wish we had known that before taking 40m pull through rope with us. (Chris is referring to esculater rift pitches) the Bubbles pitch which we rigged was still the original old rope, put in when Dave was still at Inglesport.

[Author]

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