Long Kin East to Rift Pot
Wednesday 17th of August
Chris Scaife and Don Miller
This is one of those classic SRT trips that I didn’t get to do in the early days of my speleological career and now I’m so damn hard I only do gnarly trips with gnarly cavers, so I thought I’d lost my chance. Added to that, my companion for the day was Don Miller, who as we know is only really happy doing trips like King Pot, Knacker Trapper, Slanting etc. I assumed I had missed my chance.
Nonetheless, Dr Miller turned up at Dalesbridge all dishevelled from his one day of work in the last eight months, feeling just faint-hearted enough to undertake a trip not not for the faint-hearted.
Fully rigged for Eurospeleo, this was a very quick and enjoyable trip, best hour and a half ever! We parked at Crummock and walked up to Long Kin East Pot, where a 5m pitch enters Long Kin East Cave, and also where I witnessed one of the most bizarre caving moments of my life.
Don threw his SRT kit at the ground and missed.
His SRT kit had simply disappeared. It had in fact fallen through a hole in the ground that had been totally grassed over, but was more than two metres deep. Being a massive cissy when it comes to hypothetical tiny spiders, Don was unable to perform in the small entrance, so I had to penetrate and grab hold of his sack.
There followed a very pleasant SRT trip without further ado, down the very impressive Long Kin East, which was almost completely dry, and out Rift Pot via several rebelays. After exiting Rift we stomped though Long Kin East Cave, then sat in the sunshine outside the Game Cock in Austwick. Let’s see you make a joke out of that, Mr Smart Guy.
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