Three of us signed up for this trip, namely Me, Don and shaman. The idea was to do Lord Tot’s then a reccy into Broken finger.
We got to Lord Tot’s and the first issue was the initial belay (the wooden stake) which immediately broke. Thankfully the grassy slope to the edge is not too bad, so you are not likely to fall, as the spiky tree would likely stop you. Don rigged and complained a lot about said tree and we descended. The second pitch had some old rope on, which I think was digging rope. Don was however quite happy to use the old digging rope for some reason, I insisted we used the rope we brought.
The second pitch is basically two separate drops of about 10m with climbs in-between dropping down a dig for a good 30m. A tight slot leads off from here, before a small chamber where things get properly tight. Beyond the chamber there is a very flat out crawl in water.
I went in first, and unfortunately Don and Shaman were unable to follow. The initial tight crawl continued for a several meters about as tight as that first bit in P5 (right at the start after the boulders). From there it remained low crawl in a narrow tube for about 40m with no where to turn around to encourage those behind me (or dig it from my side). From here there was out equally tight section which can be dug bigger as the floor is gravel, at this point things get wide enough to actually turn around. After here things gradually improve as do the formations. Eventually a cross over passage is joined and after a few easy climbs (down, then up) a large chamber is reached. From here after another passage in a rift, it’s about 20m to a to another low and wet passage which signals the end of the cave, as it gets far too low.
On the way out I heard who I thought was Don, but it turned out to be a guy called Shane who had followed us in (after asking Ron permission to join us, who I also had no idea he was coming). That was a weird encounter, to say the least. But I was happy to take him to the end again as well as explore the inlets as well.
Once on the surface (the crawls must had been dug out a bit as it seemed easier going that way) we met Ron, who was digging a nearby hole with Don.
As Shaman did not want to do Broken finger and neither would Ron (Shane was happy to, though), I thought we should do a club trip that everyone could come on and do Heron pot, where I searched in vain for some crabs I lost in there a few weeks ago.
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