Marble Steps – 01/07/2016

[skyrmy]

With just Chris Kelly and I attending, we left Barrow in heavy showers and headed towards an even blacker Dales. The sky looked pretty foreboding as we hit the A65 and entered the heavy rain which stayed with us all the way to Masongill. After a quick change, the rain began to ease as we sorted ropes. By the time we set off up the lane, the rain had pretty much stopped.
We decided on the Sidewinder route down to the upper chamber with a view to bottom the cave via the Intestines. Once through the 240ft rift, the sound of falling water was quite intense and we began to think that this would be the limit of the trip. However, we climbed onto the traverse and headed to Stink Pot which was extremely quiet, the large volume of water we could hear falling, was now behind us.
Rigging Stink Pot we dropped down and continued the traverse before dropping into the pit at the start of the Intestines. Quickly through this point, the final two pitched were descended without issue. There was a bit of spray in the terminal chamber but no worse than I have seen before.

Chris took over the derigging duties and we made an uneventful way out to a pleasant sunny evening and to cancel our call out with 2 minutes to spare.

A good trip

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