Mossdale Caverns (12 June 2021)

[Don]

Cavers Present: Alex, Don

Alex is better placed to write a description of this cave than me. It was a complete maze. I wouldn’t have found my way in, through or out without him. It was a really fun trip, though, one of the most fun I’ve had in a while. Lots of squeezes and watery bits. And on the way out through Kneewrecker Crawl we ran into Simon Beck. The entire cave should be called kneewrecker.

Alex made a video of parts of our trip. The best part is from 2.05-2.15, where I emerge from a long, low crawl through a canal into a chamber and tell Alex that ‘at least I managed to keep my head dry’. Then Alex punches me in the head and I fall into the stream.

[Dazofcaving]

I wanna go later in the year when am back to fitness

[Xandar]

It was really low water levels I think the lowest I have seen the place, you did not even need to take your helmet off in Drown or Glory and I never bothered with my Neoprene hood.

Our trip took in places like Confusion cavern, Rough chamber and we made it all the way. Rather than taking the easy way to knee wrecker down the correctly named easy passage we took a low crawl down pararrel stream (straight way) to reach Rough chamber. We then did Knee wrecker where as you can see from the video it was rather wet due to shingle build up at the end.

We then explored up the northern relief passages which were actually more extensive then they seem on the survey. One ends in a too tight squeeze with possibly more passage beyond. The other ends at a too small passage (no hoper) and finally one ends at a boulder choke were a tight squeeze seemed to lead into more passage, but I did not fully commit and it felt like it was blocked when I probed with my feet.

Then we went south to south relief and through the wettest bit of the cave so far to reach 4 ways. Again it was wet due to a shingle build up. Finally in our attmempt to get to Tunnel caves we ended up in Imperial way and decided to turn around at a muddy dead end. If we had turned left we could have gotten to our destination oh well. We returned via Easy passage.

Trip time 5.5 hours I think. I drew in on the survey our trip.

[rob]

It’s interesting you met Simon Beck in there, it’s almost as if he lives in there.
If you look on youtube and look up Mossdale, Simon has chronicled his incredibly numerous trips in there. Last time I looked he was up to 100!

[Author]

Posts