Not gaping gill

[Xandar]

Tom did not turn up so the other 3 guys with him decided to do Rowton and not the Gaping gill exchange, but neither me or Chris fancied it. Luckily I had brought a couple of ropes (35m , 45m) and a few crabs. With a bad weather forcast we were as usual stuck for ideas though we were to find out things were very dry and very little of the forcasted rain fell.

Anyway I digress, we decided to do the usual pull through Down Swinsto, but this time followed immediately by Simpsons. The walk up the hill was always the hardest, we knew we would be doing it twice. Into the cave, we reached the first pitch its rigged! Great we can go down and back up and I can get some much needed “going up” Berger training. Only we were dis-appointed when we reached the second. Very little water about in the stream-ways and this was the first time ever I could see the bottom of the pools at the bottom of the pitches, the water was crystal clear.

From here follows was a standard trip down to the master cave, the only thing of note was we ran into ten people outside celebrating the fact it has been 50 years since the master cave was discovered. They had cake and everything but did not share!

Oh well back up the hill again… did it get longer since last time? Into Simpsons (still not seen any rain yet). Simpsons had even less water in it. We could have done something bigger/wetter, but the weather has been so uncertain recently. Down we went, until I stopped us as I wanted to explore the pit.

Its interesting down there, of course it was dry. At the bottom there were 2 p anchors on the left wall over what looked like a narrow crack down to solid floor. I slithered down and found I could get through with gear on easily (why do so many people get stuck down here). The next pitch was at the end of a short crawl just below the crack. As it seemed easy enough I called Chris down and he found it easy enough too. I was about to go back up and change the pitch above to a pull through, but Chris made a very good point that due to the position of the P-bolts it would be highly likely the rope would get stuck on the lower pithc, so in the end we thought better of it and prussiced back up and carried on the normal route.

Swinsto great aven was rigged so we went down that, but in retrospect we both thought we should have done the slit as neither of us had done it in a while. No cake on exit this time, not like they would have given us anyway. It had started raining but it was a mere drizzle.

In the end we both agreed it was a decent trip, even if its one we had both done (normally as separate trips) before.

[Chris Sharman]

Good trip.
It looked easy enough to get onto the next pitch from the bottom of the blind pit, but the P hangers were above a couple of awkward slots – would have been lots of rope rub, and probably wouldn’t have pulled through easily.
Don’t see why people would wait for rescue though.

[Xandar]

I think those P-bolts are pretty new, most of the rescues took place when they were bolts, but there was a natural or two in there that could be used in an emergency so you are right, why get rescued?

[skyrmy]

Was it the BPC celebrating? lol.

I think Barrow got all of the rain yesterday – torrential for most of the morning/early afternoon. Sounds like it was a good trip all the same.

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