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Cavers: Chris Scaife, Roy Don Miller, Alexander Anthony Reginald (Lionel) Ritchie, Ales Hrabec
On way to entrance
Entrance to caveYoung Xander was getting all aflutter last week, thinking he was running out of Yorkshire caves. To cheer him up I had a look through my old copy of ‘Northern Caves Volume 5 The Northern Dales’, and texted him a list of obscure caves in the north that sound worthwhile. I could almost hear his delighted shrieking as he replied saying we should visit Scrafton Pot.
The weather forecast was pretty dour for Saturday, so we did what Jesus would do and spent our Sunday in the underworld. I can’t think of a cave with an entrance like it, right beside the stream flowing through the centre of the village of West Scrafton. To get to it, we had to traverse around the edge of the stream under the bridge. We made a little dam as the water levels weren’t exactly low, but only a tiny amount of water was flowing in.
Quickly down the 18m entrance pitch (rigged with a Y-hang from bolts at the pitch head and a tape deviation a short distance down) we realised that the cave has a number of passages, so decided to explore as much as we could. First we all went straight on from the foot of the pitch, through Boulder Hall, then right into the Main Stream Passage and into the frighteningly flood-prone Chert Passage. This whole section had clearly flooded to the roof with Saturday’s rain and had the feel of a sump that had been drained specially for our visit. There was definitely more of a Northern Dales feel to this part of the cave, with most of the corners being right-angles, and a band of spectacular crinoids. We headed back to Boulder Hall, then into the large and impressive Five Ways Chamber, stopping off en route to explore some side passages. Almost all of us made it through a tight squeeze in one of the side passages (marked as a dotted line on the survey).
On way to shale chamberFrom Five Ways Chamber, a steep slope on the left led into the photogenic Big Bedding Plane, and after a shoot in here, we separated and explored some passages in the vicinity. Climbing down through the floor of the chamber east of the Big Bedding Plane, I found an enormous chamber, so went scurrying back to my companions. Ales was nearby, so together we climbed back down through the boulder slope and gazed upon the large chamber. Realising that the others would want to see this, we went back up to find them. Both Anthony and Roy were entertaining themselves in their own secret passages and were initially reluctant to leave them behind, but we decided to regroup and explore together, so down down down we went, via several free climbs, into a very large chamber with a powerful waterfall entering and numerous side-passages heading off in various directions, all choked after several metres.
Having explored every nook and cranny in here, we next visited to Lionel’s North West Passage. Off the survey now, we found a narrow sideways crawl leading into some exciting aqueous climbs through torrential cascades. I expect Xaaaaaaaaaaaaaaandah will add to this description.
Bedding planeOnly Miller’s Crossing was left, so we followed the tiger cub into Upper Stream Passage, and on the way he performed a most daring squeeze. Hats off to him. The passage was a high rift, with some water in parts, a few side pitches, and another pitch linking back to one of the passages we had been in earlier.
Four hours after entering Scrafton, we were back in the World. Having read about another cave half a mile downstream, we decided to head half a mile downstream. We are cavers after all. The banks of the stream, a trickle in a field upstream of West Scrafton, became higher and more dramatic as we progressed downstream, until we were in a high-sided limestone gorge, with a Lost World feel to it. We abseiled down into the gorge and Tom Hunter’s Parlour was the obvious cave entrance on our right. With a healthy population of Meta menardi, once again almost all of us explored this 73m cave: a climb up, short crawl, then walking rift. To finish off the day, Alex and I followed the gorge down to its confluence with the River Cover, while Ales and Don de-rigged the open air pitch in the gorge.That’s strange… I recall having gone on this trip as well. However, I’m not in any of the photos. Maybe it was just a dream…
Alex, why is there a bright light coming out of your ass? Was someone giving you a rectal exam?
I was about to comment that your photographs are really improving Alex…
You cheeky sod, provided my lense is clean I do take some good photos. What about those from my solo trip recently?
Alex, why is there a bright light coming out of your ass? Was someone giving you a rectal exam?
I think you will find that is called back lighting. The reason are not in these photos is you did not hang about to have your photos taken, though you are on the bench but Alas the photo Ales took is big for me to upload and I don’t have any compression software. Oh wait you are in the first photo.
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