Cavers: Chris Scaife, Chris Kelly, Alex Ritchie, Rob Santus
The Arkansas English Dictionary defines the verb ‘to Don’ thusly: ‘to put on an item of clothing, such as one’s caving helmet’.
Following Saturday’s series of unfortunate events for one individual who shall remain nameless, it has now been updated to include the definition: ‘to drive for two hours, have breakfast in Inglesport, then head up to Leck Fell; then, when on the walk across to the cave entrance, to have it pointed out to one that one’s helmet is missing, so to return to one’s car without a word to one’s companions and simply to disappear.’
Anyway, the remaining cavers found the entrance after Alex had shouted and screamed at his phone just enough for the GPS to start to work. We climbed down the scaffolding, then at the head of the first pitch Rob was in dire straits thanks to his ancient light – he still uses a Petzl Duo that must be about 20 years old. I gave him my spare and there was light. At the bottom of the pitch, we doffed SRT kits to crawl into Haywagon Passage – straws everywhere. Back to the main route, we went down The Incredibles – a short pitch with a sloping approach – and traversed across to the head of the next pitch: Heavenly Joys. After a bit of crawling, we slipped into the Pleasures of the Palm side passage and slithered along that as far as a pitch, for which none of us could be bothered to return to the start for our SRT kits.
Once down the final pitch, Oliver Lloyd, we stomped along Notts II for a bit, admiring things, then headed out the Committee Pot entrance.
That night, we drank and dined at the Helwith Bridge, joined by Ron, June, Shaman, John, Carol and Oscar. He Who Must Not Be Named did not make an appearance. Alex found out that his new favourite drink is neat Malibu, and that not everyone has seen the episode of the Simpsons featuring Malibu Stacy, which is a shame because he was cracking some absolute corkers on that theme.
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