[Don]

How was Marble Steps? The Lost Steps route is one I’d really like to check out.

[Don]

From what I understand, he’s very assiduous and meticulous with his bolting.

You’d have to be pretty brave to rig the top of the pitch as it sounds very loose. As the old saying goes, Fortune favours the bolt.

[Don]

Finally, the recognition I deserve.

If anyone wants to go back, I’d love to do They Think It’s All Over, the alternative pitch to Megatron. Alex and I saw the passage you have to swing into to get to it and it doesn’t look that difficult. It’s not a massive swing or at a severe angle. The only question is whether the bolt at the pitch head is any good. According to NFTFH, the main pitch is only rigged from a bolt and a small thread.

[Don]

It’s a shame there wasn’t any music playing while I was waiting for everyone. I would have really enjoyed listening to some John Coltrane. It would have made the time go by quicker.

[Don]

Sharman is right. The cave really is shitty. Surprisingly I had forgotten how shitty it is. Not the entire cave, just part of it.

[Don]

We searched all over and couldn’t find anything even resembling a bedding plane. No disrespect to Sharman, but he was ‘less than helpful’ in terms of directions. He couldn’t even remember which boulders to climb down between in the chamber immediately below the entrance pitch. I really envy him. Every cave he enters is entirely new to him.

[Don]

My mistake. I thought the passage did continue. The passage was rather small at that point, and you were ahead of me, so I never officially saw the end of the cave.

[Don]

That is a very factual and succinct trip report.

[Don]

Sylvester Pot to bottom of climb into Rocky Horror Show crawl:
I thought there was a lot of us on that trip, or did you have just one with Sharman?

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Sharman and I attempted this trip about two months before you, Scaife and I did. You and Scaife didn’t believe us when we told you that the climb was, well, unclimbable.

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Lords Top Hole:
Was that with me or are you saying just two people?

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You and I attempted this trip a year before Sharman and I did. Sharman and I made it as far as you and I did. Well, actually a bit further, by maybe ten feet. The low crawl at the bottom of the entrance climb is unpassable without excavation. I think it would take quite a while to dig it out as a) from what one can see of the low crawl ahead, it doesn’t improve in size, and b) there isn’t really anywhere convenient to dump the excavated soil.

[Don]

Here’s an abbreviated list of aborted trips involving just the two of us and their dates:

Yockenthwaite Pot – top of fourth pitch (6/01/2018). We turned around at the top of the fourth pitch because of the amount of water going down the pitch.

Cow Pot to ‘too tight’ rift in Aardvark Series (20/03/2018). The rift was tight and committing and we didn’t know the correct way through so we headed back out.

Sylvester Pot to bottom of climb into Rocky Horror Show crawl (24/03/2018). We turned around because we couldn’t find a way up into the crawl.

Langstroth Pot to top of second pitch (19/05/2018). We headed back out because the pitch head was very tight.

Lords Top Hole (26/05/2018). We made it as far as the very low crawl at the bottom of the entrance climb, but had to head out because the crawl was silted up.

Broken Finger Pot (26/05/2018). We made it partway through the T-shaped entrance rift, but then turned around because we didn’t know how difficult it would be to rig the first pitch.

Spectacle Pot (26/05/2018). We made it as far as the start of Splutter Crawl, then headed back out.

Crystal Cave – Dog Hole – Monsoon Chamber (23/06/2018). We turned back because we couldn’t find the correct way on.

Cupcake to top of 2nd pitch (22/09/2018). We thought the pitches would be rigged… but they weren’t.

Swan Dike Pot – top of Nasty Weather 1 (29/09/2018). We turned around at the top of Nasty Weather 1 because we couldn’t find a suitable way to drag the tackle through The Trick.

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Taking all of this into consideration – and this is only a partial list of aborted trips – I really think that we deserve to be proud of our achievement. When the two of us cave with others, our success rate increases, but only slightly. (Need I remind you of the trip in Brown Hill with Alex and Chris Kelly back in January?)

[Don]

Please stop punishing us!

[Don]

That’s the best bovine pun I’ve encowntered for a while.

[Don]

I apologise for the cow pun. I realise how udderly disappointing it was.

[Don]

The weather forecast didn’t predict freezing rain. Still, it was an ice day. We even saw some cows lying down on the fell. Presumably they were trying to keep each udder dry.

[Don]

I’m up for a dig as well. It sounds like the place has potential. I wonder why no one has given it a go already.

[Author]

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