5th May 2025 - Rowten part III

Through work I've recently been acquainted with a superb fellow called John who's a proper caver - he's a rescue team member and everything! Having heard about our recent trip through Rowten he mentioned that it's a trip he'd like to do. Well the weather's still holding, we'd ropes that needed retrieving and handily it was a bank holiday; a rare Monday night trip was on the cards.

It was lovely walking up onto the moor with just a single short rope and our masks between us, unencumbered by heavy tackle sacks. It was great too arriving at a pre rigged entrance and despite the presence of myriad sheep, it seems that they don't like nibbling at caving ropes. With the ropes already in place we were at the bottom of the main pitch in no time. Unlike last week though sunlight still lit the upper part of the main shaft in a a spectacular display.

The main pitch rope was unclipped from the bolt at the bottom and the bag clipped as high as possible on it so we can hopefully retrieve it from above in the near future. From this point on we rerigged the pitches so that we could pull through, removing the need for a visit to the lower reaches to remove ropes.

For the second time this week I stood in the sump pool and repeated my pre dive preparations. I like to keep things the same, the only difference being that I was going to use a rope to pull through the bags and the tackle sack containing my harness and pitch ropes wasn't in a dry bag so was negatively buoyant. 

I thought I might be more aware of my surroundings on this trip through, but once again it was just pull on the rope until it broke through the surface of the water. I don't know if it was the negative buoyancy or the thicker rope, but it was definitely easier to pull the bags through than previously. Once they were through it was then on again through the 4m sump to the bell where I'd said we'd regroup. Bags retrieved, John followed shortly afterwards. 

Last trip I had the privilege to see Tony's face as he came through the sumps for the first time and I wasn't disappointed at John's reaction either. It's hard to put into words: is it making the trip from one cave to another, arriving somewhere new, doing something you didn't know that you'd be able to do, the relief of breathing air again? For me it's a mixture of all these emotions and popping out of the pipe they come flooding back again, with the addition of how surreal it feels to see the car a few seconds away.