Before the trip report begins, just to acknowledge that this is the 300th Thursday night club post on a blog set up almost 20 years ago by Tom. While he doesn't spend as much time underground he's still adventuring as hard as ever. There's loads of inspiring stuff on his website here and on his YouTube channel here.
Club caving. I've had a fantastic caving "career" spanning 20 odd years, going on trips with mates and eschewing the club scene due to not wanting to spend hours waiting at the bottom of cold, wet pitches for 20 people to ascend before you. A few years ago though, I attended a few of the truly excellent CNCC training events (see here) and was chatting about how fortunate we were as Dales cavers: free high quality topos, safe well bolted caves and massively subsidised training. With being a recipient of all of these things I'd mentioned about it feeling a bit wrong not to be giving anything back in return. The trainer, Ian Patrick, suggested signing up to the CNCC volunteer list (here) and joining a club. The club in question was the CPC and soon after I'd paid my subs and joined up.
Weekends tend to be busy with work or family commitments (thus caving on a Thursday night) so, with the exception of a terrific trip to the sump in Whitescar, I hadn't managed to make it on any club trips. A free Saturday though coincided with a trip to a cave I'd wanted to visit for a while, King pot. With the recent passing of the legendary Geoff Yeadon I'd been rewatching the fantastic Sid Perou films on YouTube about the record breaking dives in Kingsdale and wanted to see the King pot downstream sump for myself.
Friday night my bed time reading was the trip's entry in Not for the faint hearted, followed by a chapter of Pete Boardman's Sacred Summits to put everything into perspective. Saturday morning felt strange, no ropes to sort, no laminated description and a panic over what to wear. This wasn't due to caving being a particularly stylish sport but more not knowing how fast we'd be moving and whether we'd be taking on some of the more aqueous parts of the trip. I threw a number of options into the van, drove youngest to work, picked up some mini pork pies and Snickers from Lidl and headed over to Kingsdale.
Arriving at the layby by Braida Garth I was warmly greeted by the trip organiser AJ and the rest of the team, Jay, Mick, Simon, Julie and Toby began to assemble. With the team fully present it was time to get changed and as others seemed to be getting into neofleeces I followed suit, putting a balaclava in my pocket to ward off the cold if necessary. AJ had split the tackle between 7 small bags so we each had a small load and no single cumbersome tackle sack.
The walk up the hill provided a chance to start to get to know my fellow club mates. Currently the news is even more doomy and gloomy than usual and I spend most of my time at work with kids who seem hell bent on making life difficult for other people. It's extremely refreshing therefore to meet new, great people who actually reaffirm your faith in humanity.
The angle of the hill relented as we moved out of the woods onto the open moor and Julie, with the coordinates of the pot in her watch, soon had us at the entrance shake hole. Knowing it was going to be a fair while before I saw it again, I took a moment to take in Kingsdale in all its glory before following down into the shake hole and the rocky slit at its base.
Oh! King pot has a reputation but I wasn't expecting it to rear its head so soon. The 2 or so metre climb down looked awfully narrow. I couldn't call it a day here though, so slithered down, reversing this manoeuvre being the first item on a growing list of things I'd have to worry about on this trip. In the small chamber that followed AJ was quickly changing my mind about club trips, the handline was already rigged and folk were rapidly passing through the squeeze. Tackling this obstacle with SRT kit on a slither of confidence returned, it wasn't particularly squeezy, though these things are often different on return, especially when tired.
Once again arriving at the first, Perfect, pitch the rope was already rigged and a couple of people already down. Ahead I could hear calls for rope bags to be passed forward, this was definitely not AJ's first rodeo. Our tackle sack was hung at the start of a traverse over a pit as the in situ rope appeared sound and we were soon at the second pitch with its slightly constricted start. Once through I was able to pass my bag forward and enjoy the rare delight of tackle free caving.
A section of crawling followed with a couple of junctions. As well as being able to swiftly and efficiently rig it transpires AJ's also a dab hand at impromptu dry walling, the direction to go at each junction never therefore being in doubt. Before long we started what was, for me, the trickiest obstacle yet. A bedding plane traverse over an awkward width slot. Any appendage that slipped down from the horizontal plane was immediately grabbed by this rift and I began wishing for core muscles that I don't have to keep me out of it. Towards the end of this crawl a left and then right hand bend in quick succession add a further twist. Fortunately helpful advice was forthcoming from those who'd successfully negotiated these turns (lay on your right for the first and then swing your legs down to allow you to lay on your left for the second). The sense of relief at passing this point was as sudden as the 4 m drop that followed. Without the in situ rope this would be a heart in mouth moment, but with it perfectly manageable.
In the chamber at the bottom of the rope we regrouped, Simon with bag number 7, the last bag, bringing up the rear. It was at this point I discovered that not all the bags were equally light (heavy?), Simon's contained not only the longest rope for the final pitch but a large first aid kit and other group paraphernalia. I suddenly felt very guilty at my unladen passage through this bit of cave.
The way on follows Queensway (personally I'd say more to the right rather than the "directly ahead" in NFTFH). Now I'm not sure about this bit of passage, I think it probably says more about the high quality of the chat on the way out that it passed in the blink of an eye whereas on the way back, mainly solo, it seemed indeterminable.
Emma's pitch intervenes and Anne's is bypassed before the vast King Henry Hall. Bloodaxe follows, then Victoria before Elizabeth. This has to be one of my favourite pitches. I don't want to give spoilers, just go and enjoy it! With nothing to better it, removal and caching of SRT gear seemed more than appropriate and we once again regrouped, Simon now finally free of his burden.
The slippy up and over of Jane's pitch was assisted by the in situ ropes and a couple of additional slings before the final bit of crawling and short drop into the East Kingsdale main drain. We stomped up to the upstream sump, possibly the most inviting sump pool I've ever visited before retracing our steps and following the stream to the more traditional, brown and murky, historical sump.
The Black book describes the journey on from the sumps through the Grasshopper series but the general consensus was that we were more than happy having reached this point and the upward journey beckoned. Once again AJ's organisation was a master stroke and though it felt wrong at some points ending up bagless, his insistence that full bags kept being passed forward worked superbly. While some bits of passage seemed significantly longer than on our way in, we steadily ticked off obstacles and arrived back at what I felt to be the hardest, the crawl-traverse.
Keeping my bag at right angles to the rift and passing it through a couple of short cuts meant that its transportation wasn't too bad through the t-shaped passage but unfortunately Julie's bag chose this moment to disgorge its contents leaving her Stop just beyond even the longest arms reach at the bottom of the rift. Fortunately some next level thinking from those behind turned a krab on a tether into a very effective hook and line and the day was saved.
Entrance fever now gripped us and the pace seemed to significantly accelerate with this obstacle behind us and we were soon up the last couple of pitches. With elation over riding any fatigue even the last rift climb onto the moor passed without issue and we were once again on the sun drenched slopes of Kingsdale after about 7 hours underground. The walk down to Braida Garth was a lot less sweat soaked than the climb up from it though the gentle rise from the farm back to the road caused my muscles to point out that they'd been working pretty hard.
Huge thanks to AJ for his planning of the trip, to Mick for nobly volunteering to sort all the ropes out post trip and everyone else for the quality company - my previous ideas about what a club trip would be like have been blown away.
