P5 (Dales)

Alex

Well-known member
I am surprised no one has written a trip report on this place, has it ever been visited since NFTFH was written? It appears it had not been visited for a while as the entrance crawl had gravelled up, anyway....

Having read the NFTFH description and thinking it did not sound too bad, I thought why not. Becka had contacted me by e-mail (I had bottomed Langcliff on an exploration trip with her last year). After a few back and forth e-mails e settled on P5 as she and her friend Andy had spent 2 hours digging it out on Friday, before the rains came.

We met up on Sunday, It had only gone 9:15 when we arrived in Clapham a very uncharacteristic early start for me. We quickly packed up our gear and set off up the hill, in cool misty but dry weather. We reached the entrance where a stream was now flowing into a nearby shake-hole, created from the storms the previous day. Not ideal conditions and I began to wish I had brought my neoprene.

The entrances starts off loose, very loose in-fact. We carefully wormed our way down being careful not to touch well anything. It may had been better to rig this vertical death chamber with a ladder, but rig it to what? Anyway at the bottom a small sideways crawl led into another loose chamber, ninja skills required here too.

This ended at a flat out crawl where Becka and Andy spent most of their time 2 days ago. I looked through to see Becka had already got to the other-side of the "crawl" and was beckoning me through. I looked at it and thought, is that human size, it don't look like I will fit? Well it must be large enough, Becka got through. I slowly slithered into the water that covered the floor of this flat out passage. I soon found it quite difficult to move as the gravel welled up underneath me. Several times I had to stop and shift bits of gravel out of the way. Eventually after quite a struggle I got through to meet Becka.

After this there was a short sitting section, where it would be possible to put on (or take off) SRT gear at this point. The passage from here to the pitch was not too hard, a typical trench affair and except for jamming the bag a few times was quite easy going compared to what we had just come through. At the pitch head, there was room for 1 person to put on their gear whilst sat on the edge. Taking it in turns to kit up we both dropped down. You definitely don?t want loads on this trip. It might be better to do this pitch on ladders but it is do-able SRT.

At the bottom the looseness resumed, a rubble slope led up to a climb down. All the time on this slope everything we stood on, moved underneath us. Once past this and down the climb there was more low passage. The CRO crawl? No this was far too easy, it was almost hands and knees crawling. A slightly awkward drop then window led around a corner into large passage again.

From here more careful sliding past wedged boulders in the floor of the chamber led us down to a final decaying scaffold shaft of very dubious vintage and the start of the infamous CRO crawl. Becka carried on leading the way, having got this far on Friday. The crawl very quickly dropped to flat out proportions and it was wet. Soon it got very tight too, gravel again causing issues, jamming me against the smooth rock. It dug into me as I pushed on regardless and eventually slithered through. Becka got through it with far greater ease. The rest of the crawl to the next squeeze was a horrible low affair, not strictly tight at about 10-12 inches high. But pushing your helmet and bag in-front of you through this very knobbley, low and wet passage made me quite nervous as did not being able to see where I was going due to the bag blockage, I normally don't take my helmet off in passages like this. In addition to the dimensions the water was flowing except when it pooled around the bag and me. Not a lot of flow but given time or maybe a bit more rain it could become dangerous. At least that was how it felt. Eventually I came to the crux, Becka having crawled most of the way to the pitch by this point.

The crux is a tight corner with an even-tighter bypass. I tried the bypass first and found there was no chance in heck I was going to make it over it, I could not even get my shoulders in. Becka had managed it with relative ease. I tried the corner, I wriggled, thrashed, rotated but whatever I tried I seemed to end up either jamming up against my elbow or jamming my legs if I managed to get further. I was not getting through, I tried several more times and realised I was getting quite cold and tired. Perhaps if I was wearing my neofleece I would have been able to take off my over-suit at the start for this bit, but there was no room here and it would be silly to try and strip off here in the cold. So the cave had beat me and I had to shout to a no-doubt disappointed Becka that I could not follow. (Becka had reached the pitch head, there is room she tells me to put on gear again at the end).

I reversed, I reached the first squeeze in CRO crawl going feet first, there was no room in the crawl itself to turn. I tried pushing myself through but gravel soon stopped me and dug into my chest. I moved forward and pushed that gravel out. I tried again same result but I got an inch further than last time. This went on for about 10 minutes as I went into the crawl and back out again each time my chest was getting more bruised from the gravel. Eventually with Becka almost in-front of me now I gave it one last push and went through using the ?riggle? technique.

We were both quite cold and visibly shivering from the wet crawl so we set a faster pace going out. I found getting off the 1st pitch much harder then going down, expelling more energy. To save time, I negotiated the entrance crawl to the start of the flat out bit with my gear on. I stripped off and entered the last tight bit. Without Becka?s guiding light, wallowing in the water in this flat out, tight crawl led me to almost panic, with my face in the water while stuck. I involuntary shouted for help before I told my self to calm down. I also realised I could now put my hand under my head and I was basically out of it, so I was not going to drown. I also learned not to push my bag in-front of me, through this. Even Becka said it was far worse coming this direction.

All that was left was to levitate up the entrance shaft/boulder pile and embrace the sweet light of day. Becka must had forgotten to defy physics and stood on something triggering a bit of a collapse. Luckily it did not seal me in as the boulder and it?s friends had settled in there new positions. I floated out and plonked myself on the surface. A failure? But alive. Fun trip, even if it was rather short (3 hours).

So maybe I could tick it off with a neofleece only approach to the CRO crawl, but I am not certain I can psychologically take all that loose stuff again! I would definitely go on a drier day, as on Friday I was told the CRO crawl was almost completely dry.
 

adam

Member
What a shocker!
Of all the caves in NFTFH, it seems this one has no redeeming features which might offset the misery.
Thanks for the report  :)
 

Alex

Well-known member
I believe it does improve and have "redeeming features" once you get past the bit I got stuck at, we were at the end of the really hard stuff. There is a lot of cave on the survey it's almost 1km long, I must had done 90m, so 10%?
 

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
Thanks for posting this, Alex - really enjoyed reading it and knowing I won't ever be going down there  :eek:
 

chunky

Well-known member
Pegasus said:
Thanks for posting this, Alex - really enjoyed reading it and knowing I won't ever be going down there  :eek:
I'm with you on that one Pegasus!

Ace report and good effort, nice to have people do these caves so I don't have to!

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
chunky said:
Pegasus said:
Thanks for posting this, Alex - really enjoyed reading it and knowing I won't ever be going down there  :eek:
I'm with you on that one Pegasus!

Ace report and good effort, nice to have people do these caves so I don't have to!

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

Oh but you do - no photos in Alex's fine report.  Obviously needs a photographer down there  ;)
 

Alex

Well-known member
Only photo I have is after the event. I did consider taking my go-pro but these hard caves have scratched my housing too much, so nothing would come out. You would not see much anyway, a bit of dirty water here, a side of a bag there...

As for photos... There is a couple of chambers that may be photo worthy maybe take pictures of all the loose stuff to make sure no one ever goes down there again!. The small wet passages yeh but I am not hanging about longer then I have to in them, to bother messing about with a camera.
 

Noah

New member
Had a great trip down here on Monday. Alex, I would wait for it to be very dry, and not wear too much. A furry with rash vest and neoprene shorts with thin cordura was all I wore and I was fine (I normally suffer from the cold easily) - all that wriggling and bag pushing should keep you warm,there's no way I'd want to do that in a wetsuit!! I am 5'11'' and managed to pass the tight bend in CRO crawl, getting the legs round by rolling around onto my back as you come through, as you would in rolly-polly-passage in Peterson's - only it's a bit tighter and more committing. The main disadvantage is you get your back wet. Passed the flat out squeeze option on the way back, didn't find it much tighter than the other squeezes in CRO crawl, so maybe if you don't wear too much it'll be okay... Just so you know, the pitch at the end of CRO crawl is also exceedingly tight, I have bruised ribs from squeezing through where my descender pressed in - maybe you could put it on a cowstail to help.

After this, and the pretty frightening climb up into Life Boulevard (warning - the ladder has snapped on one side as I found out to my horror near the top - we left a new rope on here to self-line with your chest jammer whilst climbing, though I don't suppose it'll get much traffic) the cave is much bigger - Life Boulevard is pretty large and easy with walking - reminded me of a super scaled down version of the horizontal phreas that forms the backbone of the big Felix Trombe through trip, although maybe it only seemed this way in contrast to the tight stuff in the entrance. It's surprisingly complex down there with all sorts of side-passages leading off, and some big avens. Shrimp passage is a pleasant wallow compared to the entrance series.
 

Alex

Well-known member
Hmm maybe I was just having an off day, I must admit I have not done a lot of hard and tight caving recently as most people tend to not want to do these harder places, so I am out of practice.

Like you say it might be what I wore, I had 3 layers and a small backup light around my neck.
 

Noah

New member
Yeah I had a backup round the neck, not such a good idea - it was a struggle to get a hand to it to pull it to one side once in the squeeze, in order to fit. As for practice, this was my third time underground since last September...  ;)
 
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