Corky's Pot: weather problems

[DaveL]

I was staying in the Dales over New Year and opted to do Corky's Pot (the new GG entrance recently opened by the BPC) on New Year's Day, with a group of Cambridge and Red Rose cavers. On the way down, it was a very pleasant trip. On the way up, it was less so.

While we had been down there, it had rained heavily on the surface, and the water levels had gone up sharply. The SRT pitch out of Mud Hall was extremely drippy, and some of the crawls were a great deal less pleasant with several inches more water in the bottom. Much worse was to come, however: the last three ladder pitches (Arnold's, Picnic, and Anniversary) were all utterly miserable, with the full force of the water falling on our heads and insufficient room in the shafts to move out of the way. We finally emerged totally drenched and borderline hypothermic, and only recovered through an intensive course of medication with ale and chips in the New Inn.

So: if any of you are contemplating a trip to Corky's, go for it - it's a great cave - but take an extremely careful look at the weather forecast first!

(If any of the original BPC digging team are around on this forum, perhaps you could enlighten us as to how often this happens? Were we just unlucky, or does it get this wet often?)

 

[tubby two]

Hmmm? I thought it was a relativley dry cave, it not being a very big stream and all (if a stream at all), but then it was dry when we went down. Has anything beeen altered with the drainage up top?

(p.s. thats a lovely shiny suit in that picture dave- hope you dont wast it?!?)

tt.

 

[DaveL]

The actual size of the stream is not large, but the cave is too small to get out of the way of the water on the pitches: the whole flow goes down the back of your neck. To be fair, it had been raining on and off for most of the preceding week when we did it, so the ground up top was pretty saturated.

(As for the nice shiny suit: I think the last cave it had been down when that photo was taken was Swildon's, which is probably the best suit-washing cave I can imagine! Certainly there was no deliberate premediatated attempt at cleanliness - not guilty, m'lud.)

 

[tubby two]

not guilty, m'lud

Exonerated, my good sir!

tt.

 

[cave junky]

From my experience corky's can be a very sporting trip on the way out due to heavy rain. Whilst digging it only got very wet during very heavy rain.

 

[Alan Walker]

Can anyone let me have a brief description of Corkies, rigging topo, rope requirements, if its p bolted and a grid ref would be lovely. Thinking of going to take a look on Sunday.

Cheers

 

[dunc]

Grid Ref is - SD7526672675

Don't know about any other bits you asked about, never been.. Descent 180 has an article on it which gives a description of it..

 

[DaveL]

It's all rigged (thanks to those nice people at BPC). You'll need SRT gear for the final pitch into Mud Hall, but it does have a rope in situ; everything else is on ladders.

Go feet first in the initial crawls (as far as the first ladder pitch) on the way down; otherwise a couple of short climbs down become unnecessarily interesting!

David