Winter: Your Coldest Trip(s) anecdotes....

[langcliffe]

Mike Wooding and I were coming out of the Aven Entrance of Meregill Hole after sampling the delights of Dave Elliot's newly installed red bolt route, and whilst I was derigging the pitch, Mike found that he couldn't get through the entrance crawl. It's normally a fairly spacious passage with a puddle on the floor that one crawls through - unfortunately the puddle had frozen solid.

I had to re-rig the pitch and go back down to retrieve a sufficiently sharp and heavy stone for him to be able to chip out the ice. It added about 40 minutes to a three hour trip, and we were a trifle chilly when we finally got out.

 

[Fulk]

a fairly spacious passage

  ???

 

[robjones]

Cwmorthin Slate Mine, 11 January 1986 during a couple of weeks of very cold weather. The first thirty feet or so of the entrance comprises timbers supporting loose slate waste above, through which quite a lot of water trickles. The strong inward draught had frozen the trickling water into ice stalactites connecting to enormous ice bosses on the floor and the entrance area was almost blocked by ice. Had to use large rocks to smash our way in - felt like vandalism, they were so impressive. Beneath every drip in the entrance tunnel for the first few hundred feet there were large ice bosses up to two and three feet diameter and up to three feet high. Very impressive - very much regretted not having a camera. The round trip involved getting wet to above the waist - jolly cold emerging in wet boiler suits in sub-zero temperatures after dark for the walk back down to the road.

 

[cap n chris]

BLIMEY! That sounds brassymonkey.