Amusing experiences?

yrammy

Member
Do you have any amusing experiences underground?

I once crawled half way across the quarry have got out of Daren at night. I kept thinking  - I can smell daylight - and then I came across a pair of upright books containing my husband!
 

alastairgott

Well-known member
I was a newer member of the TSG at the time, and hadn't really been into peak cavern much, but was asked by some (Exeter? or York?) uni students whether I could lead a trip about 7 and a half years ago. We entered the cave, I'm pretty sure I got the wallows correct and didn't turn off to the 47 series.

All the way to the Main streamway, then went downstream, where I proclaimed this is Ink sump! Following the passage back upstream we got to Squaws junction where I went straight up and turned left around Main stream inlet. then got to a junction and turned right as I knew I needed to follow the pipes, I then told the group to stay where they were while I turned right again, and found myself back at the top of Squaws junction.

Knowing this to be incorrect, I backtracked and we got up wigwam aven, I knew this was the correct route. So we continued onto Galena rift and to the head of the Galena climb/weasel (which at the time I didn't remember). I didn't like the climb down beneath the wind tunnel so plumbed for the weasel down in the floor.
At this point I'm sure the group had lost faith in their leader, and so when one didn't like the weaseling at floor level, I had a mutiny on my hands. so we turned back and I got to see Squaws junction for a third time.
-----
I just wish I could regale the tales of other fails, but it would not be fine as they are not mine to consign.
 

Cavematt

Well-known member
York Caving Club started in 2009 and our first trip was Growling Hole. This however did not go well when one of our cavers became firmly wedged in the entrance hole while trying to descend on a rope. So why is this amusing? Well, it soon became apparant that the issue was not in fact his manly physique, but was instead the 2ft long giant Toblerone he had stuffed down his oversuit as a snack.

Toblerone = Bad caving snack  :mad:

 

langcliffe

Well-known member
yrammy said:
I once crawled half way across the quarry have got out of Daren at night.

That reminds me of the time in about 1972 when I decided to have a look at Frakes Passage in Kingsdale Master Cave. I staggered to the Rowten sump from Valley Entrance with my gear, and passed a guy that obviously knew a lot more about the upstream Rowten sump than I did. "Keep to the left", he said. So I did, and proceeded to swim / crawl through a flat-out bedding. After about 10 minutes, I was thinking that the sump was a lot longer than I had anticipated. So I looked up, saw an air surface, and realised that for the last 50 metres I had been swimming underwater in a passage I could have walked through, having effectively doubled the length of the sump.

As the late, great, Mike Wooding once said to me: "The good thing about solo caving is that there is no one around to see your cock-ups."

On the way back through the sump, I swam down the other side of the passage through a beautiful tube and it took about a minute...
 

chunky

Well-known member
My better half did her first couple of caving trips with North Wales which were nice and gentle and involved an underground picnic at the half way point.

She then joined Dudley caving club and was taken on the Swildon's round trip. Upon reaching the squeeze she poked her head in to it, backed up, and then reached in to her suit and removed sandwiches, pork pie, an apple, assorted snacks and her drink before she could manage to get through  :)
 
A few moons ago on a lovely Sunday we were nursing cups of tea working out which Sunday trip would fit with our mood when we happened along the idea of wandering up the Pennine Way from Horton and doing whatever cave we came across that fitted our mood and finishing off with Red Moss. All told it was a great day out - the highlight though was Canal Cavern. A short ladder left us in an unwelcoming rift - so we dispatched Wayne Rickett off into a black, waterlogged rift. Soon out of sight we monitored his progress by quality glooping sounds - shortly followed by a big splash, more splashing and lots of expletives. A soggy Wayne rapidly re-appeared, shouted the word "Out" and legged it back up the ladder.

Back in the sunshine he explained  that he'd made progress along the rift using unseen ledges below the water surface. One gave way suddenly and left him out of depth. The ledge turned out not to be a ledge but a fairly decomposed dead sheep  :cry: that was released from it's watery grave to bob to the surface only to stare eye (or what was left of it) to eye with Wayne (who is far from the best swimmer in the world).

I can honestly say that I've rarely laughed so much ... :LOL:
 

topcat

Active member
Some years ago I came out of a wet Kingsdale cave to rain and wind.  I was looking forward to a speedy change into dry clothes but once back at the car, frozen stiff, I couldn't find my trousers .  I searched everywhere, including under the car in case I'd dropped them when packing up earlier.  No where to be seen.  The rest of my clothes were there but no trousers.  This was very perplexing and a bit worrying as I cave commando and the team wanted to head for Bernies.

The car didn't seem to have been broken into and in any case the usual valuables were still in place.

I had to give up the search as the others were ready to go..  Stripping off my over suit revealed that I had been caving all day wearing my trousers over my furry undersuit, which is how I'd left the hut.

The worst thing was that when my mates started telling the tale back at the hut they were no where near the punch line when my wife said, oh aye , no doubt he was wearing them....in that tone which long suffering wives keep for just these kinds of occasions .
 

langcliffe

Well-known member
topcat said:
Stripping off my over suit revealed that I had been caving all day wearing my trousers over my furry undersuit, which is how I'd left the hut.

I feel for you. I did the same on a through trip from Lancaster to WR. I sweated buckets and finished up with a very wet undersuit and a very soggy pair of trousers.
 

Hunter

Member
Back in the eighties, four of us decided to do a through trip from Rowten to KMC with two of us using bottles and two of us free diving.
After abseiling down Rowten one of our number who was to use a bottle decided he didn?t like the idea and would SRT back out using the one set of SRT kit we had with us, just in case.
Then came a slight hiccup when colleague No 2 decided they didn?t want to dive through and also wanted to go back up the rope.
After some discussion it was decided that they would share the kit and start on up while two of us would dive out as planned and go to the car, get another set of SRT kit and run back up to the top of Rowten with it.
Now I know this sounds silly now but the plan was to shout and alert our mates and lower the kit down to them.
Trouble is we hadn?t reckoned on the noise of the waterfall drowning out our voices and couldn?t make contact which in hindsight was probably a good thing, as a set of STR kit hurtling a couple of hundred feet down the rope was not one of our brighter ideas.
So, we waited in the gloom on top of the fell in wet wetsuits occasionally doing some mad jerking dance to try and warm up.
Eventually our colleagues appeared at the top and we left them to de kit while we ran down to the car to start the engine and try and warm up.
However, on returning to the car the battery had gone flat.
Never mind says I, you steer and I?ll push you down the slope into the drive of Braida Garth and you can jump start it...........didn?t work. It coughed a couple of times and juddered to a halt in the middle of the drive......bugger!
So we are cold, in wet wetsuits as our clothes were in a caravan in Ingleton, the car is lifeless at the bottom of a slope and a thick fog is coming down and we have no idea where our mates are.
Eventually, out of the gloom we heard a strange rustling noise which turned out to be our absent friends, one of whom had donned a survival bag like a poncho and was rustling his way across the hillside.
We finally got the car started as the farmer at Braida Garth very kindly gave us a tow with his tractor to get it bump started.
And as all good caving trips do, it finished with an evening in the pub, The Marton Arms if I recall.

 

yrammy

Member
TOPCAT  you have reminded me of a classic TSG fail. It was the day of the Christmas Dinner and two chaps (I wont tell their names to spare them any embarrassment (Mind you one of them was called Don Holland)) . They did a trip down Peak but once back on the surface one found he had forgotten to bring a spare pair of undercrackers. So later the dinner was going well at the Peak Hotel. Cobs were flying and beer was going down well. The noise was incredible. But sometimes in a room where there is such chaos everyone going silent at once - a weird experience. It was at this moment that Don  shouted above  the now silent noise  "Are your balls rubbing?" I will leave you to imagine the hysterical laughter that followed. 
 

paul

Moderator
Back in the 80's we wore wetsuits on any caving trip, wet or not and had just re-surfaced on a very cold November evening after a trip down Lizard Pot on The Allotment.
As we had been using ladders and lifeline, it took a bit of time for everyone to return to the surface and we were getting very cold.
We walked back down to Clapham, where we had parked in the car park and decided to change in the public toilets as it would be more sheltered than outside. There had been some sleet and we had some ice on the front of our wetsuits.
My wetsuit had a metal zip and the ice on the front had melted from my body heat, so I was soon stripped off. The other two had nylon zips and they were still jammed with ice so they had filled two hand basins with water and were splashing their fronts to melt the ice.
I had just got to the totally nude stage when a man walked in, presumably to make used of the toilets.
He took one look at me standing totally naked with two other men dressed in rubber, splashing water over themselves.
He quickly turned around and left... rather quickly.
 

Rachel

Active member
Once, I was the first one of our group to exit Marble Steps. As it was late in the evening, going dark and the wind was howling, I decided to keep warm whilst waiting for the next person. The grass/reeds were very overgrown, so I laid down amongst them to get under the wind and was so comfy I nodded off. I was soon rudely awakened by my buddy falling over me and letting out a bloodcurdling scream, thinking he'd found a corpse on the moor.
 

Subpopulus Hibernia

Active member
Myself and a friend found a new cave in the west of Ireland about a decade ago. A large stream was gushing into an entrance and seemed to sump pretty quickly. I was wetsuited, so I swam in up to my neck, and down a short bit of rift. Here it sumped off entirely but I spotted a bit of orange polypropylene dive line vanishing into the water. 'Bollocks! It's already been dived!' I shouted back to my friend. I grabbed the dive line to see if it was still attached to anything, and yanked it out. I was surprised and disgusted to find it was not orange polyprop, but the legs of a dead mallard, which was in an advanced state of decomposition, and smelled most foul indeed.
 

blackshiver

Member
Many years ago there was a rather bloated dead sheep at the bottom of the entrance pitch in Link Pot.
After finishing a trip down there, Pete decided it would be a good idea to haul it out, so three of us went up the pitch to haul - leaving Pete to sort out the rope and corpse.
?PULL!? came the cry down in the darkness and we immediately fell over backwards after taking the strain.
In a scene like a cartoon, there was an immediate appearance of a face with eyes the size of saucers at the top of the shaft, followed by a bout of throwing up.

Apparently the idiot had tied the rope round its horns, which had immediately pulled off and discharged the contents of the bloated body through the holes that were left.......

 
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