Mini trip report for yesterday's Diccan pot excursion:
Alex C and myself headed down Diccan pot rather late in the afternoon to avoid the Saturdays football. The first problem to solve was how to walk up to the entrance wearing as little of the vast amount of caving gear we had with us. Having slogged uphill with 200m of rope we were extremely quick to don the gear and wade into the cool pools in the entrance stream way. As usual we found many more bolts than expected and we made our way down choosing in such a way that meant we didn't run out of biners. The deviations on the way down were particularly exciting. The LUSS SRT training paid off as Alex was safe, efficient and able to solve any problem we encountered quickly (his first vertical caving trip!).
We made our way to the bottom and up the stream way to be granted an enticing view up and out of alum pot. I would love to at some point do a trip with two teams swapping between alum and diccan.
The ascent was far wetter than anticipated given the current dry conditions, and masses of wet ropes proved heavy to haul. Alex got a flavour of derigging on the bottom pitch and the traverse. He did a great job of spotting the bolts high up that I had missed on the way out. We also both enjoyed swinging into the water after releasing the deviations.
All in all a great afternoon/evening trip out. Thanks to the mysterious person who reunited us with our first aid kit. Also our thanks again to CHECC, BCA, NUCC and many more, for helping us with the gear to make our trips possible. LUSS has had a good number of trips recently exploring the local area.
Alex C and myself headed down Diccan pot rather late in the afternoon to avoid the Saturdays football. The first problem to solve was how to walk up to the entrance wearing as little of the vast amount of caving gear we had with us. Having slogged uphill with 200m of rope we were extremely quick to don the gear and wade into the cool pools in the entrance stream way. As usual we found many more bolts than expected and we made our way down choosing in such a way that meant we didn't run out of biners. The deviations on the way down were particularly exciting. The LUSS SRT training paid off as Alex was safe, efficient and able to solve any problem we encountered quickly (his first vertical caving trip!).
We made our way to the bottom and up the stream way to be granted an enticing view up and out of alum pot. I would love to at some point do a trip with two teams swapping between alum and diccan.
The ascent was far wetter than anticipated given the current dry conditions, and masses of wet ropes proved heavy to haul. Alex got a flavour of derigging on the bottom pitch and the traverse. He did a great job of spotting the bolts high up that I had missed on the way out. We also both enjoyed swinging into the water after releasing the deviations.
All in all a great afternoon/evening trip out. Thanks to the mysterious person who reunited us with our first aid kit. Also our thanks again to CHECC, BCA, NUCC and many more, for helping us with the gear to make our trips possible. LUSS has had a good number of trips recently exploring the local area.
