Streaks and "other" pot

Alex

Well-known member
Streaks Pot. 18/08/2019

Having moved away from Skipton back into my native Lancashire, I have started to cave in the Peak more often, being as its just over an hour's drive. There is so much caving I have not done there, where as I have exhausted most of the normal Dales caves.
I met up with Tom Bishop of MUSC and decided to give Streaks a go, it looked entertaining and had no flood warnings, though from the description I don't understand why. Anyway it looked like no rain was forcasted but it had chucked it down a heck of a lot just over 24 hours ago, all the road drains were gushing water.

We spent a while finding the entrance, as seems to be normal when me and Tom do a trip. We thought it would be best to climb up and walk across the hill thinking there would be a path, there was not and the undergrowth was rather dense in places and just got us really sweaty. In retrospect we should have just walked up the busy road.

Eventually we admitted defeat and walked back down to find the proper way up, Streaks path, where-ever that is. We tried to match the bends in the roads to the detail lacking map and found... Yoga pot.

We decided whilst we were here we might as well do the short through trip from the aptly named Crawl entrance. There is quite a lot of flat out crawling, but we had fun exploring a few chambers the miners broke into we found our way to the exit pitch/climb (Rubbish bag entrance) and completed the through trip. No rope was needed, thanks to log jammed in place.

Since now, we now knew were we were it was not long until we found Streaks Pot.

I rigged the entrance and laughed at the pure ridiculous free climb on the opposite side of the shaft, it looked absolutely desperate.

Once down, we put the SRT kits in the rope bag, with the exception of my harness and cows tails so I could de-rig safely later. This I stuffed into my personal bag.

We spent a good 10 minutes trying to find the way on from the chamber here. Due to the last minute nature of the trip we did not have a printed description with us and simply tried to revise it as if we were to have an exam and today was exam day. We thought there should be hole in the floor, but no the way on was actually a rift at the far end of the chamber that appeared to go no where, unless you bother to climb up. 2 out of 10 must try harder!

It could have been a short trip, if we had not found this. Up next was a rather slippery looking down-climb (the aforementioned hole in the floor) which appeared to bell out below, we were hesitant at first but I found it was possible to lower yourself down at an angle to reach the ledge 2m below, and was not bad at all.

Under some dodgey stemples we remembered for the description, we went down another slippery climb, which looked like it would be quite difficult to reverse. For those of a Yorkshire persuasion it was like the climb at the top of the pitches going into Cup cake from Notts 2.

At the bottom we reached the stream, there was a lot of water, I have read some trip reports here and none of them mentioned all this water. From the survey it seemed that the way on should be to the right, but it looked impassible in just a few meters. So the only way it appeared, was left up some waterlogged tubes. These rejoined the main stream. Left here dead-ended in a chamber with an improbable crawl in the water (2 inch of air space) or a flat out muddy crawl to the left that went no where, except to a high rift.

Retracing our steps we found another way on which after entering an aven chamber (Alexander's aven) we followed the water from here. We knew upstream was wrong but there was no where else to go, so we pushed on. Easy and now mainly dry crawling for 50 meters or so went past chambers and breakdown led us to the Blue sump a crystal clear deep pool.  This at least meant we knew where we were, which was completely in the wrong place! We re-traced our steps again, trying every little side passage only finding a large breakdown chamber near the start.

We were just about to give up and go back up the greasy climbs we were really looking forward to when coming out of the tube, I noticed the passage opposite was not as low as I thought, and there was a chance, though small there might be a way up where the passage got too low. I was right, after practically floating along with my face half in the water, I found a way up via a slightly awkward but easy squeeze over boulders. Soaked now, I was glad to be out of the water. This dryness did not last and another squeeze back down, dropped us back into the stream. It got also very low with a good half head wetting, before reaching the Aptly named Nervous breakdown.  We were indeed a slightly nervous by this point, not just the looseness but the fact we were heading completely into the unknown with no survey to guide us except our vague recollections. The return journey did not seem pleasant, either. I am used to ducks etc, but not being in 12 inch high passages with water 8 inch deep flowing at such a high rate I almost lost my bag twice. Contrary to the description, it all looked very flood prone to me!

After this point more crawling in the fast flowing stream brought us to a junction took us out of the main stream and then into a side passage with smaller stream, still quite wet but less likely to drown us here. Finally just by following our noses we reached the Sandy highway which had a lot of standing water in it, and from here it was just the case of keeping right from what I recalled. This worked and soon I could hear traffic and not longer after I could then see daylight.

Type 2 fun, definitely one for water baby's with this much water about but good fun all the same. Still despite only being in a furry, I never got so cold as to start shivering, I think the water was warmer then I am used to in most Dales caves.



 

Katie

Active member
Sounds like you had fun! Streaks is an awesome through although I can imagine it is very aquatic at the moment!
It does sump completely in places but usually there is a strong enough draught to indicate if it is open or not!
In case you go back the free climb may look desperate but it isn't. It is easy (and I am 5ft2!)
Katie
 

2xw

Active member
Classic sporting streaks trip! I do think peaks water is warmer than dales water. Maybe because by the time you get in it it's been underground for yonks sitting in some mine
 

caving_fox

Active member
Yep Streaks is definitely type 2 fun! I wouldn't do it when it's this wet, it's not exactly pleasant even in normal-dry conditions.
 

Alex

Well-known member
Maybe because by the time you get in it it's been underground for yonks sitting in some mine

No, the water in Hillocks mine connection was certainly not warm. I am guessing the water in Streaks pot must sink not too far away as it was a warm(ish) day outside.
 

hoehlenforscher

Active member
oh lordy, that report bought back some memories I had put way back in my mind and hoped to never recall :) We first explored Streaks from the lower entrance which was just an old 50 gallon oil drum through the surface rubbish. On the way out the drum had moved down into the earth making it all but impossible to get into it and hence out of the cave. It took a lot of digging to get into the drum and hence out again. A bit of a worry. But we had explored the cave up past the Nervous Breakdown so that when we dropped in from the upper entrance the next time the through trip was pretty straightforward. However, the last time I did it (and this was back in the late 80's we are taking now) it was after considerable snowmelt and the thing was pretty much in spate. The squeeze over boulders and back into the water you mention was actually a duck! I chickened out at this point and went back out he upper entrance, but 2 of our group went through the duck and on into the unknown. We were extremely happy to see them emerge from the lower entrance not long after we got there from the outside. I hope the oil drum has since been improved!
 
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