Wezzit, please

langcliffe

Well-known member
This photograph taken around 1950 has been annotated as being taken from the top of Dome Pitch. As the top of Dome is relatively restricted, this cannot be taken too literally. It could be the chamber below Cathedral, but I suspect that it is the chamber above Cathedral. I have no reason to suspect that it was not taken in Lost Johns.

What do others think?

lostjohns.jpg
 

Fulk

Well-known member
Could it be the bottom of Dome, looking towards the passage that connects with the streamway (Zig-Zag Passage, is it?)/
 

langcliffe

Well-known member
Could well be, Fulk - thank you for the suggestion. The problem with that area is  that it is a bit of a mess with ledges and an incised stream passage, and I am not sure that there is enough room for three people to stand next to each other.

I tried Zig-Zag passage once. It started off very nicely, but we then bottled out of the final climb into the roof... Jack Pickup has a nice story about doing it from the Monastery side, and having to get down that same climb.

That's a wonderful collection of ladders in the photograph!
 

Alex

Well-known member
It sort of reminds me of the passage where the traverse starts to the 3rd pitch and it bends to the left. The second pitch being that short drop that is normally climbed.

This could be looking across the wide bit of that chamber, with the traverse going off ahead and to the left. Its perfectly possible to stand there as I assume back in the day, they would climb down the rift that we all traverse over now and hang the ladder from somewhere in there.
 

Fulk

Well-known member
I once went all the way through Zig-Zag Passage from the Dome end, to end up gazing down into the stream passage below the big wet pitch (Monastery), but there was an in-situ rope on the final clmb; last time we tried it, there was no rope and we bottled out.

I wonder if anybody's ever bothered to take all the tackle that would be needed to get to the bottom of LJC through the Zig-Zag Passage route?
 

langcliffe

Well-known member
Alex said:
It sort of reminds me of the passage where the traverse starts to the 3rd pitch and it bends to the left. The second pitch being that short drop that is normally climbed.

This could be looking across the wide bit of that chamber, with the traverse going off ahead and to the left. Its perfectly possible to stand there as I assume back in the day, they would climb down the rift that we all traverse over now and hang the ladder from somewhere in there.

That's my current thinking, Alex - the top of Cathedral. Nice to have one person thinking the same.

We used to put a rope down the rift to the Pulpit in the days of electron ladder.
 

langcliffe

Well-known member
Fulk said:
I once went all the way through Zig-Zag Passage from the Dome end, to end up gazing down into the stream passage below the big wet pitch (Monastery), but there was an in-situ rope on the final clmb; last time we tried it, there was no rope and we bottled out.

I wonder if anybody's ever bothered to take all the tackle that would be needed to get to the bottom of LJC through the Zig-Zag Passage route?

We bottled out before you, then!

I cannot imagine anybody, anytime, tacking tackle through Zig-Zag!
 
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