Thank you very much for all the replies! what follows is a brief account of what happened on that potentially epic trip on Sat.
After packing three bags with all the ropes required in the rigging guide, we drove to Brackenbottom on Friday night and I woke up feeling sprightly and determined to go, come rain or snow. Faff, and 'who's gonna go where' ensued but finally I managed to convince one other girl (K) and one very chivalrous bloke (R) to come with me and pay a visit to 'the best cave in the country'. Quite a few people suggested to avoid wetsuit, because if you need wetsuit in PYP you shouldn't be there, as the reasoning goes, and I obliged by wearing my psychedelic frogs Warmbac fleece.
K was blighted 'by a dark sense of foreboding' (her own words) that just got worse as we hiked up the hill amongst the howling wind. The sky was blue and mud was frozen, what could possibly go wrong? We found the cave quite easily and faced the entrance crawl, a few 'urghh' and 'argh' and 'umphf' later got to the first pitch were K started a lightening speed rigging routine. Got down the first pitch, fell face down in the pool (how refreshing!) and down the canyon all right. What a nice and well behaved stream-way: the humongous tacklesack I was carrying didn't get stuck once! Down the second pitch happily we went, we turned left towards the third pitch head where a rope was in situ, ignoring it K flashed down what was supposed to be bone dry (just a trickle instead), we rejoined the main shaft and went down the fourth pitch. The main waterfall was hammering it down and the wind was more than a normal cave draft, and instead went in icy and wet gales. We ignored the gleaming warning sign and I took lead to start rigging the rift, went down the fifth pitch. Since I'm muppet, rather than slotting neatly in the dry rift on the left, I tried to follow the waterfall line but avoid the water, and unsurprisingly got wet. Ah! K followed me and started screaming immediately that she didn't like it and we MUST turn back. Bless a person with more sense than me... so we uneventfully if soppily retraced our steps up and out with K and me derigging in turns. The entrance crawl was very very very rank. Apart from the low end bit, when keeping chest dry was an interesting task, the water was past elbow level most of the time. Brain cells were so frozen that I even considered if a tiny wet inlet was the way out, but then recovered from temporary idiocy and followed the main crawl which was draughting like an arctic dragon. Got out, walked back with R carrying two big tacklesacks and K carrying the third one, with the wind almost blowing us over the steep hill. Finally we reached the lovely heated floor of brackenbottom, warm water to defrost blue fingers and tea. By the end of this I felt so guilty that I offered to K the option to beat me , which she accepted, but in the end she was too tired to even do that...will try again, in april, so I can tick it off the to do list and be done with it!
Time underground ~4.30hrs
