chunky
Well-known member
As is often the case with my posts this will be more piccys than words but wanted to share some fun we had over Christmas.
After 4 weeks in a row working weekends I was going a bit stir crazy, so much so that when the heavy snow fell and we literally couldn't get to work I set about building a 'Snow Cave' and made poor Jess don her caving gear to mess about in it at night with the temperatures dropping to -4.
Jess not impressed
I can't think why but she wasn't overly impressed but it did the trick and she arranged a trip in to Hendre Spa Mine for the Dudley Christmas Trip.
The gang in Hendre Spa Mine
With bellies full of Turkey and Xmas pud we headed to South Wales between Christmas and New Year where we had great fun playing with Roo's 3D scanner in OFD and the Dinas Silica Mines ahead of some planned trips later in the year.
Scanning in Big Chamber
Scanning in the Dinas Silica Mines
Our first caving trip was to take the group on the OFD 1 round trip as the others hadn't been in there before. After the standard trip the girls went off to do some walking in the snow whilst the rest of us went to take some photos around the eagles nest.
Passage by the escape route
Pi Chamber
Passage near the Eagles Nest
The scanning was interesting stuff, but we weren't burning off the xmas fare stomping around big chamber and so the bigger trip of our break was planned. The snowmelt would mean that water levels were on the up and we had a fair bit of rain over night and so a plan began to form. Brendan and I had found a high level route to enter the Marble showers series without the need to traverse a couple of years ago and found a spectacular view of the main stream way that I really wanted to go back and photo in high water. To compliment the Dudley crew that had come for a couple of days caving, we picked up Nicky Bayley whom I had never had the pleasure of caving with before.
We went in via Edwards Short Cut and headed up the Sky Hook Pitch to the upper oxbow series where, after a little persuasion Nicky took a couple of photos, before descending the 20m and 8m pitches down to splash inlet. We followed this through to the Marble showers series to the balcony looking down to the main stream. I descended to check that it wasn't too dangerous to get people down the bottom to light the shot and after a little persuasion the team grabbed walkie talkies, flash guns and flash bulbs to get a shot of this beautiful area in flood conditions.
Nicky at Marble Showers
The gang happy not to have died or nuffink!
After 4 weeks in a row working weekends I was going a bit stir crazy, so much so that when the heavy snow fell and we literally couldn't get to work I set about building a 'Snow Cave' and made poor Jess don her caving gear to mess about in it at night with the temperatures dropping to -4.
Jess not impressed
I can't think why but she wasn't overly impressed but it did the trick and she arranged a trip in to Hendre Spa Mine for the Dudley Christmas Trip.
The gang in Hendre Spa Mine
With bellies full of Turkey and Xmas pud we headed to South Wales between Christmas and New Year where we had great fun playing with Roo's 3D scanner in OFD and the Dinas Silica Mines ahead of some planned trips later in the year.
Scanning in Big Chamber
Scanning in the Dinas Silica Mines
Our first caving trip was to take the group on the OFD 1 round trip as the others hadn't been in there before. After the standard trip the girls went off to do some walking in the snow whilst the rest of us went to take some photos around the eagles nest.
Passage by the escape route
Pi Chamber
Passage near the Eagles Nest
The scanning was interesting stuff, but we weren't burning off the xmas fare stomping around big chamber and so the bigger trip of our break was planned. The snowmelt would mean that water levels were on the up and we had a fair bit of rain over night and so a plan began to form. Brendan and I had found a high level route to enter the Marble showers series without the need to traverse a couple of years ago and found a spectacular view of the main stream way that I really wanted to go back and photo in high water. To compliment the Dudley crew that had come for a couple of days caving, we picked up Nicky Bayley whom I had never had the pleasure of caving with before.
We went in via Edwards Short Cut and headed up the Sky Hook Pitch to the upper oxbow series where, after a little persuasion Nicky took a couple of photos, before descending the 20m and 8m pitches down to splash inlet. We followed this through to the Marble showers series to the balcony looking down to the main stream. I descended to check that it wasn't too dangerous to get people down the bottom to light the shot and after a little persuasion the team grabbed walkie talkies, flash guns and flash bulbs to get a shot of this beautiful area in flood conditions.
Nicky at Marble Showers
The gang happy not to have died or nuffink!
