drainrat
Member
Who: Myself (freelance), Oggy (DCC)
Where: Ogof Daren Cilau, Welsh Wales
When: Friday 7th September 2012
It was about time we tried a decent length trip after all the messing about on Mendip and in the Peak, so where better to have a baptism of fire but down Daren!
Hearing of the entrance series fearsome reputation it only made sense to go for the through trip and out of Ogof Cnwc. Looking at the surveys, once in Antler passage, the cave was rather linear with not a great number of side passages to get lost up. With that in mind we thought what could go wrong?
To cut a very very long story short, we made light work of the entrance series (vice? what vice?) we had a good explore up to surveyors passage, round the loop route and then off down Epocalypse. Antler was a doddle if rather long and we eventually got to Busman's. By now we'd been in the cave 7 hours, with all the looking at pretties and exploring side leads we were fairly tired. Callout time was in another 4 hours so when we couldn't find the way on, we got a little worried.
John Stevens from the Chelsea has since sent me a very detailed survey of Busman's and it appears we had gone past the connection and were too far south. We could either have spent forever looking for the exit, or sensibly turned around and caved out to make our callout time. We opted for the latter and with very heavy hearts turned around knowing there was a long way back out.
At the start of the crawl we drank as much as possible from the little stream and made out a sensible pace. 1 1/4 hours wasn't bad in our tired state, I was suffering from cramp in my legs. We were just 27 minutes overdue back down at the car park, 12 hours after leaving. Turns out we had been less than 15 minutes from the Ogof Cnwc exit.......
Note to other cavers:
-A rudimentary survey (what we took) will get you 99% of the way through
-Take a detailed survey of Busman's or you'll regret it!
Where: Ogof Daren Cilau, Welsh Wales
When: Friday 7th September 2012
It was about time we tried a decent length trip after all the messing about on Mendip and in the Peak, so where better to have a baptism of fire but down Daren!
Hearing of the entrance series fearsome reputation it only made sense to go for the through trip and out of Ogof Cnwc. Looking at the surveys, once in Antler passage, the cave was rather linear with not a great number of side passages to get lost up. With that in mind we thought what could go wrong?
To cut a very very long story short, we made light work of the entrance series (vice? what vice?) we had a good explore up to surveyors passage, round the loop route and then off down Epocalypse. Antler was a doddle if rather long and we eventually got to Busman's. By now we'd been in the cave 7 hours, with all the looking at pretties and exploring side leads we were fairly tired. Callout time was in another 4 hours so when we couldn't find the way on, we got a little worried.
John Stevens from the Chelsea has since sent me a very detailed survey of Busman's and it appears we had gone past the connection and were too far south. We could either have spent forever looking for the exit, or sensibly turned around and caved out to make our callout time. We opted for the latter and with very heavy hearts turned around knowing there was a long way back out.
At the start of the crawl we drank as much as possible from the little stream and made out a sensible pace. 1 1/4 hours wasn't bad in our tired state, I was suffering from cramp in my legs. We were just 27 minutes overdue back down at the car park, 12 hours after leaving. Turns out we had been less than 15 minutes from the Ogof Cnwc exit.......
Note to other cavers:
-A rudimentary survey (what we took) will get you 99% of the way through
-Take a detailed survey of Busman's or you'll regret it!