UKMC
New member
After an early start and a drive up to Yorkshire I was blessed with the sight of a kebab box in my rover left from the night before only one thing to do!
After a danger close dash to the bogs at the gorge (seems UK best kebabs may not be the best breakfast) we started the carry's to the entrance on the riverbed
A tricky tight entrance was a awkward job to get 5 kit bags past but with some pushing and shoving we got there in the end. Two easy pitches managed with an 50m rope & 8 crabs we found ourself in the large main stream way we left SRT kit and started to move kit to dive base for the down stream sumps
The plan was to dive middle sump to bypass the awkward climb to the sump bypass chamber to see how far we can get towards sump 7/8 both being to long to dive. Seems I drew the short straw to dive first middle sump 12m/15m starts in a steep gravel bank to a depth of 3.5m changing to a area of sticks and sand along the bottom with the odd large bolder. Vis was more than poor every tie off put me back into a cloud of 0 visibility. After some zig zagging about on quite a wide sump I found a steep upward gravel bank. My first mistake was thinking I'm smaller than I am after a small amount of digging I decided to have a squeeze into the small gap created. My second mistake was getting stuck just as I got to the point I was getting stuck I decided to push myself back out of the upward slot I had dug sadly the rock collapse had other ideas. Unknown to myself the top of the slope was a mass of loose boulders that at my point of reversing decided to fall on my head me being a cleaver dick used my hands to push them all away from my head thus creating two lovely mounds of boulders that went down and round my cylinders and with ease blocked me from reversing backward. For the first time of a number of times on this dive I will not bullshit you I was more than thinking I was going to come unstuck and meet my watery death and for a split second I started to panic. After telling myself to get a grip and the only way to get back home to the girls was to sort this mess out was to think like a caver and dig I slid my arms down my cylinders and started to push rocks sideways and thankfully they started to move and I cleared my backwards path and I reversed. More than shaken by the experience I decided to take five after a short breather I started to look for other options but my panic had made a cloud of dirt that was not going to clear any time soon I decided to tie off my reel on a bolder and head back the 12m or so to discus with CC and to be quite honest I needed to be back in air for a short time feeling I had been out matched by the middle sump. After handing on the challenge to CC he managed to sort my zig zags out and find the correct way up the gravel slope and we both made it to the start of sump 1
TBC - When I have more time & photos
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